News of the weird

August 19, 1999, Minneapolis Star Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/stOnLine/cgi-bin/article?thisSlug=new19

In July, the director of Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island formed a committee of physicists to explore whether the lab's replication of the world-forming Big Bang, scheduled for later this year, could backfire and destroy Earth. Full nuclear collisions by the lab's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider will start in the fall, building to the Big Bang. Some physicists believe there is a small chance that the machine could create new kinds of matter or form mini-"black holes" and suck in all surrounding matter.

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Yucca layoffs possible
Budget cuts may also mean delays in scientific studies

By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com> LAS VEGAS SUN, August 18, 1999
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/1999/aug/18/509193778.html

If Congress cuts the Energy Department's budget too much, the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project faces major layoffs and delays, an official said Tuesday.

President Clinton proposed $409 million to continue scientific studies at the mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, but the House slashed that to $280 million.

The Senate has offered $355 million. Lake Barrett, Nuclear Waste Management acting chief, said Tuesday that he expects a research budget somewhere between the two figures.

"The bigger the cut, the bigger the delay," Barrett said during a meeting with local government officials at the Yucca Mountain Project Science Center in Las Vegas.

Barrett's comments came at the DOE's first meeting with local and state officials since a 1,400-page draft environmental impact statement was released Aug. 6.

The House has removed $15 million for state and local oversight of the project, Barrett said. The Republican-led House has slashed oversight funds for the state and 10 counties to oversee Yucca Mountain since 1995.

The House loaded its $20.2 billion energy and water appropriations bill with water projects, Barrett said, and they come first. That hurts Yucca Mountain research funds.

"It will be devastating to the DOE, and I can't read the goat entrails on what the number will be," he said.

Barrett could not estimate how many layoffs might occur.

Yucca Mountain Project spokesman Allen Benson said about 1,600 people work on the project. "I don't have a clue on how many layoffs could occur until Congress decides," he said.

While not blaming the House for intentionally trying to disrupt Yucca Mountain research which is expected to be complete by 2001, Barrett said deadlines may slip.

"Things in Washington between the president and Congress are more chaotic than usual," Barrett said, adding that he would not be surprised to see continuing spending bills to cover federal activities after Oct. 1. The government could even shut down until the budget fights are resolved, as it has in the past.

The DOE released a draft environmental impact statement that helps government scientists focus the direction and scope of research at the mountain, Barrett said. Rather than completing a final impact statement after six months of public comment, the DOE may release both it and a technical assessment in November 2000.

But if Congress slashes the DOE budget by $100 million, work would be delayed on the license application to be considered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2001. At the earliest, it would be ready by late 2002.

The budget situation has to change before the DOE could consider building a repository scheduled to open in 2010 with railroads and access roads, Barrett said.

While utilities contribute $630 million a year to a fund to help pay for Yucca Mountain, the Defense Department and its contractors have failed to pay $1 billion.

Lawsuits filed by nuclear utilities may drain Yucca Mountain funding further, Barrett said. The utilities are suing because when the fund was established, the government agreed to remove spent nuclear fuel from plant sites by 1998.

The earliest that will happen now, if Yucca Mountain is approved and a repository built, is 2010. An appeals court decision is not expected until next year.

At the meeting, state and local government officials raised questions on everything from possible routes to the proposed repository to receiving the latest information about ongoing studies.

Geologist Steve Frishman, Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency technical policy coordinator, said that the DOE could finish its studies and turn them over to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which must license any repository, without updating the state in time to respond.

"The state, the public and the NRC should review the Energy Department's final report," Frishman said.

The DOE's schedule is driving the project, Frishman said.

Barrett and project coordinator Tim Sullivan assured Frishman that the DOE will provide copies to all the information to the state.

Dennis Bechtel, Clark County's nuclear waste director, said the draft impact statement ignored local concerns about effects on the tourism economy and proposed using the locally funded beltway for hauling 77,000 tons of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain.

The Transportation Department prefers the routes in the statement, DOE manager Wendy Dixon said. The statement's developer said the state could offer alternatives as long as they meet DOT guidelines.

Dixon explained that the statement does not conclude anything because so much scientific work remains to be done before the DOE can submit a report to the president about 2001. It examines environmental effects at the site, not economic effects.

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Plant moves for on-site rod storage

By Susan Young, Of the Bangor (Maine) NEWS Staff, August 18, 1999
http://www.bangornews.com/News/81899Plantmoves.html

WISCASSET - With the federal government way behind in its plans to build a permanent storage site for radioactive waste, Maine Yankee's owners want permission to store 1,400 spent fuel rods at the closed nuclear plant.

On Thursday, the plant's owners will go before the Board of Environmental Protection to ask its permission to build concrete casks to store the spent fuel rods.

The plant closed in 1997 after years of problems and safety concerns.

The rods, which contain uranium pellets that were smashed to generate the heat which ultimately became electric power, are stored in a large pool of water inside a building that is scheduled to be demolished.

The power plant is being taken apart. Its owners had paid nearly $200 million to the U.S. Department of Energy, which was supposed to construct a long-term storage facility for high-level radioactive waste that would house spent fuel rods from old atomic plants from around the country.

Construction of the facility, which was to be built in Nevada, has yet to begin and estimates are that the earliest it could open is 2010. So the rods must stay in Wiscasset.

Maine Yankee, which stopped generating power in 1997, proposes to move the fuel rods from the underwater storage to 17-foot high cylindrical casks. The rod assemblies would first be encased in stainless steel canisters, then placed in 66 casks that are made of 28-inch thick concrete.

