How America’s Push for the Atomic Bomb Spawned Enduring Radioactive Waste Problems in St. Louis via Associated Press

Posted on 2023/07/16 by nfield

Michael Phillis and Jim Salter/Associated Press


The federal government and companies responsible for nuclear bomb production and atomic waste storage sites in the St. Louis area in the mid-20th century were aware of health risks, spills, improperly stored contaminants and other problems but often ignored them, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

Decades later, even with much of the cleanup complete, the aftereffects haunt the region. Federal health investigators have found an increased cancer risk for some people who, as children, played in a creek contaminated with uranium waste. A grade school closed last year amid radiation concerns. A landfill operator is spending millions to keep underground smoldering from reaching nuclear waste illegally dumped in the 1970s.

The AP examined hundreds of pages of internal memos, inspection reports and other items dating to the early 1950s, and found nonchalance and indifference to the risks of materials used in the development of nuclear weapons during and after World War II.

This story is part of an ongoing collaboration between The Missouri Independent, the nonprofit newsroom MuckRock and The Associated Press. The government documents were obtained by outside researchers through the Freedom of Information Act and shared with the news organizations.

Consider a 1966 government inspection report on a site in St. Louis County, which noted that “in a number of places along the roadway” material that later tested positive for radioactivity “appeared to have fallen from vehicles.”

A follow-up inspection three months later found the material was still sitting on the road. The company, Continental Mining and Milling Co., said it was having trouble with the contractor — a lone man who used a shovel and broom to pick up the atomic waste and put it in a pickup truck.

The company was not penalized.

The AP review didn’t uncover evidence of criminal wrongdoing. What it did find were repeated instances where companies, contractors or the government could have addressed significant problems but didn’t.

Dawn Chapman of the activist group Just Moms STL — a group pushing for cleanup and federal buyouts in an area near the airport — said the region “saved our country” with its work on the nuclear program but paid a terrible cost.

“We are a national sacrifice zone,” she said.

THE HISTORIC ROLE OF ST. LOUIS

St. Louis was part of a geographically scattered national effort to build a nuclear bomb that was tested in New Mexico. Much of the work in the St. Louis area involved uranium, where Mallinckrodt Chemical Co. was a major processor of the element into a concentrated form that could be further refined elsewhere into the material that made it into weapons.

“This is an enterprise of heavy industry,” said Gwendolyn Verhoff, a historian at St. Louis Community College.

Just months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Mallinckrodt began processing uranium near downtown. In 1946, the government bought land near the airport and began trucking nuclear waste from the Mallinckrodt facility.

Meanwhile, starting in 1941, the government began making explosives at a new plant in Weldon Spring. Production there ended in 1945, but not before soil, sediments and some springs were contaminated.

In 1957, the Atomic Energy Commission opened a plant in Weldon Spring and Mallinckrodt moved its uranium processing there. Radioactive waste contaminated the area, including a large quarry that eventually became a Superfund cleanup site in 1987. The rest of the Weldon Spring site was added two years later.

Alison Carrick, co-director of “The First Secret City,” a documentary about the region’s nuclear history, said after the war some companies thought that byproducts of the radioactive material could be sold.

But that didn’t work. So the waste moved to new sites, contaminating more land, near more people.

In 1966, the Atomic Energy Commission demolished and buried buildings at the airport site. Continental Mining and Milling Co. moved the waste to 9200 Latty Ave. in nearby Bridgeton, piling it in a heap, the commission said at the time. Radioactive barrels lay outside the fence. Storage was so haphazard that even the path to the site was contaminated by trucks that spread waste on their hauls from 1966 to 1969.

Tons of that nuclear waste flowed into Coldwater Creek, contaminating the often-flooding waterway and adjacent yards for 14 miles, state and federal investigators determined.

In 1973, the uranium processor Cotter Corp. took hazardous leached barium sulfate from Latty Avenue to the West Lake Landfill, also in Bridgeton. The material contained uranium residue.

The government cleanup of Weldon Spring is complete, but the site is considered permanently damaged and will require oversight into perpetuity. Rather than remove the waste, the government built a 75-foot-tall mound, covered in rock, to serve as a permanent disposal cell for much of the waste. The government said the site is safe, but some local residents still worry. About 5,300 people live in Weldon Spring, but tens of thousands more live within a few miles in neighboring O’Fallon.

Federal officials plan to remove some of the waste at West Lake Landfill and cap the rest. Cleanup of Coldwater Creek is far along, but isn’t expected to finish until 2038. Cleanup efforts have cost taxpayers more than $1 billion, and millions more will be needed to finish the job.

The AEC, historically responsible for the nation’s nuclear weapons program, was abolished in the 1970s, in no small part because of public criticism of its handling of nuclear safety. The Department of Energy is now responsible for overseeing the country’s nuclear weapons and waste. The department has publicly detailed the environmental damage earlier waste mismanagement caused to people and the environment. Now, the Army Corps of Engineers handles cleanup at several former nuclear program sites, including in St. Louis.

[…]

IGNORING THE ENVIRONMENT

Less than a year after victory in World War II, Winston Churchill traveled to a small Missouri town and announced a turning point in history: an “iron curtain” had descended on Europe. The brutality of global war quickly transitioned to a dangerous standoff with the Soviet Union. In America’s push for nuclear dominance, across the St. Louis region, when harmful waste was dumped, officials were indifferent to the hazards posed by materials that were so vital for the nuclear program.

The focus was on speed and secrecy. The environment was secondary.

Take a March 17, 1953, memo from Merril Eisenbud, health and safety division director for the Atomic Energy Commission, concerning a barium cake spill that left a half-mile of road, its shoulder and part of a corn field with nuclear contamination. Eisenbud wrote that in his opinion “no emergency existed.”

“A decision as to what action to take will undoubtedly involve a balance between costs, potential risks, public relations aspects,” Eisenbud said.

