Scientist: Whale deaths off Alaska island remains mystery
« Other test results also are pending, however. A muscle-tissue sample is being tested for the possibility of radionuclides from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Scientists also have looked at other possibilities, including sonar and seismic exploration. »
In this June 8, 2015 photo, provided by the University of Alaska Fairbanks Gulf Apex Predator Prey project, a fin whale lies dead on Kodiak Island, Alaska. Researchers may never solve the recent deaths of 18 endangered whales whose carcasses were found floating near Alaska’s Kodiak Island, a scientist working on the case said Monday, July 27. (Bree Witteveen/University of Alaska Fairbanks via AP)
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Researchers may never solve the recent deaths of 18 endangered whales whose carcasses were found floating near Alaska’s Kodiak Island, a scientist working on the case said Monday.
Samples taken from one of the 10 fin whales were at least a week old, which could throw off test results, said Kate Wynne, a marine mammal specialist for the University of Alaska Sea Grant Program. The carcasses of eight humpback whales also were found.
The carcasses of the marine mammals were discovered between Memorial Day weekend and early July. Most of the animals were too decomposed for sampling.
Both species of whales feed close together, and scientists speculate the animals might have eaten something toxic in waters that were significantly warmer than average at the time. One test came back negative for one toxin that would be present in harmful algal blooms, and another test is still pending, Wynne said.
“That’s my leading hypothesis,” Wynne said of an environmental toxin as a cause. “The carcasses unfortunately are getting older and less sample-able. So we never will find out what killed those whales, in my mind.”
Other test results also are pending, however. A muscle-tissue sample is being tested for the possibility of radionuclides from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Scientists also have looked at other possibilities, including sonar and seismic exploration.
The deaths are an unusual occurrence, Wynne said. She said she’s never heard of anything similar occurring among large baleen whales in the U.S.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also is looking into the deaths of a slightly larger number of whales over a larger area. NOAA is requesting the deaths to be designated nationally as an unusual mortality event, which would free of federal funding for further studying the deaths, NOAA spokeswoman Julie Speegle said.
Along with the dead whales, dead birds including murres and shearwaters were reported earlier in the investigation. Tests showed the shearwaters had a high parasite count and were starving, Wynne said. The murres were not sampled, but Wynne said those deaths could be part of a die-off that occurs periodically.
Source: Tucson.com, Arizona Daily Star
Many $millions later, Los Alamos Weapons Engineering Tritium Facility still not safe
Audit: Nuclear lab lets safety gaps languish for years, Center For Public Integrity
Multi-billion-dollar Los Alamos contractor tells investigators it needs more money to meet basic safety expectations By Patrick Malone July 22, 2015
An obscure facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory for nine years provided vital scientific data about a critical gas used in America’s arsenal of nuclear weapons, until it was shuttered four years ago due to a raft of safety problems that have stubbornly persisted.
The Energy Department, which oversees and finances the lab’s work, has poured tens of millions of dollars into fixing the problems, but so far, the expenditures haven’t borne much fruit. The facility – known as the Weapons Engineering Tritium Facility – is “vital” to the lab’s national security mission, but it remains closed, the department’s inspector general said in a report released July 20.
In fact, Los Alamos managers have been unable – after seven years of effort – even to prepare a sound analysis of the site’s safety hazards and the steps being taken to ensure that the radioactive gas at issue does not leak or explode and harm either workers or those living nearby, according to the DOE report.
DOE Inspector General Gregory H. Friedman said in the report that poor hazard analysis has been a recurrent problem at the lab, and said weaknesses in other projects have remained unfixed from one annual evaluation to the next. The lab, he wrote, “lacked sufficient qualified staff to resolve certain safety issues.”
The purpose of the tritium facility is to refine, mix and analyze that high-hazard gas, which is used in small amounts to boost a nuclear bomb’s pulverizing force. Those who worked at the facility struggled to ensure that monitoring equipment accurately tracked oxygen levels, to avert any chance of a sudden combustion during processing, according to the report. The lab’s own assessments, dating back to 2007, warned that the oxygen monitoring system in the building was unreliable. Energy Department staff in April 2013 cited the oxygen monitoring as one of 450 issues that needed to be addressed there.
