Plutonium spill neither gone nor forgotten, 40 years later.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

On June 7, 1960, a nuclear-tipped missile burst into flames on its launcher at an Air Force base nestled in the heart of New Jersey's Pine Barrens, triggering sirens that shattered the afternoon stillness and sent a brief, nervous shock through the region.

Airmen poured water on the burning BOMARC missile and put the fire out within an hour.

With international tensions high over the downing of Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union the month before, the incident seemed minor in comparison, and attention shifted elsewhere.

But 40 years later, an estimated 300 grams, or 10 and one-half ounces, of plutonium from the melted warhead remain in the sandy soil, entombed in asphalt and concrete _ a radioactive relic of the Cold War and just one of the toxic hot spots from the era that dot the nation.

The Air Force has allocated $6 million to clean up the site on the eastern edge of the Fort Dix Military Reservation, but the plans to cart away 10,000 cubic yards of soil, concrete and steel have stalled because surrounding communities do not want radioactive waste shipped through them.

And one radiation expert wonders if it should be moved at all, saying that stirring up the site during an intrusive cleanup might pose a greater risk.

The Air Force calls the site RW-01, or Radioactive Waste-01, and its history offers a window to a time when trust in the government was high and a nuclear accident was easily forgotten.

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BOMARC stands for Boeing Michigan Aeronautical Research Center _ a collaboration between Boeing and the University of Michigan, which developed the …