In a May 27, 1966, memo from a senior radiation specialist for the Atomic Energy Commission, it was noted that at Continental, an inspector found a pile of uranium material 30 feet wide, 100 feet long and nearly 8 feet high that was not in a secure area behind fencing and a locked gate, as the contract required. About 100 barrels of “miscellaneous residues” also were found outside the fenced area.

An on-site manager said he was unfamiliar with the storage requirements, the inspector wrote. When he turned to the company’s vice president in Chicago, he got nowhere.

The vice president “immediately submitted that most of what the inspector was talking about was not understood,” the memo stated. “He went on to explain that he had taken over as Executive Vice President of CMM as a protection of the money invested by a number of individuals.”

Continental was not penalized.

It wasn’t just in St. Louis. At the arid Los Alamos site in New Mexico where weapons were developed, for example, waste was thrown into nearby canyons.

Handling waste “was shielded from any greater public oversight or attention,” Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists, told AP. Environmental standards at the time were looser and the program’s secrecy allowed bad practices to continue for too long, he said.

Workers received some protection but health risks were in some cases ignored or written off.

Another 1966 report noted that Continental used the Nuclear Consultant Corp.’s field badge service to track radiation exposure among workers. The report found radiation levels so high for some workers that some at the company doubted the results.

“They did not see how people could be getting that much exposure,” it stated.

The memo showed no evidence that any action was taken.

WORKER HARM AND ADVOCACY

Efforts to force cleanup have been led largely by women who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Denise Brock’s father worked for years at Mallinckrodt. When he had cancer when she was young, she would sometimes stay home from school to help care for him. He died in 1978.

When Brock learned in 2001 that former Mallinckrodt workers with certain types of cancer were eligible for federal compensation, her effort to help her mother get payment grew into an activist role. In 2003, she founded the United Nuclear Weapons Workers in her home, and worked with others to convince federal lawmakers to make it easier for thousands of former workers to get compensation for their illnesses.

Brock’s prodding led the government to begin offering up to $400,000 to those who worked at nuclear facilities across the country who developed certain cancers, or their survivors. Over the past two decades, the government has paid out $23 billion.

PRESENT-DAY FEAR

While nuclear workers had direct exposure, people who live near contamination sites worry about uncertainty. Many who grew up in the area weren’t told about the risks for decades.

In 2007, Chapman and Karen Nickel were so concerned about cancer and other unusual illnesses in their St. Louis County neighborhoods that they formed Just Moms STL.

In 2019, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry issued a report that found people who regularly played in Coldwater Creek as children from the 1960s to the 1990s may have a slight increased risk of bone cancer, lung cancer and leukemia. The agency determined that those exposed daily to the creek starting in the 2000s, when cleanup began, could have a small increased risk of lung cancer.

Some experts are skeptical. Tim Jorgensen, a professor of radiation medicine at Georgetown University, said the biggest risk factor for cancer is age and local radiation’s contribution would be so low as to be hard to detect, he said.

“The public also tends to overestimate the risk of radiation-induced cancer,” Jorgensen said.

The government’s sloppy handling of nuclear contamination over decades has understandably made people doubt official promises that conditions are safe now, said Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear expert and president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

“There is zero trust,” he said.

People in the St. Louis area are concerned that more illnesses are caused by the contamination and some are pushing for legislation to compensate those who are sick. Others have sued those responsible for the waste.

[…]

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‘We deserve better’: Residents demand action to extend radiation exposure compensation via Las Vegas Review-Journal

Posted on 2023/07/10 by nfield

By David Wilson Las Vegas Review-Journal

Sheron Carter’s brother and grandfather died from cancer after working at the Nevada Test Site.

Three years ago, the 66-year-old Las Vegas native was diagnosed with breast cancer. Now, she’s demanding lawmakers take action to compensate herself and her family for the fallout from years of nuclear testing.

“It has destroyed families,” Carter said.

On Saturday afternoon, Carter was one of about 30 people who attended an information session at the West Las Vegas Library focused on a federal compensation law that is set to expire next year.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act passed in 1990 and provides compensation to individuals and their families who lived downwind of nuclear tests, test-site participants and uranium industry workers.

Under current law, White Pine, Eureka, Lander, Lincoln, Nye and northeast portions of Clark County are considered downwind areas. Those who contracted certain diseases and lived in those areas during a specific time period can apply for compensation. Downwinders can receive $50,000, on-site participants $75,000 and uranium industry employees $100,000.

A two-year extension of the law passed last year, meaning the law is due to sunset on June 10, 2024.

Of the approximately 200 above-ground nuclear tests done in the United States, about 100 were done at the Nevada site, starting in 1951. The facility is located 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, with the government town of Mercury at the main entrance.

Carter recalled her mother hosing down the lawn because of radiation and having to stay inside — sometimes all day — after a nuclear test.

[…]

Three bills proposed

Dr. Laura Shaw, an investigator with the Radiation Exposure Screening and Education Program and the Nevada Test Site Screening Program, provided updates with her team Saturday and answered questions about bills that were introduced in Congress this year.

Three bills have been introduced in 2023 to extend or amend existing law, but none have been brought before a committee.

H.R. 1751 expands downwind areas to include all parts of Clark County and Mohave County in Arizona.

It was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in March.

S. 1751 has been co-sponsored by 14 senators, including Sen. Jacky Rosen. This would extend the RECA deadline by 19 years after its enactment. It would expand the covered area to include Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Guam, as well as all of Nevada, Utah and Arizona. If passed, the bill would reduce the physical presence requirement for those exposed from two years to one year. The compensation would increase to $150,000 and provide medical benefits.

H.R. 3497 would expand the eligible time period for uranium industry workers from 1971 to 1978, and extend the RECA program for years, including for downwinders and on-site workers.

‘Fallout does not go away’

Shaw said not only would compensation end if the law expires, but the free medical screenings offered by UNLV and other grant-funded programs would end as well.

A misconception about nuclear fallout, Shaw said, is that it only impacted people in the immediate aftermath of a test.