Although the lab fixed the oxygen monitoring system last year, and so far has spent $17 million to prepare a comprehensive safety plan, it hasn’t completed the task. “There had been higher safety-related priorities” at the lab, Energy Department staff told auditors……..http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/07/22/17702/audit-nuclear-lab-lets-safety-gaps-languish-years
Summary of the issues in “Low Level” Nuclear Waste
“Low Level” Nuclear Waste Summary by NIRS-Sierra Club-SEED: Comment to US NRC by one minute to midnight, NYC-DC-ET, tonight USNRC Comment: Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal (aka nuclear waste burial) ID: NRC-2011-0012-0077 Due Jul 24 2015, at 11:59 PM EThttp://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=NRC-2011-0012-0077Document for comment: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2015-03-26/pdf/2015-06429.pdf Docket ID: NRC-2011-0012 Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), 10 CFR 60 and 61
The US is burying deadly, long-lived nuclear waste, including plutonium and depleted uranium, in Utah and west Texas. As discussed yesterday, the cost charged is so outrageous that it could be put in good quality containers, in proper above ground facilities, making this burial deadly highway robbery.
The following excellent summary of the so-called “low level” nuclear waste problem was submitted by NIRS, SEED and Sierra Club of South Carolina, for a similar comment period last September. These are some important highlights: “Obviously the NRC is fully committed to deregulating nuclear waste. The public, however, is more committed to preventing it. We ask NRC to stop pushing all the many creative forms of Below Regulatory Concern or BRC.
After NRC’s BRC policies were overturned by Congress in the Energy Policy Act of 1992, NRC sought international nuclear agency assistance to set clearance standards could be used to force the US to deregulate nuclear waste. The public has fought repeated efforts by NRC and other agencies in various forms over a dozen times in the past 29 years. Cities, counties, states, community, religious and environmental groups, labor unions and individuals have passed resolutions, petitioned, written, demonstrated and in every other democratic way expressed opposition to the deliberate release of manmade radioactive waste from regulatory control.”
“We call in NRC to stop wasting its resources trying to come up with more ways to let nuclear waste out of control and to charge those who make the wastes with whatever costs are needed to isolate and regulate them for at least 10 to 20 half-lives of the radionuclides present.”……………….https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2015/07/24/low-level-nuclear-waste-summary-by-nirs-sierra-club-seed-comment-to-us-nrc-by-one-minute-to-midnight-nyc-dc-et-tonight/
Potassium Iodide pills to be distributed to residents in area of nuclear facility
Department of Health distributing free Potassium Iodide to Pennsylvanians near Nuclear power plants, Pittsburgh Actio News,
KI is also available for those who work within the 10-mile radius, but do not live there. Employers can contact the Department of Health at 1-877-PA-HEALTH to make arrangements to pick up tablets for their entire workforce.
School districts within the 10-mile radius have the option of deciding whether to distribute KI for their students. Interested schools work directly with the department to obtain their supply of tablets…….http://www.wtae.com/news/department-of-health-distributing-free-potassium-iodide-to-pennsylvanians-near-nuclear-power-plants/34335576
Increased radiation levels, leak shuts down US nuclear facility
Local News: “Breaking… Alert… leak shuts down US nuclear plant” — Gov’t: Radiation levels ‘above normal’ — ‘Steam plume’ seen in reactor building, workers can’t find where leak is coming from due to safety concerns — Flood warnings issued for area http://enenews.com/newspaper-breaking-news-alert-leak-shuts-down-nuclear-plant-govt-radiation-levels-above-normal-steam-plume-reported-workers-find-leak-coming-due-safety-concerns-flood-warnings-issued-area?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ENENews+%28Energy+News%29
US NRC Event Notification Report, Jul 23, 2015 (emphasis added): Callaway Plant initiated a shutdown required by Technical Specifications (TS)… TS 3.4.13 Condition A was entered due to unidentified RCS [reactor coolant system] leakage being in excess of the 1 gpm TS limit. The leak was indicated by an increase in containment radiation readings… A containment entry identified a steam plume; due to personnel safety the exact location of the leak inside the containment building could not be determined. At this time radiation levels inside [the] containment are stable and slightly above normal. There have been no releases from the plant above normal levels.
