Rachel's part II or how i stopped worrying and learned to love radiation..

[Guest guest]

..

.. RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #748 .

.. ---July 25, 2002--- .

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.. WASTE MANAGEMENT FOREVER .

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The Importance of Surprises--Part 2

WASTE MANAGEMENT FOREVER

 

Here we continue examining the three kinds of surprises that have

made nuclear technology one of the world's most difficult and

dangerous problems, and one that grows worse each passing year.

The three kinds of surprises result from (1) technical ignorance

of the chemistry, physics or biology involved, (2) management

lapses (failure to anticipate human errors and subsequent

inability, or refusal, to confront mistakes and take corrective

action), and (3) political winds (shifting political and economic

realities that render government controls ineffective, including

commercial competition).

 

Our purpose in examining these nuclear surprises is first to make

the point that nuclear technology has apparently exceeded the

human capacity for controlling complex machines and processes,

and, secondly, to ask whether it makes sense to press ahead with

the deployment of new technologies that are more powerful than

nuclear, less understandable, and therefore less controllable,

namely biotech and nanotech.[1]

 

Where do we find evidence that nuclear is beyond human control?

In the newspapers every week.

 

All nuclear operations generate radioactive wastes. The U.S. now

holds an estimated 42,500 metric tons of intensely radioactive

spent reactor fuel, and 100 million gallons of highly radioactive

liquids and sludges in temporary storage. These wastes are

dangerous by themselves, but some of them could also be used to

make terrifying weapons. This week we look briefly at local

hazards from radioactive wastes.

 

** As we saw in REHN #747, at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in

southeastern Washington state, DuPont and other private firms

manufactured plutonium for weapons from 1943 to 1987 under close

government supervision. In the process they created 54 million

gallons of radioactive liquids, sludges and salts, about a

million gallons of which have already leaked into the ground and

are now measurable in the Columbia River -- an event considered

impossible until it happened. (Technical surprise.)

 

In addition to the 54 million gallons held in tanks, substantial

additional quantities of radioactive wastes lie buried in shallow

pits at Hanford. As a consequence, tumbleweeds (Russian thistles)

growing on some parts of the Hanford site absorb radioactivity

through their roots. (Technical surprise.) To prevent this mobile

vegetation from releasing radioactivity by blowing off-site, or

burning up in a fire, the government continually collects them

and solves the problem by burying them in the ground. [NY TIMES

Sep. 12, 2000, pg. D3.] The " hot tumbleweed " problem will solve

itself through natural radioactive decay after 240,000 years have

passed. To help get this problem into perspective, Homo sapiens

(modern humans) have roamed the earth for about 100,000 years.

 

** Hanford is not alone. In October, 2000, the Department of

Energy (DOE) announced that its previous estimate of plutonium

buried in shallow pits and trenches had increased ten-fold.

(Management surprise.) These are bomb-making residues buried

between 1943 and 1987 at Hanford, Washington; Los Alamos, New

Mexico; the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental

Laboratory near Idaho Falls, Idaho; the Oak Ridge National

Laboratory near Oak Ridge, Tenn.; and the Savannah River complex

near Aiken, S.C.

 

Unfortunately little is known about the chemical characteristics,

or exact locations, of many of these wastes, which often were

mixed with toxic chemicals and explosives at the time of burial.

" There is little or no information on volumes of soil potentially

contaminated by leaching of buried solid wastes, nor is there

information on hazardous waste components known to have been

commingled with the radioactive components, " said Carolyn

Huntoon, assistant secretary for environmental management with

the Department of Energy. (Management surprise.) [NY TIMES Oct.

21, 2000, pg. A13.]

 

In announcing the 10-fold increase in its estimate, the DOE

acknowledged that cleanup of buried radioactive wastes is

extremely difficult, and that little progress has been made on

them. (Technical surprise.)

 

For example, in 1994 the DOE tried to dig up a 25-year-old

one-acre pit at the Idaho laboratory, to demonstrate retrieval.

Four years later DOE fired the contractor in a dispute over costs

and methods. During the year 2000, DOE spent $6 million in legal

costs in the dispute over the Idaho pit, and another $2.5 million

on further work, but during the six-year effort no waste was

retrieved. [NY TIMES Oct. 21, 2000, pg. A13.] (Technical and

management surprises.)

 

** At West Valley, New York, 30 miles south of Buffalo, the

Davison Chemical Company processed spent nuclear fuel from power

plants for six years from 1966 to 1972, producing 660,000 gallons

of highly radioactive wastes, plus other assorted radioactive

debris, which were pumped into an underground storage tank or

buried in large shallow pits.[2] In 1976, Davison Chemical

decided the nuclear business wasn't sufficiently profitable and

walked away from the West Valley site, leaving New York State

holding 30 million Curies of radioactivity in the ground and in

contaminated buildings and equipment. (Political surprise.) (A

Curie is the amount of radioactivity in a gram of radium. For

comparison, the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 released

about 50 Curies into the air.)

 

New York state and the federal government now employ nearly 1000

scientists and engineers working full-time to clean up the West

Valley site. So far they have spent more than $1.5 billion and

the end is nowhere in sight. At some point a couple of decades

ago, acid ate through a concrete and steel foundation, releasing

about 200 Curies of highly-radioactive Strontium-90 into the

groundwater beneath the West Valley site. (Technical surprise.)

The plume of strontium-90 flowed beneath the site for more than a

decade before it was discovered in 1993 (management surprise);

since then the plume has continued to spread out and move toward

Lake Erie and has even shown up on the surface of the land

downhill from the old factory. (Technical surprise, management

surprise.)

