By AP/KWMU
St. Louis, MO – The first of several trucks carrying radioactive waste passed through parts of Missouri Monday night.
The shipments are coming from a long-closed uranium plant near Cincinnati and headed for Texas. Neighbors near Cincinnati had been fighting for years to get rid of the material.
Jeff Wagner, a spokesman for company that's been hired by the Energy Department to clean the site, says the material is not a great risk to humans.
Wagner says other cargo moves across interstates every day that are more of a security risk. The radioactive material is being shipped in concrete blocks.
It will take about 2,000 shipments of sealed containers aboard flatbed trucks to transport all of the 45,000 tons of waste.