AP, Jul 23, 2015: Missouri Nuclear Plant Shut Down After ‘Non-Emergency’ Leak… Jeff Trammel, a spokesman for St. Louis-based Ameren, called it a “minor steam leak.”… Ameren officials are investigating the cause… it was unclear when the plant would restart… [NRC] inspectors are at the plant.
Missouri Times, Jul 23, 2015: Unplanned Shutdown & Elevated Radioactive Levels at Ameren Missouri’s Callaway 1 Nuclear Reactor Containment Building… Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued an event notice for the unplanned shutdown of the Callaway 1 nuclear reactor… The NRC notes that radiation is above normal in the containment building.
Jefferson City News Tribune, Jul 23, 2015 at 2:26p: Alert – Steam leak shuts down Callaway…
Jefferson City News Tribune, Jul 23, 2015:Breaking News – Steam leak shuts down Callaway Plant… Company officials are trying to determine the cause of the problem, which they said “has been contained.”
ABC 17, Jul 23, 2015 — Callaway FLOOD WARNING: Issued at: 9:52 am CDT on July 23, 2015, expires at: 4:00 AM CDT on July 26, 2015. The Flood Warning continues for the Missouri River near Chamois until Friday afternoon. At 7:00 am Thursday the stage was 19.5 feet. Flood stage is 17.0 feet. Minor flooding is occurring.
Previous event at Callaway: Emergency declared at US nuke plant: Fire shuts down reactor — “Reports of black smoke” — Company says no radiation release “above normal operating limits”
Safety concerns about the San Onofre site as a long-term waste-storage site
Nuke storage by the sea http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2015/jul/21/ticker-nuke-storage-plan-san-onofre/# Aguirre equates Southern California Edison to “drunken frat boys” By Dave Rice, July 21, 2015 Concerns over nuclear waste generated by the now-defunct San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station expressed by environmental activists for years took another turn in the spotlight on Monday (July 20), as local activist attorney Mike Aguirre called attention to what he terms “SCUD,” or Southern California Uranium Dump.
Today, July 21, county supervisors are considering a $1.6 million agreement with San Onofre operator Southern California Edison to provide offsite emergency planning in the event of an on-site catastrophe. The specter for such an event looms as long as spent nuclear fuel, which remains highly volatile for millions of years, remains stored at the former power-generating facility.
Concerns about the San Onofre site as a long-term waste-storage site include several nearby earthquake faults. Experts have called for the fuel to be stored in dry casks after an initial five years’ cooling-off period in open pools of water, which Edison officials say they’ll do. Still, the casks are only expected to safely contain radioactive waste for about 25 years, though no long-term waste-storage facility exists and, even if one were cleared for construction immediately, it could be decades before waste is ready to leave the seaside locale near a public beach and within a potential evacuation zone that could displace millions of residents in a worst-case scenario.
“It is ludicrous that the same company that created the disaster by skirting safety rules is now responsible for the cleanup,” decried Aguirre in a release Monday afternoon. “They have behaved like drunken frat boys, leaving a mess on the beach for the adults to clean up. Can we really trust them to do it properly?”
US Military Industrial companies benefit greatly from aggravating US-Russian tensions
Nuclear Buildup in EU: Who Benefits From Aggravating US-Russian Tensions? Sputnik News, 23 July 15 While beefing up NATO’s military presence in Europe Washington should refrain from deploying more US nuclear weapons in EU countries, senior fellow of the Brookings Institution Steven Pifer said.what forces are playing the first fiddle in Washington, urging the White House to drag the country into new overseas conflicts and increase its military spending? US investigative journalist Robert Parry is pointing the finger at US neocons, who “still dominate Official Washington’s inside-outside game.” The journalist underscored that wars have long become a profitable business for transnational corporations and their influential lobbyists in the White House.
