State gets new federal grant to oversee monitoring at Amchitka nuclear test site

Alaska's environmental regulator has a new five-year federal grant to oversee radiation monitoring at Amchitka, the Aleutian island where the U.S. set off three underground nuclear tests.

The U.S. Department of Energy awarded the grant to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation for Oct. 9, 2026, through Oct. 8, 2031, according to the federal award record. The record shows $41,000 committed so far. The grant it replaces, which ran from 2020 to 2026 and also covered cleanup and closure at the Project Chariot site near Point Hope, totaled $519,815.

The money pays for oversight of long-term surveillance and maintenance, DOE's term for monitoring and upkeep of a closed site. The award record says the state agency has the legal responsibility to review and approve DOE work plans for radiation monitoring, assessment and cleanup at the site.

The tests were Long Shot in 1965, Milrow in 1969 and Cannikin in November 1971. Cannikin was detonated at a depth of 5,873 feet with a yield of less than 5 megatons, according to a DOE fact sheet, and DOE has called it the largest underground nuclear test the U.S. ever conducted.

Amchitka is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. In 2008, DOE, the state agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service signed a Record of Decision, the formal document closing out surface cleanup and setting DOE's long-term monitoring duties.

DOE samples the site on a five-year cycle. Crews collect water and animal tissue to check whether radioactive material from the test cavities has reached the ocean. Tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, was monitored in surface water and shallow groundwater from 1965 through 2001. The state's FY2020 annual report said investigations to that point found no evidence of that migration, and that levels in wildlife were below risk-based and food-safety thresholds. DOE last sampled in June 2023 and said it would publish results after lab analysis.

The Qawalangin Tribe of Unalaska holds a separate $298,291 DOE grant, through February 2027, to build its own Amchitka oversight program.