“That fallout does not go away. That fallout spreads: People are inhaling it, increasing their risk of lung cancer,” Shaw said. “They’re drinking the milk from the cows that fed on the grass that has fallout. That fallout, 30 percent of that, is still here.”

Scott Bunn, 63, lives in Reno and attended Saturday’s event with his wife, Debra. Bunn worked on the test site between 1979 and 1983. In 2018, he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma and plasmacytoma.

“We feel that it’s certainly unfair to end this program,” he said. “It should be increased if anything.”

Bunn received medical benefits and compensation through the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act, also known as EEOICPA.

Current laws allows individuals affected by radiation exposure or their families to receive money from either RECA or EEOICPA.

Bunn said it would be unfair for RECA to expire in a year because there are on-site participants who have not yet developed cancer or other diseases as a result of radiation exposure.

“It needs to be updated because when it started, 50 grand was a lot of money and it got you a long way, but now it’s not,” Bunn said.

For free assistance in filing compensation claims or to schedule a medical screening, call 702-992-6887 or email nevadaresep@medicine.unlv.edu.

Contact David Wilson at dwilson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @davidwilson_RJ on Twitter.

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Red alert at Zaporizhzhia? via Beyond Nuclear International

Posted on 2023/07/10 by nfield

The threatened deadly scenarios could not happen at a wind farm

By Linda Pentz Gunter

Amidst accusations from both the Russian and Ukrainian sides that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine has been wired for detonation or could be deliberately attacked during the current war there, one absolute truth remains: nuclear power plants are inherently dangerous. 

[…]

Zaporizhzhia is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe with at least 2,204 tons of highly radioactive waste within the reactors and the irradiated fuel pools. 

Depending on the severity of what transpires, any or all of this radioactive fuel could be ignited.

Amidst the confusion and unreliability of any pronouncements uttered through the “fog of war”, there remain several unanswered questions that have led to heightened rumor and speculation:

Has the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in fact been wired for detonation and whose interests would be served by blowing up the plant? 

Why is there an exodus of both Russian and Ukrainian plant personnel? 

Will the sabotage of the downstream Kakhovka dam that resulted in catastrophic flooding, also lead to an equally catastrophic loss of available cooling water supplies for the reactors and fuel pools? 

Will the backup diesel generators, frequently turned to for powering the essential cooling each time the plant has lost connection to the electricity grid, last through each crisis, given their fuel must also be replenished, potentially not possible under war conditions?

None of these threats would make headlines if Zaporizhzhia was instead home to a wind farm or utility scale solar array. This perhaps explains the rush now to downplay the gravity of the situation, with claims in the press that a major attack on the plant would “not be as bad as Chornobyl” and that radioactive releases would be minimal and barely travel beyond the fence line.

This is an irresponsible dismissal of the real dangers. The measured assessment of Dr. Edwin Lyman at the Union of Concerned Scientists confirms that an attack on Zaporizhzhia could indeed be catastrophic.

The graphite moderator used at Chornobyl undeniably worsened the outcome of that explosion and its aftermath. The graphite fueled the fire and the smoke further suspended what became the radioactive fallout that traveled far and wide across the former Soviet Union and all of Europe.

The part played by the graphite moderator in increasing the severity of the Chornobyl disaster has led to an assumption that major fires and explosions at Zaporizhzhia would result in less serious consequences, given the reactors are not of the same design. All six at Zaporizhzhia are Russian VVERs, similar to the Pressurized Water Reactor used here in the United States. (Chornobyl was the older RBMK.)

However, while Zaporizhzhia may be a less primitive design, it is not harmless. (Absurdly, these 1980s reactors are described in the press as “more modern.”)

If the uranium fuel in the Zaporizhzhia reactors or irradiated fuel storage pools overheats and ignites, it could then heat up the zirconium cladding around it, which would ignite and burn fiercely as a flare at temperatures too hot to extinguish with water. 

The resulting chemical reaction would also generate an explosive environment. The heat of the release and any subsequent detonations could breach concrete structures, then loft radioactive gas and fallout into the environment to travel on the weather. 

Radioactive fallout could contaminate crucial agricultural land in Ukraine and potentially also in Russia should prevailing winds travel eastward at the time of the disaster. As we have learned from the Chornobyl fallout, this is an enduring harm that enters the food chain and human bodies and remains harmful in the environment indefinitely, as exemplified by the 1,000 square mile Chornobyl Exclusion Zone.

Who then consumes that food is also of critical importance. While Europe allows an already too high 600 becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg) of radioactive cesium in food, contaminated food supplies from Ukraine that read at higher levels after a nuclear disaster could be exported to countries with even weaker standards, including the US where the limit is an unacceptable 1200 Bq/kg. But will those consuming such foodstuffs be counted among the victims of such a nuclear disaster? Likely not.

The true numbers of those harmed by the Chornobyl disaster will never be known due to institutional suppression and misrepresentation of the numbers and the absence of record-keeping in the former Soviet countries affected. Therefore, to suggest that a major nuclear disaster at Zaporizhzhia would be “not nearly as bad as Chornobyl” is too broad and speculative without looking at the specifics.

Those specifics depend on whether the disaster involves hydrogen explosions such as happened at Fukushima, or fires resulting from a bombing raid or missile attack, which could disperse more radioactivity further. It would also depend on whether all six reactors suffered catastrophic failures, whether all of the fuel pools were drained and caught fire and whether the storage casks were breached.

It would further depend on which way the wind was blowing, and if, when and where it subsequently rained out a radioactive plume, all factors that influenced where the Chornobyl radioactive fallout was deposited.

If Zaporizhzhia comes to harm, each side in the conflict will almost certainly hold the other responsible. But ultimately, the responsibility we all share is to reject the continued use of a technology that has the potential to wreak such disastrous consequences on humanity.