“So, to understand the enduring influence of the neocons… you have to appreciate the money connections between the business of war and the business of selling war,” Parry remarked.
These wars cost trillions and trillions of dollars and multinational corporations including the US military-industrial complex benefit a lot from them. ……..: http://sputniknews.com/politics/20150723/1024969193.html#ixzz3gkc7anUQ
USA Nuclear Regulatory Commission seriously considering quack science of “radiation hormesis” !
Linear No-Threshold Model and Standards for Protection Against Radiation, Office of the Federal Register USA
A Proposed Rule by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on 06/23/2015 This document has a comment period that ends in 46 days (09/08/2015)
ACTION
Petition For Rulemaking; Notice Of Docketing And Request For Comment.
SUMMARY
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has received three petitions for rulemaking (PRM) requesting that the NRC amend its “Standards for Protection Against Radiation” regulations and change the basis of those regulations from the Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model of radiation protection to the radiation hormesis model.
The radiation hormesis model provides that exposure of the human body to low levels of ionizing radiation is beneficial and protects the human body against deleterious effects of high levels of radiation.
Whereas, the LNT model provides that radiation is always considered harmful, there is no safety threshold, and biological damage caused by ionizing radiation (essentially the cancer risk) is directly proportional to the amount of radiation exposure to the human body (response linearity). ………The NRC is examining the issues raised in these petitions to determine whether they should be considered in rulemaking.
The NRC is requesting public comments on these petitions for rulemaking………
Submit comments by September 8, 2015. Comments received after this date will be considered if it is practical to do so, but the NRC is able to assure consideration only for comments received on or before this date.
ADDRESSES:
You may submit comments by any of the following methods (unless this document describes a different method for submitting comments on a specific subject):……. https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/06/23/2015-15441/linear-no-threshold-model-and-standards-for-protection-against-radiation
USA’s reputation at stake, if Congress votes against Iran nuclear deal
White House: Congressional vote against Iran nuclear deal would be ‘devastating’ By Dave Boyer – The Washington Times – Friday, July 17, 2015
The White House said Friday that Congress would devastate the U.S. leadership role in the world if lawmakers vote to reject the Obama administration’s historic nuclear deal with Iran.
“For the United States, because of a congressional action, to isolate our country on such an important issue, would be devastating to our standing in the world,” said White House press secretary Josh Earnest. “If Congress killed this agreement, it would have a terrible impact.”
The U.S. struck the deal in cooperation with Russia, China, Germany, France and the United Kingdom.
Republicans and some Democrats are expressing serious concerns about the agreement, which will lift economic sanctions against Tehran in exchange for imposing limits on Iran’s nuclear program. President Obama said it’s the best way to ensure that Iran cannot build a nuclear weapon for at least the next 10 years.
Mr. Earnest said international sanctions “would collapse” if the U.S. kills the agreement.
“Iran would still obtain the financial benefits of sanctions relief,” he said. “Iran will get all the benefits of this deal without having to give up anything.”
Such action by Congress would “allow Iran to get off scot-free,” Mr. Earnest said……….
The president’s spokesman also said the administration isn’t trying to disregard Congress by requesting the U.N. Security Council to approve the agreement before Congress can review it. Congress has 60 days to debate the accord.
Nuclear power station running out of space for radioactive trash fuel rods
Peach Bottom nuclear power plant could run out of spent fuel storage space in 2019 There is no available off-site storage for spent fuel rods, ydr.com Local News, By Brett Sholtis bsholtis@ydr.com @BrettSholtis on Twitter 07/18/2015 Most
people will never get a chance to stare down at nuclear fuel rods submerged in the eerie blue water of a spent fuel pool.
For Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station employees, however, working near tens of thousands of used fuel rods — still lethally radioactive — is business as usual.
Some of those rods have been in the fuel pool since 1976, according to Krista Connelly, spokeswoman for the southern York County power plant.
