| •Communism continues to collapse
in many nations including the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. •Long
buried ethnic rivalries explode into civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. •United
States and allies begin ground war and liberate Kuwait from Iraq four days
later. |
| •No nuclear materials production
reactors are operating during the decade. One hundred ten commercial reactors
are operating in the United States as of 1992. |
Communism continued to collapse, most notably in the Soviet Union. The Soviet
Union began to unravel in August 1991, when Communist hardliners staged a coup.
Soviet leaders were about to sign a new Union treaty that gave the Soviet
republics more power. The hardliners ordered troops into Moscow and the Baltic
Republics and took Soviet President Gorbachev prisoner at his vacation home in
the Crimea. Boris Yeltsin, the democratically elected President of the Russian
Republic, led the resistance to the coup and within three days the coup
collapsed.
The hardliner coup only accelerated the process they were trying to stop. Within
days, ten Soviet republics declared their independence from the Soviet Union.
Soviet President Gorbachev resigned on August 24, ending 74 years of Communist
rule. On August 29, the Soviet Parliament suspended the Communist Party.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin emerged as the former Soviet Union's most
important leader.
-
October 1990
Germany is reunited as one country for the first time since the end of World
War II.
-
November 1990
Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe formally ends the Cold War and
reduces Warsaw Pact and NATO conventional forces.
-
July 1991
The United States and Soviet Union sign historic agreement to cut back
long-range nuclear weapons by more than 30% over the next seven years.
-
1992
The Hanford Site changes its mission from nuclear materials production to clean
up of its facilities.
-
October 1992
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Land Withdrawal Act withdraws public
lands for WIPP, a test repository for transuranic nuclear waste located in a
salt deposit deep under the desert.
-
December 1992
DOE's Office of Environmental Restoration and Waste Management (EM) and its
predecessor agencies have decontaminated and dismantled over 90 contaminated
facilities across the country. EM has cleaned up 11 of 43 sites under its
Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program. Under its Uranium Mill
Tailings Remedial Action Program, EM has cleaned up 15 of 24 sites and 4,200 of
5,000 vicinity properties.
-
September 1993
Secretary of Energy O'Leary and Washington Governor Lowry host a two-day summit
to make Hanford a model for the cleanup and revitalization of similar
defense-related waste sites across the country.
-
1993...
DOE continues to clean up the contamination from the last 50 years of the
nuclear age. This contamination is the price we pay today for maintaining a
strong national defense. DOE is working with regulatory agencies and the public
to develop the technology needed and to make the difficult choices associated
with this national cleanup project.
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