Nuclear power is the most dangerous way to boil water. It is unnecessary, expensive, and an obstacle to renewable energy development. It is intrinsically tied to the desire for — and development of  — nuclear weapons, the use of which could be the other lethal outcome in this war.

Zaporizhzhia is in the news almost every day. The propaganda may be deliberately alarmist, but the basis for the alarm is very real or it would not be in the headlines in the first place. 

It is time to see sense. Calling for a no-fire zone around Zaporizhzhia is not enough. We must call for no nuclear power at all.

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< What to know about Japan's plan to dump waste water into the ocean via NPR

Posted on 2023/07/09 by nfield

July 9, 20238:00 AM ET

Transcript

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

The International Atomic Energy Agency on Tuesday approved Japan’s plan to release over 1 million tons of treated nuclear wastewater from a nuclear plant. The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station was destroyed in the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and ensuing tsunami that devastated much of the country’s east coast in 2011. But the plan to dump the contaminated water into the ocean later this summer faces a lot of domestic and international opposition. Bob Richmond is a research professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and is the director of Kewalo Marine Laboratory. Welcome to the show.

BOB RICHMOND: Thanks very much, Ayesha. I appreciate the opportunity.

RASCOE: OK, so the IAEA says that the plan is sound because it went through a two-year assessment period and that the release of the water will have, quote, “negligible radiological impact on people and the environment.” So should that reassure people who are worried about this plan?

RICHMOND: For me and a number of my colleagues, our answer is at this point, we’re not convinced. We’re not saying that there’s no way, but we are saying because we’re scientists and data driven, that there are insufficient data to be able to demonstrate the feeling that this is going to be safe. And I really should take a moment to clarify, the International Atomic Energy Agency – their job is to see that their plan adheres to standards, and adhering to standards is not the same thing as guaranteeing safety.

RASCOE: What are the specific concerns that you have?

RICHMOND: There are missing data on a number of the radionuclides of greatest concern. There’s a lot of discussion of one in particular, tritium, that’s coming out in the – what we call tritiated water from the cooling. And so I agree. I’ve been in animated discussions with nuclear chemists and nuclear physicists saying if you calculate the concentration of radionuclides and the volume of the Pacific Ocean, the dilution is great and it’s going to be tiny. And that’s where the opinion that IAEA presented was they feel that the effects would be negligible. Dilution is a chemical process. You can calculate it out, and if the ocean was a sterile vessel, it would work. But it’s not. You have phytoplankton at the bottom of the food web, microscopic algae that photosynthesize. They pick up a number of the radionuclides, notably tritium and carbon-14. And so these can be taken up, and then they can be passed through the food web to other organisms, and a number of radionuclides can be bioaccumulated. And this is a pathway for which it can get into people through seafood.

RASCOE: So do we know then how the release of the wastewater will have an impact over the next 30 or 40 years on marine life?

RICHMOND: Yeah. So we don’t want to be alarmist and, you know, scare people to say that, you know, the world’s going to end and don’t eat anything from the ocean. That’s not the case. It is interesting to note that as we understand and we’ve been studying, this is very much what’s called a transboundary issue. The water release is going to occur a kilometer offshore from Fukushima, but it’s not going to stay in Japan’s waters. It’s going to spread throughout the Pacific through ocean currents – also through organisms like fish, tuna, others. So we know it will move across biologically. And interestingly enough, radionuclides can even adhere to plastics, particularly PET. When I talked to the physicist and the chemist, they say, well, we’re assuming everything is going to go well. If you look at the history of how we got here, I think the assumption that everything is going to go to plan is one that has to be clearly evaluated, and I don’t think that will be the case.

RASCOE: Has this been done before, this sort of release?

RICHMOND: There are categories for nuclear disasters from 1 to 7. There have only been two No. 7s. The first was Chernobyl, and then the second one was Fukushima. So this was about a tenth of what happened at Chernobyl. What’s different about Fukushima is this is primarily marine release. So in answer to your question, this is not a normal operation, but challenges are also opportunities. And this is an opportunity for Japan and the IAEA to provide forward-thinking leadership and do a far better job.

RASCOE: China said on Thursday that it’s banning seafood imports from 10 regions in Japan, including Fukushima. Is that valid, or is that too far, to start banning seafood imports?

RICHMOND: Yeah, for me, again, I’m data driven. And, you know, you pointed out the timeline. This is supposed to go on for over 30 years. And so not only is this a transboundary issue, but it’s a transgenerational issue. That’s a concern because many of the problems won’t show up immediately. And once it does show up, you’re not going to get the genie back in the bottle. So, you know, should there be concern? Absolutely. Are there data missing to answer these fundamental questions? Yes. Do we know that radionuclides like cesium and strontium have been picked up already by sea life? The answer is yes. Levels have been very low. So, again, I don’t want to overstate the issue, but, you know, as an environmental biologist, I strongly adhere to what’s called the precautionary principle. In the absence of data showing something is safe, you don’t assume that it’s safe. You rather put in those protective measures to be very conservative.

RASCOE: Japanese authorities are saying that in order to move ahead with decommissioning the damaged plant, they have to get rid of the water. What are the alternatives to dumping it into the ocean?

RICHMOND: We strongly recommended that they evaluate the use of putting that water into concrete to be used on-site and around that area. And it was everything from deflection to denial. And our concern – once again, me as a marine biologist – is the health of the oceans and the people who depend on it. We need to step away from continuing to use the ocean as the ultimate dumping ground for everything we don’t want on land. And this is a really good place to start.

[…]

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Florida moves forward on radioactive road paving plan as Gov. DeSantis signs new law via NPR

Posted on 2023/07/02 by nfield

Updated June 30, 20231:24 PM ET 

By Bill Chappell


Florida is another step closer to paving its roads with phosphogypsum — a radioactive waste material from the fertilizer industry — after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a controversial bill into law Thursday.

Conservation groups had urged DeSantis to veto the bill, saying phosphogypsum would hurt water quality and put road construction crews at a higher risk of cancer.