But with nowhere off-site to store the fuel, Connelly said Peach Bottom is running out of places to put it. Continue reading
21 years after shutdown, USA’s Experimental Breeder Nuclear Reactor-II (EBR-II) is entombed
USA’s Experimental Breeder Reactor-II now permanently entombed, World Nuclear News
01 July 2015 The main clean-up contractor at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Idaho Site, has entombed an historic nuclear reactor in place and treated the reactor’s remaining sodium coolant….CH2M-WG, Idaho, LLC (CWI) said yesterday that crews with the Decontamination and Decommissioning (D&D) Program recently completed pouring more than 3400 cubic yards of concrete grout into the basement of the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II) building to fill in any remaining void spaces and effectively entomb the reactor.
Workers also removed and treated the last of the sodium coolant from the reactor’s nine heat exchangers. The exchangers were used to cool the liquid metal and direct the steam to a generating turbine to produce electricity when the reactor was operating.
The EBR-II was the basis of the US Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) program…….. The reactor was shut down in 1994 and its fuel was removed and transported to another site facility for safe storage.
The DOE grouted the reactor in place instead of removing it to protect workers from industrial hazards and radiological risks, CWI said. Crews filled the reactor vessel with grout over two years ago and recently completed the remainder of grouting at the facility under CWI’s contract.
Concern for health, as radiation found in Greene County stream near water supply
Radia
tion found in Greene County stream near water supply Biologist concerned about residents’ health By Paul Van Osdol, Pittsburgh’s Action News Jul 16, 2015 FREDERICKTOWN, Pa. —Action News Investigates has learned high levels of radiation — up to 60 times higher than the maximum allowed in drinking water — have been found in a stream that feeds into a water treatment plant. VIDEO: Watch Paul Van Osdol’s report
The high levels of radiation were found in a Greene County stream that flows into the Monongahela River. Ultimately, that water ends up in Pittsburgh.
Ken Dufalla of the Izaak Walton League conservation group has been taking samples from 10 Mile Creek for years, frequently finding high levels of total dissolved solids.
“I wouldn’t touch it. As you can see, I try to keep my hands off it all I can because I don’t know what’s in this water,” Dufalla said.
To find out exactly what is in the water, he pressed the state Department of Environmental Protection to do comprehensive testing.
The results showed levels of radium 226 and radium 228 totaling 327 picocuries per liter at one location, and 301 picocuries per liter of radium 226 at another location.
In plain English, that means both samples had 60 times the EPA drinking water standard of 5 picocuries per liter.
“There’s something in here that’s not supposed to be here,” Dufalla said.
Ten Mile Creek feeds into the Mon River near Fredericktown. Less than a mile down river is a water treatment plant, and that is a major concern for regulators and area residents.
John Stolz, a biologist at Duquesne University, says radium can be hazardous.
“The reality is, if it’s getting into the water that is being used as a source of drinking water, then it is a problem,” Stolz said.
One big problem is water authorities cannot easily get rid of radium through the standard filtering process.
Tests by the Tri-County Joint Municipal Authority last year found low levels of radium 228 — just 1 picocurie per liter. But the authority did not test for radium 226, and it did not do any radium testing in 2012 or 2013.
It’s not just drinking water that’s a concern. The Izaak Walton League canceled plans to stock 10 Mile Creek with trout this year after consulting with state officials.
“Do you want to eat fish that has radiation in it? It’s that simple,” Dufalla said………
The DEP is concerned enough that it is also doing additional testing of water, fish and wildlife in the area.
“We’re trying to attack this from every possible angle to see what the extent of the contamination is, if there is extensive contamination, what it’s affecting, and tracking it down,” Poister said.
The DEP is especially interested in finding the source of the radiation. Stolz says the test results offer a clue.