The casks would then be placed on concrete pads near the edge of the facility. They would have to meet safety requirements to stand up to earthquakes, storms and missile strikes.

Maine Yankee officials had hoped that the Department of Environmental Protection - not the BEP - would quickly approve its application based on its traditional guidelines: evaluating a project's impact on soil and water. The project would change the use of 10 acres.

The department, however, recommended that its citizen board - the BEP - take control of oversight of the project because of the strong statewide interest in the issue. If the BEP decides to take jurisdiction over the matter, this could entail holding public hearings and collecting testimony from nuclear waste experts before deciding whether the project should go forward.

But, company officials argue, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, not a state board, has the expertise to decide if Maine Yankee's storage plans are adequate. The plant's owners have applied to the NRC for approval of its dry storage casks, and a decision is expected in the spring of 2001. Maine Yankee spokesman Eric Howes said the company applied to the DEP for approval to build a concrete pad where there is now a gravel parking lot, not for permission to construct dry storage casks in general.

"This is not a new thing,'' he said. "We've been storing fuel at Maine Yankee for 27 years. Now, we're going to store it in a new way.''

He said dry cask storage is common in the nuclear energy business and will be less expensive for consumers than the current wet storage system that requires pumps to circulate the water.

But David Silver of the DEP's Bureau of Land and Water Quality said it would be Maine's concern if a storage cask failed and released radioactive material into nearby soil and water.

Adding fuel to the fire are hopes among Wiscasset officials that a natural gas-powered power plant and industrial park will be built on the former Maine Yankee site. Selectmen and planners have urged the governor to speed the state approval process so that the town won't suffer economically.

Wiscasset used to get about 90 percent of its property taxes from the atomic power plant and is looking for a way to partially make up for that loss of revenue.

"The injury done to this community by the closure of Maine Yankee will only be compounded if we miss the opportunity for another electric plant to be built at the site because state government was unable to efficiently process permit applications,'' said Robert Blagden, chairman of the Wiscasset Board of Selectmen, in a letter to the governor earlier this month.

Members of the state's nuclear energy watchdog groups argue that Wiscasset's property tax situation isn't a good reason to rush decisions involving high-level radioactive waste.

"We're not talking about putting up a hen house here,'' said Ray Shadis of Friends of the Coast, an Edgecomb-based group that has questioned Maine Yankee's operation since it started in 1972. "This will no longer be the pristine coast of Maine. It will be the coast of Maine with a high-level nuclear dump right on the water's edge.''

While saying the decision should not be rushed, Shadis agreed that dry storage of spent fuel rods, if it is done right, is a better option than wet storage.

As for redevelopment, Shadis questioned whether anyone would want to locate their business on the site of a former nuclear power plant and said that talk of building a natural gas-fired power plant there was just that - talk.

Maine Yankee's Howes said the engineering company that is decomissioning the plant, Stone & Webster, has a two-year option to build a gas-fired plant and is looking into the possibility. The company may be able to reuse the cooling system and transmission lines used by Maine Yankee, which would make the project more economically feasible than starting from scratch.

But, Shadis argued, the electricity such a plant would generate is not needed and that Stone & Webster doesn't have the money necessary to undertake such a project.

The Board of Environmental Protection will take up the matter at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 19, at the Augusta Civic Center.

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Feds Allege Fraud by Navy Contractor

By The Associated Press, August 19, 1999
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/w/AP-Ship-Scam.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Several employees of one of the nation's largest ship management companies are accused of cheating the government while working under a $200 million contract to repair Navy ships, federal officials said Thursday.

Bribes and kickbacks allegedly accepted by some employees of Bayship Management Inc. of Englewood Cliffs, N.J. included dinners, golf outings, country club memberships and trips from subcontractors that were later billed to the government as part of the contract price.

Four former Bayship employees were charged in criminal bills of information last week in Texas. Charges include fraud and kickbacks. Two other Bayship employees were charged earlier.

To date, the four-year investigation has netted charges against 21 people and two companies working as subcontractors.

Charges span individuals from Jacksonville to Boston to San Francisco. Federal authorities say the investigation continues and more charges are likely.

``This case is an egregious example of corruption within a Department of Defense program that has undermined the procurement process, cost the American taxpayers a significant amount of money and eroded the trust and confidence of the public in the operation of the government,'' said John F. Keenan, director of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the investigative arm of the Defense Department's Inspector General.

The focus of the investigation was alleged fraud in a $200 million contract Bayship had with the Military Sealift Command for maintenance and repairs of eight Navy ships. Bayship was responsible for soliciting subcontractors to do the work.

After receiving reports of the allegations in 1994, federal agents set up an undercover subcontracting business known as Coastal Marine Engineering Group that eventually operated in Houston, Jacksonville, New Orleans, Norfolk, Va. and San Francisco.

During the four-year probe, more than 27 agents had undercover roles and made more than 3,000 telephone and body recordings, officials said. Dozens of meetings between the undercover agents and subjects were videotaped, they said.

Officials said the investigation revealed that Bayship employees directed the undercover agents to fraudulently inflate the dollar amounts of contracts to cover gratuities provided to them by Coastal Marine Engineering Group. On some occasions, fraudulent contracts were allegedly issued to reimburse the undercover business for cash given to Bayship employees.