“By signing off on this reckless handout to the fertilizer industry, Gov. DeSantis is paving the way to a toxic legacy generations of Floridians will have to grapple with,” said Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement sent to NPR.

The Environmental Protection Agency also has a say: The agency regulates phosphogypsum, and any plan to use it in roads would require a review.

“Any request for a specific use of phosphogypsum in roads will need to be submitted to EPA, as EPA’s approval is legally required before the material can be used in road construction,” the EPA told NPR on Friday.

Here’s what to know about phosphogypsum and the new law.

What does the law do?

The new law looks to clear the way for phosphogypsum to be used as a pavement aggregate alongside crushed stone, gravel, sand and other materials. In recent years industrial byproducts and reclaimed materials also have been used as aggregates, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

HB 1191 compels the Florida Transportation Department to conduct “demonstration projects using phosphogypsum in road construction aggregate material to determine its feasibility as a paving material,” as it studies using phosphogypsum in roads.

Florida’s transportation agency now has less than a year to complete a study and make a recommendation; the bill sets a deadline of April 1, 2024.

Bennett criticized the plan, saying that under the new law, radioactive waste would be dumped in roadways “under the guise of a so-called feasibility study that won’t address serious health and safety concerns.”

[…]

What is phosphogypsum and why is there so much of it?

In fertilizer, phosphorus is important for plants to grow strong roots and for crops to be productive. To make phosphoric acid for fertilizer and a few other uses, phosphate rock is dissolved in sulfuric acid. Phosphogypsum is what’s left over.

[…]

Is phosphogypsum dangerous?

“Phosphogypsum contains appreciable quantities of uranium and its decay products, such as radium-226,” according to the EPA, which also notes that because the fertilizer production process concentrates waste material, “phosphogypsum is more radioactive than the original phosphate rock.”

“The radium is of particular concern because it decays to form radon, a cancer-causing, radioactive gas,” the EPA adds.

An analysis commissioned by the Fertilizer Institute, a group that represents the fertilizer industry, disagrees, saying that using phosphogypsum in road construction won’t produce radioactive doses that are above the EPA’s acceptable risks. Such work, it stated, “can be done safely and results in doses that are a small fraction of those arising from natural background radiation.”

Last November, researchers in China who reviewed numerous existing studies on recycling phosphogypsum said they were optimistic about its potential use in road construction materials. But they also concluded that more studies were needed, noting that “few studies have focused on its durability or analyzed its long-term effects on soil and water resources.”

Conservation and environmental groups banded together to fight the Florida bill, saying it caters to the fertilizer industry — which, they said, previously has shown it can’t adequately manage the more than 1 billion tons of waste currently stored in the state.

In a letter to DeSantis, the Center for Biological Diversity and more than 30 other groups stated that “Florida should not be a test subject in the industry’s reckless experiment.”

Is Florida’s plan legal?

The EPA says “phosphogypsum remains prohibited from use in road construction,” as it has been almost continuously for more than 30 years.

Under former President Donald Trump, the EPA briefly rescinded that policy starting in October 2020. But it reinstated the rule in June 2021.

[…]

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福島原発避難者の支援手薄　「安心情報だけ提供」と批判via Kyodo (Yahoo!ニュースJapan)

Posted on 2023/06/29 by nfield

　国連人権理事会に任命され、東京電力福島第1原発事故の避難者の実態を調査した専門家が、日本政府に対し「放射線に関して安心できる情報だけを提供し、避難者より帰還した人に手厚い支援を行うことは国際法の基準に反する」と指摘した最終調査報告をまとめたことが25日、分かった。7月4日にも人権理へ正式に提出される。 　国内避難民の権利担当の特別報告者だったセシリア・ヒメネスダマリー氏が昨年9～10月、来日して調査した。人権理会合では、当事国の日本や各国から報告書の内容に対する意見や質問が出され、ヒメネスダマリー氏が回答する予定。 　共同通信が入手した報告書は、事故後、政府が「差し迫った危険はない」と市民に強調し、事態の深刻さを軽視したと批判。詳しい説明に消極的で、矛盾するメッセージを伝えることもあったことから、市民は自分で避難するか決断せざるを得なかったとの見方を示した。放射線に関する政府の情報への信頼は失墜したと指摘し、科学に基づいた中立的な情報を提供するよう促した。（共同）

原文

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‘Exploring Tritium’s Danger’: a book review by Robert Alvarez via the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

Posted on 2023/06/26 by nfield

Over the past 40 years, Arjun Makhijani has provided clear, concise, and important scientific insights that have enriched our understanding of the nuclear age. In doing so, Makhijani—now president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research—has built a solid reputation as a scientist working in the public interest. His most recent contribution to public discourse, Exploring Tritium’s Dangers, adds to this fine tradition.

A radioactive isotope of hydrogen, tritium is one the most expensive, rare, and potentially harmful elements in the world. Its rarity is underscored by its price—$30,000 per gram—which is projected to rise from $100,000 to $200,000 per gram by mid-century.

Although its rarity and usefulness in some applications gives it a high monetary value, tritium is also a radioactive contaminant that has been released widely to the air and water from nuclear power and spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plants. Makhijani points out that “one teaspoon of tritiated water (as HTO) would contaminate about 100 billion gallons of water to the US drinking water limit; that is enough to supply about 1 million homes with water for a year.”

Where tritium comes from. Since Earth began to form, the radioactive isotope of hydrogen known as tritium (H-3) has been created by interactions between cosmic rays and Earth’s atmosphere; through this natural process, the isotope continues to blanket the planet in tiny amounts. With a radioactive half-life of 12.3 years, tritium falls from the sky and decays, creating a steady-state global equilibrium that comes to about three to seven kilograms of tritium.

