nuclear-news

Savannah River nuclear site – killer radiation and coverup

Race and Radiation: The Equal Opportunity Killer at the Savannah River Site DC Bureau By Joseph Trento,  September 6th, 2012 “……The multiple lawsuits and harsh criticism of its practices have not seemed to stop some at SRS. …..

with the money came unspoken danger. Unannounced radiation releases into the air exposed children to the most toxic nuclear materials on a regular basis during the 1950s and 1960s. Local officials and residents made no effort to ask questions about what went on at SRS. As a result, today SRS is the most radioactively contaminated single site in the world. Though a Superfund Site, the EPA has no legal power to stop the National Nuclear Security Administration from creating more high-level nuclear waste. The NNSA continues to amass more high-level waste every day at SRS. Since the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage facility was abandoned, SRS has become the de facto high-level nuclear waste dump for the United States.

In recent weeks, the DOE-appointed Citizens Advisory Board that does “outside environmental monitoring” at the Site has shown signs of abandoning its traditional DOE rubber stamp role and began asking hard questions that had been reserved for environmental critics of SRS. The reality that radioactivity cannot be mitigated, just segregated and stored for the thousands of years it takes to decay, makes the entire Savannah River Site and the communities near it what former DOE official Robert Alvarez says is “a national sacrifice zone.”

Even South Carolina area political officials who have run for office again and again on the vast amounts of federal aid and contractor monies they enjoy are beginning to understand that the state’s reputation as a retirement haven may be less attractive if future retirees are reluctant to purchase homes adjoining the largest high-level waste nuclear dump site in the United States. The increased publicity and wariness toward SRS is making retirement and second homes from Aiken to Hilton Head less appealing.

As the troubled history of SRS becomes more personal to people in the surrounding communities, the acceptance of DOE’s continued pollution may become politically untenable.

“We were basically revisiting what transpired 46 years ago and yet this story is still being told again and it’s still a tragic story,” Richard Lindsay said. “The same elements are there. These are human beings whose lives are being affected and yet there are other people who seem to be indifferent to it. Sometimes I just get a sense that people don’t get it.”  http://www.dcbureau.org/201209067618/national-security-news-service/race-and-radiation-the-equal-opportunity-killer-at-the-savannah-river-site.html

September 7, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, USA