The investigation also uncovered the use of ``complementary'' bids in the awarding of repair contracts. In this practice, certain subcontractors were allegedly instructed to submit bids higher than a favored vendor so it would appear that the competitive bid process was followed. Authorities said that on many occasions the Bayship employees recorded the undercover company as a bidder on a job when, in fact, no bid was ever submitted.

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Migration of plutonium in soil at Rocky Flats

By LeRoy Moore Guest Columnist August 1, 1999
http://www.bouldernews.com/opinion/columnists/leroy.html

Four years ago Dr. M. Iggy Litaor, a scientist under contract at Rocky Flats, created a firestorm of controversy when he announced that he had found significant migration of plutonium in the Rocky Flats soil. Forced out of his Rocky Flats job, he returned to his native Israel. Now back in Colorado briefly, Litaor speaks about his plutonium migration research at the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Aug. 11.

The controversy surrounding Litaor began in the heavy rains of May-June 1995 when he discovered that plutonium was migrating in the soil at Rocky Flats, the Department of Energy's defunct nuclear bomb factory south of Boulder. Until the moment of this discovery Litaor, a respected scientist who had spent five years mapping plutonium deposits around Rocky Flats, held the conventional view that plutonium, once in the environment, remains more or less in place.

His discovery complicated plans for a quick cleanup of the Rocky Flats site, since, if plutonium migrates, any quantity left in the soil after "cleanup" may eventually move off site where it will pose a health risk. The significance of Litaor's discovery reaches far beyond Rocky Flats to every site anywhere that is contaminated with plutonium. Locally he succeeded in putting the issue of plutonium migration on the radar screen for all who watch Rocky Flats.

Kaiser-Hill, however, the company responsible for cleanup of RockyFlats, rather than honoring Litaor for his scientific breakthrough, tried to discredit him and terminated his contract. Then, with no public input,they hired scientists of their own choosing to study migration of radioactive materials in the Rocky Flats environment.

Kaiser-Hill, with DOE's support, says they can clean and close Rocky Flats by 2006. Litaor, armed only with evidence, stood in the way. Rather, plutonium stood in the way, and Litaor simply pointed it out. Kaiser-Hill couldn't get rid of the plutonium; they decided instead to get rid of Litaor. Now the scientists Kaiser-Hill hired to pick up where Litaor left off admit that plutonium moves; they insist they knew it all the time. But they haven't yet explained its rate of movement or how it happens, other than by erosion. And Litaor's elaborate equipment for making real-time measurements has fallen into disrepair.

A couple of years after Litaor left Colorado for a teaching job in his native Israel, other researchers discovered major plutonium migrationin soil at the Nevada Test Site and at Hanford in Washington State. Also, in the summer of 1997 plutonium from an unknown source was twice detected leaving the Rocky Flats site in quantities above the legally permitted surface-water standard. Litaor, in a sense, has been vindicated. But of course he was long gone.

Behind the scenes, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center worked to get public oversight and better peer review of the plutonium migration studies set up by Kaiser-Hill to ensure the credibility of the work and thus to enhance the possibility of its acceptance by a skeptical public. We also pressed management at Rocky Flats to provide data needed by Litaor to complete for publication his own research on plutonium migration at Rocky Flats, the goal being to get the best results possible.

After several years' effort and with grudging assistance from Rocky Flats management, Litaor is now completing a paper that will be added to his 10 previously published technical studies on radioactive materials in the Rocky Flats environment. His paper will show that plutonium migrates in the near-surface soil at Rocky Flats and thus that maximum cleanup is called for.

We at the Rocky Moutain Peace and Justice Center are pleased to honor Litaor for his passion for truth and his persistence in the face of uncalled-for adversity. To learn the results of his work, and to help celebrate his accomplishment, please join us at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Aug. 11.

LeRoy Moore, Ph.D., is a consultant with the Rocky Mountain Peace andJustice Center of Boulder.

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Last plutonium liquid leaves Rocky Flats

July 7, 1999, Inside Denver
http://insidedenver.com/news/0707flat1.shtml

GOLDEN, Colo. (AP) -- Workers at Rocky Flats have removed and treated the last of the plutonium-laden liquids in a former production building, a key milestone in the site's cleanup.

Kaiser-Hill Co., in charge of cleaning up the former nuclear weapons plant, Wednesday said the last of 10,000 liters of plutonium liquids in Building 371 were removed.

The building housed chemical processing and the recovery and purification of plutonium. It contained several tanks and radioactive liquids.

"The treatment of these liquids places them in a stable form for longer-term storage and dramatically reduces one of our top risks," said Scott Sax, project manager for the building's cleanup.

The federally owned Rocky Flats plant northwest of Denver produced nuclear triggers during the Cold War. Production of nuclear components was halted in 1989, although the operation wasn't officially closed until 1992.

The first truckload of radioactive waste from Rocky Flats was shipped by truck last month to a storage site near Carlsbad, N.M. It was the first of about 2,000 truckloads headed for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

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An eye on Rocky Flats
The First Rocky Flats Shipment to WIPP Was Contaminated

By LeRoy Moore Guest Columnist
http://www.bouldernews.com/opinion/columnists/moore.html

The first truckload of plutonium-laden waste moved on June 15-16 by the Department of Energy from Rocky Flats to WIPP (the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, NM) was contaminated with radiation on arrival at the end of its 700-mile trip. What happened? Questions swarm like bees around this issue.