Tritium initially became a widespread man-made contaminant when it was spread across the globe by open-air nuclear weapons explosions conducted between 1945 and 1963. Rainfall in 1963 was found in the Northern Hemisphere to contain 1,000 times more tritium than background levels. Open-air nuclear weapons explosions released about 600 kilograms (6 billion curies) into the atmosphere. In the decades since above-ground nuclear testing ended, nuclear power plants have added even more to the planet’s inventory of tritium. For several years, US power reactors have been contaminating ground water via large, unexpected tritium leaks from degraded subsurface piping and spent nuclear fuel storage pool infrastructures.

Since the 1990s, about 70 percent of the nuclear power sites in the United States (43 out of 61 sites) have had significant tritium leaks that contaminated groundwater in excess of federal drinking water limits.

The most recent leak occurred in November 2022, involving 400,000 gallons of tritium-contaminated water from the Monticello nuclear station in Minnesota. The leak was kept from the public for several months. In late March of this year, after the operator could not stop the leak, it was forced to shut down the reactor to fix and replace piping. By this time, tritium reached the groundwater that enters the Mississippi River. A good place to start limiting the negative effects of tritium contamination, Makhijani recommends, is to significantly tighten drinking water standards.

Routine releases of airborne tritium are also not trivial. As part of his well-researched monograph, Makhijani underscores this point by including a detailed atmospheric dispersion study that he commissioned, indicating that tritium (HTO) from the Braidwood Nuclear Power Plant in Illinois has been literally raining down from gaseous releases – as it incorporates with precipitation to form tritium oxide (HTO)—something that occurs at water cooled reactors. Spent fuel storage pools are considered the largest source of gaseous tritium releases.

The largely unacknowledged health effects. Makhijani makes it clear that the impacts of tritium on human health, especially when it is taken inside the body, warrant much more attention and control than they have received until now. This is not an easy problem to contend with, given the scattered and fragmented efforts that are in place to address this hazard. Thirty-nine states, and nine federal agencies  (the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Department of Agriculture are all responsible for regulating tritium.

This highly scattered regulatory regime has been ineffective at limiting tritium contamination, much less reducing it. For example, state and  federal regulators haven’t a clue as to how many of some two million exit signs purchased in the United States—and made luminous without electric power by tritium—have been illegally dumped.  For decades, tritium signs, each initially containing about 25 curies (or 25,000,000,000,000 pCi) of radioactivity, have found their way into landfills that often contaminate drinking water. One broken sign is enough to contaminate an entire community landfill. There are no standards for tritium in the liquid that leaches from landfills, despite measurements taken in 2009 indicating levels at Pennsylvania landfills thousands of times above background.

Adding to this regulatory mess, is the fact that federal standards limiting tritium in drinking water only apply to public supplies, and not to private wells.

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The NRC and other regulating agencies are sticking to an outdated premise that tritium is a “mild” radioactive contaminant that emits “weak” beta particles that cannot penetrate the outer layers of skin. When tritium is taken inside the body (by, for example, drinking tritiated water), half is quickly excreted within 10 days, the agencies point out, and the radiation doses are tiny. Overall, the NRC implies its risk of tritium ingestion causing cancer is small.

But evidence of harm to workers handling tritium is also growing. Epidemiologists from the University of North Carolina reported in 2013, that the risk of dying from leukemia among workers at the Savannah River Plant following exposure to tritium is more than eight times greater (RBE-8.6) than from exposure to gamma radiation (RBE-1).  Over the past several years, studies of workers exposed to tritium consistently show significant excess levels of chromosome damage.[1]

The contention that tritium is “mildly radioactive” does not hold when it is taken in the body as tritiated water—the dominant means for exposure. The Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board—which advises the US Energy Department about safety at the nation’s defense nuclear sites—informed the secretary of energy in June 2019 that “[t]ritiated water vapor represents a significant risk to those exposed to it, as its dose consequence to an exposed individual is 15,000 to 20,000 times higher than that for an equivalent amount of tritium gas.”

As it decays, tritium emits nearly 400 trillion energetic disintegrations per second. William H. McBride, a professor of radiation oncology at the UCLA Medical School, describes these disintegrations as “explosive packages of energy” that are “highly efficient at forming complex, potentially lethal DNA double strand breaks.” McBride, underscored this concern at an event sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, where he stated that “damage to DNA can occur within minutes to hours.” [2]

“No matter how it is taken into the body,” a fact sheet from the Energy Department’s Argonne National Laboratory says, “tritium is uniformly distributed through all biological fluids within one to two hours.” During that short time, the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board points out that “the combination of a rapid intake and a short biological half-life means a large fraction of the radiological dose is acutely delivered within hours to days…”

A new approach to tritium regulation. Makhijani pulls together impressive evidence clearly pointing to the need for an innovative approach that addresses, in addition to cancer, a range of outcomes that can follow tritium exposure, including prenatal and various forms of genomic damage. In particular, he raises a key point about how physics has dominated radiation protection regulation at the expense of the biological sciences.

It all boils down to estimation of a dose as measured in human urine based on mathematical models. For tritium, dose estimation can be extraordinarily complex (at best) when it is taken inside the body as water or as organically bound, tritide forms. So the mathematical models that can simplify this challenge depend on “constant values” that provide the basis for radiation protection.

In this regard, the principal “constant value” holding dose reconstruction and regulatory compliance together is the reliance on the “reference man.” He is a healthy Caucasian male between the age of 20 to 30 years, who exists only in the abstract world.

Use of the reference man standard gives rise to obvious (and major) questions: What radiation dose limit is necessary to protect the “reference man” from serious genomic damage? And what about protection of more vulnerable forms of human life?

According to the 2006 study by the National Research Council, healthy Caucasian men between the age of 20 and 30 are about one-tenth as likely to contract a radiation-induced cancer as a child exposed to the same external dose of gamma radiation while in the womb.

In his monograph, Makhijani underscores the need to protect the fetus and embryo from internal exposures to tritium—a need largely being side-stepped by radiation protection authorities. “Tritium replaces non-radioactive hydrogen in water, the principal source of tritium exposure,” Makhijani writes, pointing to unassailable evidence that tritium “easily can cross the placenta and irradiate developing fetuses in utero, thereby raising the risk of birth defects, miscarriages, and other problems.”