 

Several years ago a government contractor began drilling wells

and pumping groundwater through filters to try to retrieve the

plume of strontium-90, but the filters themselves became a new

source of radioactive waste and were expensive ($400,000 per

year). Now the contractor has buried a large quantity of kitty

litter (zeolite) in the ground, trying to create one huge filter

to capture the deadly strontium. Even if this works, eventually

someone will have to re-bury the radioactive zeolite in the

ground somewhere else. [NY TIMES Feb. 24, 2000, pg. A23.]

 

** At the Millstone nuclear power plant in Waterford,

Connecticut, corporate managers can't locate two

highly-radioactive spent fuel rods that are supposed to reside in

a 40-foot deep pool of special boron-treated water to shield

their intense radioactivity and prevent them from overheating.

The company lost track of the two 12-foot-long rods in 1980 and,

prodded by alert federal overseers, began searching for them 21

years later. The fuel rods are not in the spent fuel pool where

they were last seen in 1980, and no one knows what happened to

them. Company officials speculate that the fuel rods were

mistakenly broken up, shipped to a " low level " radioactive waste

dump, and buried in a shallow pit in the ground. (Management

surprise.) [NY TIMES Jan. 8, 2001, pg. A17.] \tab

 

Coincidentally, Millstone officials admitted that they had

falsified environmental records and had deliberately promoted

unqualified plant operators during the period 1994 to 1996. Six

Millstone control-room operators flunked the licensing exam but

still received federal operators' licenses because Millstone

managers falsified their exam scores. (Management surprise.)

 

Millstone's owner, Northeast Nuclear Energy Company, pleaded

guilty to 23 federal felonies and was fined $10 million. Federal

officials said " economic pressure brought on by the deregulation

of the nuclear industry had contributed to the violations. " In

other words, the Millstone managers were driven to crime by

competitive pressure: " The shortcut was taken so there was some

economic saving, " said assistant U.S. attorney Joseph C.

Hutchison. (Political surprise.) [NY TIMES Sep. 28, 1999, pg.

A23.]

 

** At the Nevada Test Site, covering 1593 square miles in

south-central Nevada, the government exploded 828 nuclear bombs

underground between 1956 and 1992. Government scientists always

assumed the resulting radioactivity would be sealed into cavities

by the blasts, or else absorbed by soil and rocks. They also

believed the groundwater beneath the site moved very slowly.

 

Unfortunately, they were wrong on all counts. Now new scientific

studies have shown that some radioactive metals, particularly

plutonium, can move readily with groundwater. (Technical

surprise.) Furthermore, the groundwater beneath the site is now

known to be moving much more rapidly than previously assumed.

(Technical surprise.)

 

Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey now say that a

dangerous brew of radioactive wastes could take as little as 10

years to reach water wells in the town of Beatty, Nevada in the

Oasis Valley. Eventually groundwater flowing beneath the bomb

test site is expected to reach Death Valley National Park. A

University of Nevada physicist and groundwater researcher, Dr.

Dennis Weber, said there were other problems besides plutonium at

the site. Huge quantities of tritium -- which is radioactive

hydrogen that can be incorporated directly into any water that it

contacts -- lie buried at the site.

 

Dr. Weber criticized the government's attempt to understand the

exact nature of the contaminated groundwater problem beneath the

site, which is larger than Rhode Island. " They haven't drilled

wells with the intention of finding the plumes, " he said. " They

didn't want to know. " (Management surprise.) [NY TIMES March 21,

2000, pg. D2.]

 

** In 1997, the Department of Energy announced plans to privatize

6000 tons of surplus radioactive nickel from a stockpile at the

Oak Ridge, Tennessee weapons factory, by selling it to scrap

dealers. Another 10,000 tons would be sold later. The government

has set no standards for radioactive metals, so the proposed sale

was legal. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission refused to

regulate the radioactive nickel because the radioactivity had not

been intentionally added for " beneficial effect. " This left the

decision up to the Tennessee Division of Radiological Health,

which approved the sale. (Management surprises.)

 

Congressional critics pointed out that the radioactive metal

could end up in stainless steel tableware or in braces on

children's teeth. The propose sale " horrified scrap dealers and

steel industry leaders, who feared having to explain to their

customers that their product was even mildly radioactive. "

(Political surprise.) They opposed the sale, and so it was

postponed. [NY TIMES Jan. 12, 2000, pg. A17.]

 

** In 1996, a truck carrying nuclear warheads skidded off an icy

road and crashed in Nebraska. For half a day no one in government

-- including the President and his cabinet -- knew the level of

danger or whether any radioactivity had escaped from the truck

because radiation monitors on the government's fleet of weapons

trucks had been removed after drivers complained that the

monitors showed they were being exposed to dangerous levels of

radiation. (Management surprise.)

 

Robert Alvarez, who was a senior policy advisor within the

Department of Energy from 1993 to 1999, reported these facts in

April, 2000, saying they were " emblematic of the [Department of

Energy's] inept and often arrogant management culture. " He went

on, " The mind-set has become so backward, that the [u.S. weapons]

complex is now basically a ticking time bomb waiting to go off in

a serious accident or an inadvertent nuclear blast. " [NY TIMES

April 30, 2000, pg. 23.]

 

To be continued.

 

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[1] http://www.rafi.org/text/txt_search.asp?type=communique

 

[2] http://www.wv.doe.gov/LinkingPages/sitehistory.htm