The truckload in question, the first of a projected 2,000 shipments from Rocky Flats to WIPP, followed the designated Colorado route down Highway 36 to I-25, then south on I-25 through Denver, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Trinidad into New Mexico. Over the next 30 years DOE expects an additional 26,000 truckloads from Idaho and Washington State to carry WIPP-bound nuclear waste through Colorado on I-25. It adds up to an average of 2 to 3 shipments per day for three decades.

Given the magnitude of DOE's plan to transport WIPP-bound nuclear waste through Colorado, the public needs a full explanation of what went wrong with this first shipment. Here are a few undisputed facts about this situation:

At about 8:30 p.m. on June 15 a truck carrying 26 barrels of nuclear waste left the Rocky Flats facility northwest of Denver for WIPP.

Though a full load consists of 42 drums of waste packed in three large"TRUPACT" shipping containers, 14 drums per container, this truck carried only 26 drums. Hence, one of the three TRUPACTs was empty.

After the truck arrived at WIPP on June 16, inspectors found that one shipping container, TRUPACT #131, was contaminated at a level three-and-a-half times the official WIPP contamination limit. A repeat inspection on June 17 found contamination almost four times the limit.

The type of radiation detected by the inspectors was "alpha," which is emitted by plutonium but also by other materials, including polonium-210, a radioactive daughter product of radon, itself a byproduct of uranium.

WIPP spokespersons say they believe the contamination came from a naturally occurring source along the route.

Authorities in New Mexico learned about the problem not from anyone at WIPP but from Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center of Albuquerque.

WIPP officials did not inform authorities in Colorado.

Kent Hunter of WIPP told the Associated Press that affected authorities had not been notified because "it was immediately apparent it was really small contamination [with] no safety or health consequence."

So much for what is known. To begin to fill in the blanks of what is not known, the following questions need answering:

Where and when did the contamination occur? Is there any guarantee TRUPACT #131 was not contaminated when it left Rocky Flats? Was the truck allowed to proceed even though contamination had been discovered?

The Rocky Flats advanced shipment notice of June 1 said TRUPACT #131, the one found to be contaminated, would contain waste when it left RockyFlats. WIPP personnel now say #131 was the empty container. What is the truth?

Why did inspections performed by the states of Colorado and New Mexico fail to discover the contamination?

Was the source of the alpha radiation plutonium or polonium-210? If thelatter, where did the polonium originate? Did it come from the chain of radioactive decay of naturally occurring uranium and radon? Or from thedecay chain of uranium, including depleted uranium, left over from weapons production at Rocky Flats?

If the contamination came from a naturally occurring source along theroute, what source? How could it have adhered to the surface of a movingTRUPACT? Is it likely to happen again?

When contamination three-and-a-half to four times the WIPP limit wasdiscovered, who determined that the quantity was so small that there was"no safety or health consequence" and thus no need to contact pertinent NewMexico and Colorado authorities? What is the meaning of a contaminationlimit? Don't such standards exist to protect public health? Who enforcessuch standards for WIPP shipments?

A WIPP Fact Sheet put out after the incident refers to "recurring problems at Rocky Flats regarding polonium-210." It had been "found onsome trailer roofs" and "seems to have an affinity for metal surfaces."Doesn't this suggest that the contamination originated at Rocky Flats and not along the way? What is the nature of these "recurring problems"? Why were they not referred to in the WIPP Environmental Impact Statement? Why were the affected state governments not apprised of such problems? What could be the effect on future shipments from Rocky Flats?

Before any more shipments to WIPP occur the public needs 1) full and verifiable answers to the foregoing questions, and 2) implementation of controls to ensure there is no repeat of the problems of the June 15-16shipment from Rocky Flats to WIPP.

LeRoy Moore, Ph.D., author of the Citizen's Guide to Rocky Flats, is aconsultant with the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center of Boulder.

June 27, 1999

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Weed removal plan draws fire
Activists fear Flats burn plan will release plutonium into air

By Katy Human Camera Staff Writer April 24, 1999
http://www.bouldernews.com/news/local/24cweeds.html

If someone driving by Rocky Flats saw flames shooting through a curtain of smoke, panic would be an understandable reaction.

In fact, fire will likely scorch part of the former nuclear weapons site this year, as part of a new noxious-weed management plan.

Workers will set fire only to grasslands in the broad buffer zone surrounding Rocky Flats and wouldn't touch any vegetation in the contaminated industrial core, which is a Superfund cleanup site. But activists still worry.

"They have found that plants do uptake plutonium, and by burning, you may be releasing plutonium into the air," said Tom Marshall of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center in Boulder. "Anything that puts plutonium into the air is a bad idea."

Inhalation of dust particles containing the toxic metal is the easiest way to expose cells to its cancer-causing radioactivity.

Fires and other accidents at Rocky Flats in 1957, 1969 and throughout the 1970s and 1980s sent plutonium-laced material into the buffer zone of Rocky Flats, and officials acknowledge that soil radiation levels in some areas there are many times higher than background levels.

Plants there also contain some plutonium, absorbed from contaminated soils, said Patricia Powell, a physical scientist with Rocky Flats.

But she said burning would not harm human health, and that it's the most ecologically sound way to rid the Flats buffer zone of the pernicious weeds that have invaded, choking the native plants.

And not only is Rocky Flats legally required to deal with invasive weeds, she said, the thick thatch of dead weeds now covering much of the buffer zone raises the risk of a natural wildfire.

Powell said the Flats conducted a "dose assessment" to determine if the amount of radioactivity released during a control burn could harm people. The answer was "no," she said.