He is not alone in such an assessment. According a 2022 medical expert consensus report on radiation protection for health care professionals in Europe, “The greatest risk of pregnancy loss from radiation exposure is during the first 2 weeks of pregnancy, while between 2-8 weeks after conception, the embryo is most susceptible to the development of congenital malformations because this is the period of organogenesis.”

In the United States, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s efforts to reduce exposure limits and protect pregnant women and their fetuses is best described as foot-dragging. By comparison, the required limit for a pregnant worker in Europe to be reassigned from further exposure is one-fifth the US standard—and was adopted nearly 20 years ago.

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[Interview] Japanese lawmaker proposes novel way of storing irradiated Fukushima water via Hankyoreh

Posted on 2023/06/22 by nfield

Posted on : Jun.21,2023 17:09 KST Modified on : Jun.21,2023 17:09 KST

Calling the sea the world’s “shared asset,” Tomoko Abe, 74, a member of Japan’s House of Representatives, has proposed a new alternative for the impending discharge of contaminated water from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the ocean: mixing Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS)-treated water with cement and sand to form a solid, then storing it.The Hankyoreh sat down with Abe, who belongs to the Constitutional Democratic Party and is a member of a bipartisan group advocating for zero nuclear power and 100% renewable energy in Japan, for an interview at the House of Representatives in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward on June 15.During our interview, Abe was critical of the Japanese government and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), saying they aren’t conducting in-depth studies on the effects of long-term discharge on the marine environment.She continues to use the phrase “ALPS-treated contaminated water” (hereafter written as contaminated water) because she believes that the water is still contaminated even after treatment.

Hankyoreh: The Japanese government plans to discharge the contaminated water into the sea later this summer once the IAEA issues a final report this month. What do you make of this plan?

Tomoko Abe: This issue is not one that can be resolved by the Japanese government and the IAEA stating that the situation is fine. The sea is our shared asset. We need the understanding of the people who are concerned about the discharge and neighboring countries.The IAEA General Safety Guide (GSG-8) states that “for planned exposure situations, justification is the process of determining whether a practice is, overall, beneficial, i.e. whether the expected benefits to individuals and to society from introducing or continuing the practice outweigh the harm (including radiation detriment) resulting from the practice.”Since the discharge of contaminated water cannot be 100% safe, it has been strongly opposed by Japanese citizens, Korean fishermen, Pacific Island countries, and others. If there are no benefits and only risks, the discharge should be annulled. IAEA hasn’t reviewed this portion at all.

Hankyoreh: TEPCO is arguing that it’s reducing radiation to below legal thresholds with ALPS, and that diluting the unremoved tritium with sea water before dumping it makes it safe.

Abe: The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is a nuclear reactor where an accident occurred [in March 2011], so there are all sorts of radioactive materials present in the water, including cesium and strontium. The government has not been doing any testing at all on the total quantities to see how much radioactive material it is dumping into the sea.Even if the radioactive substances have been diluted to below the legal thresholds, we’re still talking about vast quantities of contaminated water, so we can’t ignore the total volumes. The number of nuclides that are measured before discharge has also been reduced from 64 to 30. If we’re going to assess the risks, we need to verify that as much as possible.

Hankyoreh: In connection with the water’s safety, there has also been some debate over the effectiveness of the ALPS system.

Abe: There isn’t enough data to verify the effectiveness of ALPS. When they took samples to analyze the 64 nuclides, they only came from three tanks (K-4, J1-C, and J1-G) out of more than 1,000 where the contaminated water is stored.An even bigger problem is that [an inquiry with TEPCO] found there to be no churning when the samples are taken [to mix them evenly]. The samples were collected from the upper part of the tank, where the radioactive material is less concentrated.That means we can’t trust the data used to verify the effectiveness of ALPS. This is an act of deception.

Hankyoreh: How do you think the contaminated water should be disposed of?Abe: It’s not too late. It is necessary to remove as much radioactive material as possible by running the water multiple times through ALPS, as TEPCO is doing now. Once the radioactive content has been lowered to below the threshold, it should be mixed with cement, sand, and other materials so it can be stored in solid form.If you see what experts are saying, they talk about how that sort of concrete can be reused later on to make things like seawalls. It also obviates the need to keep storing them in the nuclear power plant tanks like we’re doing with the contaminated water.

Hankyoreh: Opinion surveys have shown 60% of the Japanese public supports the discharge of the contaminated water into the ocean.

Abe: The fishers want to preserve the seas, and the opposition from them has been fierce. Polls say that 60% of people are supportive of the move, but not only has correct information not been provided to the people, but the overall mood regarding nuclear power in Japan is shifting. It feels as if we’re going back to before the 2011 earthquake (such as by allowing the use of nuclear plants beyond their 60-year lifespan). The nuclear meltdown is being underplayed, and it’s making people forget the lessons of that day.Moreover, there’s no understanding of how we’re going to protect our marine environments, internationally speaking. I’m talking about more than just tritium — there’s a lack of thought about the contaminated water that’s coming out of the ruined nuclear reactor. Twelve years have passed since the meltdown, but fish that have been contaminated with cesium and other radioactivity continue to be caught. There’s endless biomagnification occurring.

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Legal challenge against Sizewell C nuclear power plant rejected via The Guardian

Posted on 2023/06/22 by nfield

A legal challenge against the government’s decision to build the Sizewell C nuclear power plant has been rejected.

The campaign group Together Against Sizewell C (Tasc) had launched a judicial review against the government’s decision to give the green light to the 3.2 gigawatt plant on the Suffolk coast, which is being built by French energy company EDF.

The group said the government had failed to consider alternatives to nuclear power to meet its emissions targets when approving the project. It cited the threat to water supplies in an area officially designated as seriously water-stressed, the threats to coastal areas from the climate crisis, and environmental damage.

