Forty-five jobs will be created over the next three years as part of a cleanup at the Nevada Test Site announced by Energy Secretary Steven Chu this week, National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Darwin Morgan said.

The cleanup is part of $6 billion in funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act designed to accelerate environmental cleanup work and create thousands of jobs across 12 states.

The program awards $44 million to the Nevada Test Site to identify waste characteristics within the soil at three corrective action sites and install groundwater monitoring wells to provide additional data on groundwater contamination to support future cleanup work. It also involves demolishing three major faclities and two smaller structures, removing contamination.

"Those are specific areas that are geographically located close to each other where we can do some type of environmental resotration/cleanup activities," Morgan said.

The grant will enable the NNSA to speed up completion of some of the cleanup program at the test site, he said.

"This gives us a more efficient use of taxpayer money and being able to do these programs now rather than during the out years," Morgan said. "Our base line has always been that we would be completed with environmental restoration/remediation by 2027. We're not seeing any change of that but it's allowing us to attack some areas sooner than we would have."

Specfically, cleanups will take place of contamination from atmospheric tests and groundwater contamination at the Schooner and Danny Boy crater sites, Morgan said.

Another corrective action unit will be the Sedan, Uncle and ESS crater sites, he said. The Sedan Crater is a famous formation viewed in tours of the Nevada Test Site where the government wanted to study the ground disbursement of a nuclear blast.

The funds will also be used to install two groundwater monitoring wells in Pahute Mesa. The Nevada Test Site Community Advisory Board had requested more monitoring wells at that location near Beatty to study possible migration of groundwater contamination, but those wells are being installed separately, Morgan said.

The large facilities that will be demolished include an engine maintenance assembly facility in Area 25, Morgan said. The Pluto Disassembly Facility, Reactor Maintenance Assembly and Disassembly Facility and two ancillary structures used in Test Cell C will also be demolished, he said.

Morgan said there's contaminated material in those areas including asbestos, lead, mercury, cadmium, oil, PCBs, batteries, light bulbs and other material that could be considered low-level radioactive waste.

Morgan said additionial NTS workers could come from Nye County, depending on who is hired by the environmental remediation contractor.