"There would be some radioactivity released into the air," Powell admitted, "but in quantities like a 0.0027 millirem dose to the nearest resident."

Federal standards allow any activities that would expose the general public to less than 10 millirem per year, she said.

But Marshall said such standards may not be protective enough, because scientists still don't understand how extremely low level exposure to plutonium affects human health.

Hank Stovall, a member of Broomfield's City Council, sides with Marshall.

"I am not interested in any vegetation-management plan at the Flats that involves any kinds of burning," said Stovall, a volunteer firefighter. "Fires tend to get out of control."

He said he feared that with the rising heat created by fires, contaminants will loft into the air and spread. In addition, Stovall worried that a controlled burn would remove all vegetation from sections of the ground, at least temporarily.

"The whole idea out there is to maintain the (radiation) in the ground, don't bare the ground and let that stuff blow off," he said.

Powell is reviewing public comments made on the proposed vegetation-management plan and will make some clarifications to the plan before passing it on to the site manager for approval.

The only other license needed to begin conducting weed-control activities is a burn permit, she said.

Richard Fox, an environmental protection specialist with the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, said it's likely his agency would approve a request for a controlled burn in Rocky Flats' buffer zone.

But this spring's burning season is almost over, so it will likely be autumn before workers at the Flats will try a controlled burn, Powell said.

Other activists have raised opposition to the proposed heavy use of pesticides in the Rocky Flats weed plan, which includes aerial helicopter spraying of up to 1,500 acres of weeds a year. Boulder County stopped aerial spraying in 1996 because of pressure from anti-pesticide activists.

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Rocky Flats throws shadow on route
Road may pass through land contaminated with plutonium from Rocky Flats

By Katy Human Camera Staff Writer March 14, 1999
http://www.bouldernews.com/news/local/14aflats.html

In the 1950s and 1960s, Rocky Flats workers tossed drums of plutonium-tainted waste oil on an outdoor area known as the 903 Pad. The drums rusted and radioactive oil leaked out, undetected for several years.

Workers trying to clean up the site disturbed the plutonium-laced soil in the late '60s, and winds out of the mountains whipped the dust east for two decades. Radioactivity much higher than background levels is now found in the sediments of Great Western Reservoir, Standley Lake and the land between the two.

That's exactly where the communities of Westminster and Arvada intend to route a highway that would extend the future Northwest Parkway in Broomfield south toward C-470 in Golden.

It's likely to be a dusty project, and inhaling particles of plutonium is the best way to get a cancer-stimulating internal dose of radiation, said LeRoy Moore, an activist with the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center.

But officials of both communities said they're convinced the road can be built without threatening anyone's health. Construction teams can use water to keep down the dust.

The state health department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy agree the road can be built safely, noting that two years ago officials decided that "no further action" or cleanup was required east of the Rocky Flats boundary, because contamination levels were low.

According to Tim Rehder, Rocky Flats project manager with the EPA, there's not enough plutonium in the soil to cause significant harm even if a family lived on the most contaminated site, eating home-grown vegetables and raising children who love playing in dirt.

But others have worried about construction in an area where radioactivity levels are nearly 20 time higher than normal.

"I just don't think it's a good idea to move that much soil out there," Moore said. "There's a difference between what's safe and what's permitted."

Infamous site

In the 1950s and 1960s, workers at Rocky Flats then a U.S. Department of Energy site 8 miles south of Boulder used plutonium and other radioactive and hazardous chemicals in nuclear weapons research and production.

Now, Rocky Flats is one of the country's most infamous Superfund sites, and the Energy Department has hired Kaiser-Hill, a contractor, to clean it up.

According to data collected by Kaiser-Hill and its regulators, soils just east of Indiana Street, outside the eastern boundary of Rocky Flats, emit radiation in excess of 6 picocuries per gram. On average, Colorado soils register at about 0.04 picocuries per gram a result of historic nuclear bomb testing and radioactive fallout.

Most of the extra radiation probably comes from wind-carried 903 Pad soils, but constant low-level air emissions of plutonium from Rocky Flats and fires there in 1957 and 1969 may have contributed.

Jennifer Thompson, spokeswoman for Kaiser-Hill, acknowledged that in some parts of the area east of Rocky Flats, called "OU 3," soils are nearly 20 times as radioactive as uncontaminated soils. But she said a 1997 document ruled that contamination unlikely to harm anyone.

The Department of Energy, in consultation with the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment and the Environmental Protection Agency, "has determined that no remedial action is necessary for OU 3 to be protective of human health," the document reads.

To make the decision, EPA's Rehder said researchers ran a sophisticated model to determine radiation exposure and the associated danger of cancer for a person living in the most contaminated area.

The researchers found that a person living in the most contaminated areas a plot of about one-third square mile just south of Great Western Reservoir and a smaller plot west of Mower Reservoir would receive a dose of only 0.19 millirem of radiation a year from the soil contamination.

A dental X-ray doses a patient with about 10 millirem of radioactivity, said Steve Gunderson, Rocky Flats cleanup coordinator for the health department.

According to the 1997 report, about one in one million people living on such contaminated soils would be likely to get cancer from the radioactivity.

Rehder said he "couldn't imagine" that someone exposed to the dust of a construction project on that soil would receive any greater radiation dose than the resident in the computer model scenario.

'Special techniques'

At the moment, then, the only limit on construction in the potential highway corridor is a state standard that requires "special techniques of construction" in soils with plutonium greater than 0.9 picocuries per gram.