“It’s highly suggestive that it may be due to drilling operations, or at least the wastewater,” Stolz said……… http://www.wtae.com/news/radiation-found-in-greene-county-stream-near-water-supply/34205428
New impediments to plans for Yucca nuclear waste storage
The Plan for Storing US Nuclear Waste Just Hit a Roadblock Wired 16 July 15 AMERICA’S FAVORITE PROBLEM to ignore—what to do with radioactive waste—just got worse. Since 1987, the grand (and controversial) idea was to put it all in one place, a series of tunnels deep below Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. Well, last week America got three new national monuments, including the 704,000 acres of the Basin and Range National Monument. And guess what? The train that was supposed to carry all that nuclear guck to Yucca Mountain runs right through it.
“It’s another nail in the coffin for Yucca Mountain,” says Timothy Frazier, a former Department of Energy official who now works on nuclear waste for the Bipartisan Policy Center. “It certainly adds time, and would require more money to resolve.”………
radioactive waste doesn’t disappear if you ignore it. The US has 75,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste—spent reactor fuel and the byproducts of processing it—that now sit in pools or dry casks at nuclear power plants, facilities never intended for long-term storage. The risk of leaks is high. Because the stuff stays radioactive for millennia, the safest course of action is supposed to be entomb ingit in rock like at Yucca Mountain, where it can remain inaccessible to future humans.
Now, Yucca Mountain plans have dragged on so long that all the high-level radioactive waste in the country exceeds its storage capacity. The Department of Energy hasn’t even built the repository yet, and the country already needs a second…….http://www.wired.com/2015/07/plan-storing-us-nuclear-waste-just-hit-roadblock/
Language of USA’s Republicans give away their desire to bomb Iran
Who cares if no Republican has read the full text of the deal, which won’t be given to Congress for days?
Many of the Republicans’ statements on Iran in the past few months have just a word salad of insults – “evil”, “malevolent”, “corrupt”, “terrorists”, “the devil” – as though there were a contest to see how many despicable adjectives they could fit into one paragraph.
Republicans hate the Iran nuclear deal because it means we won’t bomb Iran Trevor Timm,
Guardian 14 July 2015
The Administration’s agreement with Iran would curtail the latter’s nuclear program. The only people who can hate that are the kind who just love war As soon as President Obama announced the historic nuclear agreement between the US and Iran on Tuesday, Republican presidential candidates raced to see who could get out the most hyperbolic, foaming-at-the-mouth condemnation of the potential for peace.
Republicans frontrunner Jeb Bush was first out of the gate, more than 24 hours before the deal was actually signed. He boasted on his YouTube channel: “History is full of examples of when you enable people or regimes who don’t embrace democratic values you get a bad result…it’s called appeasement.” Continue reading
The staggeringly huge problem of Los Alamos’ radioactive contamination
‘Los Alamos will never be clean’, Local News, Santa Fe New Mexican, By Staci Matlock 13 July 15 “……….The scientists knew this canyon was contaminated back in the 1950s and ’60s,” said Greg Mello, a former inspector with the state Environment Department and now a partner in the nuclear watchdog Los Alamos Study Group with his wife, Trish. “Their children played here.”
As people this year commemorate the 70th anniversary of the first atomic bomb, which helped lead to the end of World War II, often left out of the conversation is the legacy of environmental waste left behind from the making of that bomb and the thousands that followed.
Acid Canyon is among more than 2,000 dumpsites around the lab’s 43-square-mile property and thousands of other dumpsites at 108 locations in 29 states around the nation where waste from the Manhattan Project and subsequent nuclear weapons research was discharged, tossed or buried.
Efforts to clean up the contamination have taken decades and billions of dollars. The work isn’t finished yet, and it may never be complete in some places. Millions of cubic meters of hazardous waste still await cleanup, along with hundreds of contaminated buildings demolished or awaiting demolition at Savannah River in South Carolina, the Hanford plutonium processing plant along Washington’s Columbia River, Los Alamos and a dozen other sites.
A legacy of waste
Air, land, water and people all were exposed to hazardous and radioactive waste products while scientists and engineers were producing the Trinity test bomb and subsequent nuclear weapons.