[…]

Mr Justice Holgate rejected the group’s challenge against the secretary of state for energy security and net zero in a written ruling at the high court on Thursday. Holgate ruled the government’s decision was in keeping with energy policy intended to achieve “diversity of methods of generation and security of supply”.

He said the judicial review was an attempt to “rewrite the government’s policy aims by pretending that the central policy objective is … to produce clean energy, without any regard to diversity of energy sources and security of supply”.

Tasc said it would continue its campaign and was examining options for how to do so.

Sizewell got the go-ahead from government last year, when the then business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, overruled a verdict from the independent Planning Inspectorate.

The planning body had said that “unless the outstanding water supply strategy can be resolved and sufficient information provided to enable the secretary of state to carry out his obligations under the Habitats Regulations, the case for an order granting development consent for the application is not made out”.

Kwarteng’s decision to override these concerns came against the backdrop of plans to approve one new nuclear reactor a year, under an energy strategy drawn up under the former prime minister Boris Johnson. The strategy envisaged the UK sourcing up to 25% of its projected energy demand from nuclear by 2050.

The Tasc chair, Jenny Kirtley, said: “Naturally, Tasc is disappointed, but this verdict does not signal the end of our efforts. Together with our lawyers we are examining all possible options open to us and can promise our supporters that in one form or another, this campaign will continue.

[…]

Sue Ferns, a senior deputy general secretary of the trade union Prospect, said the ruling “removes one of the blocks” to getting Sizewell C started. “Nuclear must play an important role in our energy mix as we race to net zero. We now need to get on with building Sizewell C, and secure the jobs, economic benefits and clean reliable energy it will bring.”

[…]

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HOLTEC ACCUSED OF “STRONGARMING” UNIONS TO HELP THEIR PLAN FOR HUDSON RIVER NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP via Yonkers Times

Posted on 2023/06/21 by nfield

By Dan Murphy

Efforts to keep Holtec, the Corporation that is charged with decommissioning Indian Point Power Plant, from dumping one million gallons of nuclear waste in the Hudson River, continue, with a bill to prohibit radiological discharges into the Hudson River expected to be passed in the Assembly this week, and to land on the desk of Governor Kathy Hochul this month.

But Holtec is now on the offensive, pushing back on the narrative that they should not be allowed to dump in the Hudson River, which took Pete Seeger and Robert Kennedy Jr., and many other environmental advocates, decades to clean. Members of several unions packed a recent decommissioning meeting in Buchanan and held protests outside of the office of Assemblywoman Dana Levenberg, the sponsor of the bill.

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“I care deeply about all of my constituents, including our local workforce. I have been hearing concerns from three labor unions who are fearful of possible layoffs during the decommissioning of Indian Point. Because I am very concerned about local jobs, I asked multiple questions about the labor implications of different radioactive waste management options during last night’s Decommissioning Oversight Board meeting. I heard repeatedly that there is plenty of work to be done at various points during the decommissioning process. If this is the case, why are workers being told that their jobs are at stake if A7208 passes? This appears to be an attempt to enlist labor in an effort to stifle public discussion of our options,” said Assemblywoman Levenberg.

“If they are confident that the science and evidence unequivocally supports the safety of discharging the water, they should want skeptical members of the public to be able to come in and hear it and be convinced.  Public perception of a polluted, hazardous river will undermine our local economy in various ways, harming property values, business interests, and much more. More than 30 municipalities and thousands of my constituents have reached out to my office to oppose the plan to discharge nuclear waste into the Hudson.”

Members of the Carpenters Union oppose the bill by Levenberg and State Senator Pete Harckham, claiming that it will effectively stop the decommissioning of Indian Point and kill their union jobs as a part of the cleanup.

“This bill may be well intentioned, but it would stop the decommissioning of Indian Point and lead to substantial long-term job losses in the Hudson Valley. The concerns raised by the bill’s sponsors have been addressed, and the EPA has developed environmentally conscious procedures that our members are following closely. A handful of misguided activists from outside our community shouldn’t be allowed to stop a worthy project that is providing critical blue collar jobs,” said Bill Banfield, Assistant to the Executive Secretary-Treasurer, North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters.

However, finding the connection between stopping Holtec from dumping in the Hudson, to the union jobs for the cleanup on the power plant and surrounding property, is difficult to find. “This is nothing more than Holtec strongarming unions into stopping this bill from passing, and allowing them to dump this Nuclear Waste in the Hudson. This is how a child acts when they don’t get what they want, and their refusal to consider other options is a sign of a corporation that doesn’t care,” said one Westchester environmental leader.

State Sen. Peter Harckham, a sponsor of the bill, called connecting union jobs with toxic dumping a false choice.”Protecting jobs versus protecting our environment and natural resources is a false choice. We need to work together to accomplish both. There are years’ worth of work onsite at Indian Point, and workers should not be treated as hostages while we deal with the challenges of safe decommissioning.”

Another point raised by opponents of the dumping is that if Holtec decides to store the wastewater on site, which would reduce the tritium’s half-life (the radioactive isotope) by 50%, there would be hundreds of new union jobs required to build the waste facilites and the surrounding infrastructure.

Recent supporters of Holtec’s plan to dump include John Ravitz, of the Business Council of Westchester, who penned an Op-Ed, ( https://www.theexaminernews.com/holtecs-planned-release-of-indian-point-water-was-agreed-to-by-all-parties/?) and from Warren Smith, republican candidate for Cortlandt Town Supervisor.

Westchester County Executive George Latimer at his weekly briefing on June 15, said, “If Holtec asserts that there is no method by which the contaminated water can remain on site, they must explain why that is the case…The question that I have to ask is if this water is released in this quantity at this level of pollution, that there will be no harmful effects to this river over the next 50 years? I have no confidence, nor have I seen persuasive data that assures me otherwise….If there is any miscalculation, we are the ones who will pay the price. I support calls for a moratorium to address these issues.”

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