Tony Harrison, an environmental protection specialist and health physicist with the state health department, said that generally means spraying water mists to keep down the dust.

He said he personally wouldn't fret about being a construction worker on the proposed highway, regardless of the precise path it takes.

"If they're doing a reasonably good job of dust suppression, I would say those guys don't have anything to worry about," he said.

But Harrison also said it would be difficult to keep a construction site entirely dust-free, and that the plutonium regulation is not one that state health workers are proactive about enforcing.

"For us to really get involved and decide if it's being done appropriately, we would probably have to have a complaint or an allegation," he said.

Moore complained that the state standard is therefore meaningless. He also noted that politics, not science, may have played a part in the state regulation.

In early 1973, the state adopted an interim standard that translates to about 0.09 picocuries of plutonium per gram. According to the original rule, land with any greater contamination was deemed "unfit for residential use, subdivision development, or commercial and industrial uses."

But in March of that year, the health department adopted the far less restrictive standard of 0.9 picocuries per gram. And more importantly, Moore pointed out, the new standard only required "special techniques of construction upon property so contaminated."

Susan Jones-Hard, a radiation specialist with the health department, interviewed a retiree there to find out about the change.

"He said they decided that the (0.09 picocuries per gram) number . . . was too restrictive as far as land use, so they wanted to come up with a very conservative guidance that would also be very very protective and they decided that (0.9) was much more realistic," she said.

The EPA's Rehder objects to the state standard on different grounds. He says that if researchers ran today's sophisticated computer models on soil contamination, they would come up with a less restrictive number than 0.9 picocuries per gram.

Highway route

Regardless, Craig Kocian and Bill Chrisopher, the city managers of Arvada and Westminster, both said they'll choose a highway route carefully, because they're aware of the historic contamination of the corridor.

"It's our intent to be extremely careful about any construction in that area," Kocian said. "And the area should be tested thoroughly before it's started."

He added: "If there is any contamination, it's possible an alignment could be picked which would avoid that."

Kelly DiNatale, water resources manager for Westminster, said the city has already done some construction work in the contaminated land east of Rocky Flats. Mower Reservoir, which collects water from Woman Creek in Rocky Flats, was built about 3 years ago, in an area with plutonium levels above the state standards.

"We've gone through all this already," DiNatale said. "Maybe we'll just have to collect soil samples along the entire corridor that's what we did for Woman Creek."

Zeke Zebauers, director of highways and transportation for Jefferson County, said the municipalities interested in laying the road east of Rocky Flats are beginning safety studies now, but it may be several months before they're completed.

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Tritium stirs concern at Test Site
Scientists call element's dangers more worrisome than plutonium's

By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com> LAS VEGAS SUN Jan. 24, 1999
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/1999/jan/24/508316281.html

Recent news reports have alerted the public to the discovery of plutonium almost a mile from where underground nuclear weapons were exploded at the Nevada Test Site.

But scientists working to clean up the site are more concerned about another element left from the more than 900 explosions set off 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas: radioactive tritium.

Their concern is how fast and how far tritium has traveled in the ground water and whether it has escaped the site's boundaries.

Tritium is considered the most dangerous of the materials left over from the nuclear blasts because it dissolves easily in ground water and poses a threat to public health for more than 100 years.

The Department of Energy began cleaning up the Cold War's radioactive mess after 1992 when a moratorium was imposed on U.S. nuclear testing. Officials estimate it will take until 2070 to complete the task and remove the threat of widespread contamination.

Above-ground tests that spread plutonium over the land in central Nevada were cleaned up first. The emphasis was switched to ground-water contamination after DOE scientists three years ago discovered plutonium in a water well far from a nuclear-bomb cavity. If plutonium can travel a mile floating in water, then tritium, which dissolves in water, would be a greater threat, scientists say.

Congress gave the DOE's Nevada Operations Office an extra $6 million this year to drill six new wells, for a total of eight, south and west of Pahute Mesa to check for tritium in the ground water. The concern is that if tritium has flowed south and west, it will move into drinking supplies and irrigation water for crops and dairy cows.

The new wells are expected to be completed by the end of the year. Samples will be analyzed and the results made public as analysis is completed, officials involved with the project say.

The scientists also are working to determine the direction the underground water is flowing. That information may not be available until 2003, Gary Russell of the U.S. Geological Survey in Las Vegas said.

Because of the secrecy surrounding the bomb blasts, little information on the content, size or number of weapons was available to outside scientists.

By piecing together information from available public sources, physicist Anthony Hechanova, who works at the Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies at UNLV, determined that at least 260 underground nuclear explosions took place at or under the level of the ground water at the Test Site from 1951 to 1992.

Hechanova also gleaned from 10,000 pages of recently declassified DOE documents that a total of 921 bombs were set off at different levels during the same period, and he verified the number of ground-water blasts.

He compiled his findings in a comprehensive report released last week and made available to the public at UNLV's James Dickinson Library.

"This is the first time it has been compiled into one report accessible to the public," Hechanova said.

Thus far records that give the contents of the nuclear weapons are not available, which is hindering scientists in the cleanup effort and slowing a flow of information that could offer warnings to residents if dangers exist.

Hechanova found that the 921 underground nuclear-weapons experiments were conducted in 878 shafts and tunnels at the Test Site.

"The DOE has not released source term data (information about what was left by the bombs) on the individual nuclear-test explosions at the NTS," Vernon Brechin, a former Stanford University electronics technician, said. He now is a consultant specializing in the effects of underground nuclear explosions.