Uranium miners, scientists, lab technicians and people living near research facilities or test sites around the United States during the heyday of the Manhattan Project were exposed to the highest immediate levels of radiation. They’ve sought compensation from the federal government for a litany of maladies and cancers related to their work on nuclear weapons.
The waste dumped in canyons, buried in unlined trenches or discarded in out-of-the-way places has represented longer-term hazards to people living in or near places where the components of nuclear weapons were processed. In the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Army Corps of Engineers began cleaning up the waste sites around the country.
The danger from the waste depends on its radioactivity and how much of it people or animals are exposed to. People regularly are exposed to some level of radiation, which occurs naturally in the environment, such as uranium in soil and radon gas. The legacy waste adds to natural radiation levels in the environment and, left untreated, can increase the risks of cancers and other health problems.
At Los Alamos, lab workers dumped waste in trenches and pits, including those at Area G, a 63-acre dumpsite that opened in 1957. This includes thousands of cubic feet of low-level and mixed transuranic waste such as old lab coats, tools and other debris.
Nuclear waste is exempt from many federal environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act. The New Mexico Environment Department, after a court battle, gained some measure of regulatory control over the lab’s legacy waste only because it is mixed with other hazardous chemical waste. Under an agreement with the state, the lab in 2014 was on track to remove 3,706 cubic meters of hazardous and radioactive waste stored in above-ground containers and ship it to the nation’s only underground nuclear waste repository near Carlsbad when a lab container ruptured at the underground facility, halting operations.
A lab official said last year LANL still had thousands of cubic feet of contaminated waste left in 35 pits and 200 shafts at Area G. “The main concern is that Area G is smack dab over the regional aquifer,” said Scott Kovac, of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, noting the groundwater table is between 900 and 1,000 feet below the surface.
The Department of Energy and state environment officials are grappling with whether the increasing costs of cleanup at the lab and at other legacy waste sites outweighs the health risks of leaving waste where it is and capping it. Mello, who issued the first notice of violation to the lab for noncompliance with federal hazardous waste regulations in 1984, contemplated the trade-off: “Los Alamos will never be clean. It will always have tons of buried waste. Whether the waste is a health hazard is debatable.”
Costs of nuclear cleanup
The legacy costs of the Trinity Site test and the Cold War can be counted in human and environmental price tags……….
“It is costing a lot of money, taking a lot of time, and we’re leaving behind a lot of workers who have suffered,” Alvarez said.
Uranium miners and millers developed lung cancer and kidney cancers, among other illnesses. Scientists and other workers exposed to radiation from above-ground tests developed cancers of the lung, thyroid, esophagus, stomach and pancreas, as well as leukemia and other maladies.
More than 107,141 nuclear research workers and their families have received some of more than $11.6 billion in compensation and medical coverage as of July 5, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. More than a fourth of workers filing claims have cancer types recognized by the federal government as ones that can be caused by exposure to radioactive materials.
More than 4,900 former Los Alamos National Laboratory workers from World War II to the present have received $566 million for health problems related to their work at the lab……..
The costs of cleaning up legacy waste continue to climb. The Department of Energy’s life-cycle environmental liability for thousands of contaminated facilities and management of massive quantities of radioactive waste rose to $427 billion in 2014 from $297 billion in 2006, according to the agency’s fiscal report. The life cycle includes all of the department’s liabilities until the waste is finally cleaned up to federal standards — a process still years away in some locations.
The estimated liability for the legacy waste is higher than the combined state budgets of New Mexico, Texas, California, Arizona and Colorado.
The total life-cycle costs of managing environmental cleanup of legacy waste at Los Alamos were estimated at $2.9 billion in the Department of Energy’s fiscal year 2016 budget request to Congress. For Hanford, it is $63 billion, and for the Savannah River site, it is $71 billion.
“We keep on spending and yet the estimated environmental liability keeps growing,” said Jay Coghlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico…………. Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com. Follow her on Twitter @StaciMatlock. http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/los-alamos-will-never-be-clean/article_a3cc7ce1-8af0-5113-8f38-5d4aa673fd7a.html
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