"Though the DOE has this information, it is still classified, reportedly to prevent the proliferation of nuclear-weapons technology," Brechin said.

Information about the Test Site experiments has trickled out recently in DOE reports issued from the national laboratories at Los Alamos in New Mexico and Livermore in California.

Hechanova, an MIT graduate, came to the Reid Center almost four years ago to work on the project. He has used the available DOE reports as well as those issued to the public from the U.S. Geological Survey to compile the study.

The search for the nuclear elements escaping into the environment is important because the radiation could already be moving through the ground water toward communities such as Beatty and the Amargosa Valley, where crops grow and milk cows graze, Hechanova said. But he said no evidence currently exists of radiation creeping off the Test Site.

There is, however, fear that the contamination may be widespread.

In 1991, DOE Test Site Manager Nick Aquilina adopted a policy for ground-water protection while nuclear testing continued, and scientists began to try to track radioactivity moving in the ground water.

"No one is willing to jeopardize the present water supply required for NTS (Nevada Test Site) operations, which includes drinking water," said DOE scientists Gregory Nimz of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Joseph Thompson of Los Alamos National Laboratory in a 1992 report.

"Clearly, ground water is capable of carrying certain dissolved nuclides (radioactive particles) appreciable distances," Nimz and Thompson reported.

In the 1960s, the Atomic Energy Commission, predecessor to the DOE, experimented with ever-larger bombs at the Test Site. To avoid leaking radiation into the atmosphere, some of the nuclear devices were detonated near or below the ground water. By "near," the DOE means within 330 feet of subsurface water.

First, today's scientists need to know the nuclear contents at the heart of those deep holes where the atomic explosions occurred, Hechanova said. Then researchers can begin piecing together information on radiation migration from the caverns through surrounding ground water and rock.

Hechanova is trying to find out how much radioactivity is trapped in the caverns created by the original bomb blasts. "Then we can work our way out," he said.

While DOE scientists at both Livermore and Los Alamos have reported plutonium riding tiny particles in the ground water, called colloids, a mile away from an underground nuclear test, the real health threat to people from ground-water contamination comes from tritium, Hechanova said.

Hechanova and UNLV radiochemistry professor Vernon Hodge examined 78 possible radioactive contaminants in the Test Site's ground water.

"We are trying to define the radioactivity posing the most risk to people," Hechanova said.

The risk from plutonium in the ground water is small because the particles that get into the water don't move very far. It's unlikely they would reach a populated area.

"Part of the problem is the perception that plutonium is very deadly, often called the most dangerous substance known to man," Hechanova said. Risks from plutonium exposure are much less than that of other radioactive materials left from bombs such as tritium, neptunium, americium, thorium and uranium, he said.

The danger from plutonium comes if a speck of it is inhaled or ingested.

Tritium appears to be the leading contender as the contaminant with the best chance of posing a threat to the public. Scientists must find out whether it's in the ground water and which way the water is heading.

However, the Test Site is larger than Rhode Island. Scientists must play a guessing game on where to look.

"The real problem, the real huge question is, where is the tritium plume?" Hechanova asks.

Hechanova estimates that 100 million curies of the total blast residues came from tritium. The Environmental Protection Agency considers drinking a daily dose of more than 20,000 picocuries (one-trillionth of a curie) of tritium dissolved in two quarts of water to be dangerous.

The rest of the radiation in the Test Site's ground water could come from cesium, strontium, iodine, plutonium, carbon, uranium or other remains of a nuclear blast.

The DOE cleanup effort is focusing on water flowing south and west of Pahute Mesa in the northwest corner of the Test Site. The extra wells will be drilled in the potential path of the ground water. Pahute Mesa was loaned to the DOE by the Air Force for nuclear experiments so, technically, contaminated water on the mesa could be considered off-site.

If radiation is found in the new wells, it would show that contaminated water had migrated off the Test Site property and could be heading for residents in Beatty and the Amargosa Valley.

The DOE's own program for monitoring ground water chose to look at lead, carbon-14, tritium, iodine-129, uranium, cesium and plutonium because they were found in measurable quantities in water taken from the bomb cavities or nearby monitoring wells on the site. Scientists also are looking at how the radiation affects human health.

The DOE is not only worried about people living around the Test Site, it also must examine the ground water to prevent workers drilling sampling wells from coming in contact with radioactive water, DOE Project Manager Bob Bangerter said.

Tritium, iodine and carbon-14 dissolve and flow along with the ground water. Cesium, lead and plutonium normally cling to soil particles and move at a slower rate. Uranium can migrate somewhere between the other two groups.

For Hechanova, who was blocked by secrecy, it took three years to find enough information to allow him to report on how much tritium was contained in five blast cavities.

The size of some nuclear blasts and ground-water samples taken from nearby water wells years after the explosions existed in open government files. They gave Hechanova a good estimate of the tritium inside the cavities left by five nuclear experiments: Bilby, Dalhart, Baseball, Cambric and Cheshire.

Bilby, a 249-kiloton blast triggered under the surface of the Test Site's northeast section in 1963, was the first underground nuclear experiment that rocked Las Vegas, about 75 miles southeast of the explosion.

Hechanova and former Test Site scientist James O'Donnell combed U.S. Geological Survey and national earthquake records for Bilby's impact. It registered a 5.8 on the Richter scale at the International Data Center in Virginia. "That was a good-sized bomb," Hechanova said.

In 1965, Cambric exploded with a force less than a kiloton -- or less than 1,000 tons of TNT -- but produced extremely high tritium, nine times larger per kiloton than what was expected from such shots in or near the ground water. Hechanova has a number of theories: the nuclear device fizzled, the scientists wanted to create tritium or the results were unexpected.

Once Hechanova figures out the source amounts of tritium in the bomb caverns, he plans to develop a simple monitor available to anyone living near the Test Site's boundary. "Nothing like it exists now for the average person to sample well water," he said.

If he receives a $100,000 grant request, Hechanova hopes to develop a tritium monitor at the Harry Reid Center with assistance from UNLV professors. "It's an early warning system that any farmer could put down his well," he said.

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Fernald health concerns increase
Study finds more cancer than norm

BY TIM BONFIELD The Cincinnati Enquirer June 24, 1999
http://enquirer.com/editions/1999/06/24/loc_fernald_health.html

People who lived near the Fernald uranium processing plant are still developing some forms of cancer at higher-than-expected rates even though the plant closed years ago, according to a medical report released Wednesday.

High rates of urinary cancers, melanoma and prostate cancer were reported in a “preliminary” analysis of more than 8,500 Fernald neighbors who have participated in a court-established medical monitoring program. The analysis was conducted by University of Cincinnati researchers.

And according to a separate study released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), radiation emitted from the site could cause an elevated incidence of leukemia among people who lived within 6.2 miles of the site while it was operating between 1951 and 1988.

“When it comes to real cases of people dying, there's no denying that,” said Bob Hanavan, who represents residents of the Fernald Health Effects Subcommittee. “I feel kind of vindicated by these numbers.

“It's real obvious to people living around here that something is terribly wrong.”

These reports significantly expand the types of health risks that may be associated with the Fernald plant. Activists have contended for years that Fernald is linked to a variety of illnesses. But until now, the only health risk experts have linked to Fernald has been lung cancer.

“We're always apprehensive when we hear there's a little higher incidence of this and of that ... we've been saying for 15 years that this was the case,” said Lisa Crawford, founder of Fernald Residents For Environmental Safety and Health.

“So while it's still painful and we hate to hear it, we expect it. We're kind of shock-proof at this point.”

To experts, the new data on kidney and bladder cancers represented the strongest possible link to Fernald, in part because the statistics held up against several tests and because studies at other nuclear weapons sites have found similar results.

“I must say I was a little surprised. This definitely needs to be explored further,” said Dr. Robert Wones, project director for the Fernald medical monitoring program. “If there was any bias in the study, it was that we looked at a population that was at least as healthy or possibly a little healthier than normal. So to find any increase (in cancer rates) is particularly remarkable.”

Although that study does not say the additional cases of cancer found were caused by contamination from Fernald, studies along those lines are ongoing.

The CDC estimated last year that more than 80 additional cancer deaths will occur among people living near Fernald when it was operational than in comparable population groups elsewhere.

The CDC study also indicates there may be more cases of leukemia resulting from Fernald contamination.

“We're kind of going at this from two different angles,” said the CDC's Owen Devine. “But these are both pieces of the same puzzle.”

The Fernald plant, about 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati near Ross, Ohio, opened in 1953 to process uranium ore into materials to make atomic bombs.

Production stopped in 1989 after a series of controversies about off-site contamination. Ever since, Fernald has been the focus of health studies, lawsuits and a multibillion-dollar cleanup effort.

Wednesday's report, presented in Harrison at an evening meeting of the Fernald Health Effects Subcommittee, comprised the first data ever made public from the medical monitoring program. The program was established in 1990 as part of a $78 million settlement of a class action lawsuit filed by plant neighbors.

The report focused on new cases of cancer diagnosed after people joined the monitoring program. People who already died of cancer or had been diagnosed with cancer before the program started were not included.

For urinary system cancers, the researchers expected to find 13 cases. They found 22. For melanoma, researchers expected to find 6.4 cases. They found 11. For prostate cancer, 25.6 cases were expected. They found 39.

To residents and others who have been concerned about radioactive and chemical pollution from Fernald, Wednesday's report added strength to their long-held views.

“It says that Fernald was a serious problem and the people that pooh-poohed it were wrong,” said Cincinnati attorney Stanley Chesley, who represented neighbors in the class-action lawsuit.

Fairfield resident Ann Burwinkel lived on a 82-acre family farm, about 1,800 feet northwest of the plant, from 1967 to 1993. She raised four children there.

She recalls many mornings in the late 1960s and early 1970s when she arose to find her white Rambler station wagon coated with unidentified black dust from Fernald's nighttime smokestack emissions.

“We're all fine right now. But who knows what might happen down the road? If something ever does happen, you know who I'm going to blame,” Mrs. Burwinkel said.

Wednesday's UC study does not address whether Fernald pollution actually caused the higher cancer rates. However, Dr. Wones said the urinary cancer data raised the sharpest questions.

That's because the excess rates were clearly statistically significant, even after comparing them to four different populations (the United States, Iowa, Ohio, and a grouping of Butler, Warren and Clermont counties).

Also, the local urinary cancer data seems consistent with studies at other weapons plants.

The possible Fernald links to the melanoma and prostate cancer data appear weaker, Dr. Wones said.

After presenting the medical monitoring program findings, Dr. Wones said, the next step will be to consider more research to determine whether Fernald or other factors caused the excess cancer cases.