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Fukushima at Ten: Aftershocks, Lies, and Failed Decontamination

Image at “Mechanics of a Nuclear Meltdown Explained”, by Jenny Marder, PBS News Hour, March 15, 2011: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/mechanics-of-a-meltdown-explainedP8

 

By John LaForge

It’s now 10 years since the catastrophic triple meltdowns of reactors at Fukushima in Japan. As Joseph Mangano of the Radiation and Public Health project put it three years ago, “Enormous amounts of radioactive chemicals, including cesium, strontium, plutonium, and iodine were emitted into the air, and releases of the same toxins into the Pacific have never stopped, as workers struggle to contain over 100 cancer-causing chemicals.”

Nukewatch and hundreds of other groups and scientific journals have issued dozens of reports about the disaster. A score of books have been published on the subject, and major media have at least done annual reviews of the official evacuations, cleanups and decontamination efforts. With so much information available, it is not possible to do more than present another update on recent news and analysis.

There is news of the shortage of Fukushima health studies; big earthquakes (aftershocks) rattling reactors and waste tanks; corporate and government dishonesty about decontamination; novel radioactive particles dispersed; and renewed fish contamination.

Very few health studies

“So far only one single disease entity has been systematically examined in humans in Fukushima: thyroid cancer,” says Dr. Alex Rosen, the German chair of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Other diseases, such as leukemia or malformations, which are associated with increased radiation exposure, have not been investigated, Rosen told the German medical journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt March 2.

(Fie studies have focused on birth abnormalities in the areas most affected: three on infant mortality rates, one on underweight newborns, and one on declining birth rates 9 months after March 2011.*)

The one disease study of the population was a screening for thyroid cancer in 380,000 local children under the age 18. In January 2018, the journal Thyroid reported 187 cases after five years. Reviewing the study, Mangano write in the Washington Spectator that, “A typical population of 380,000 children would produce 12 cases in five years.” The increase among children is “exactly what would be expected if Fukushima were a factor, as radiation is most damaging to the fetus, infant and child,” Mangano said.

New Earthquakes Rattle Wreckage and Nerves

Another large earthquake, magnitude 7.3, struck Feb. 13, again off the coast of the Fukushima reactor complex, and the reported 30 seconds of terror was followed by14 aftershocks up to magnitude 5.

The quake was severe enough that Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) and federal regulators suspect it caused additional damage to reactors 1 and 3 where cooling water levels fell sharply, the Associated Press reported. The Feb. 13 quake was felt in Tokyo 150 miles away. Japan’s meteorological agency said it was believed to be an aftershock of the record 2011 quake.

At a Feb. 15 meeting, government regulators said the quake had probably worsened existing earthquake damage in reactors 1 and 3 or broken open new cracks causing the cooling water level drop, the AP said.

“Because (the 2011 quake) was an enormous one with a magnitude of 9.0, it’s not surprising to have an aftershock of this scale 10 years later,” said Kenji Satake, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Earthquake Research Institute.

There have been six major aftershocks in the Fukushima area since March 2011: April 7, 2011 (magnitude 7.1); April 11, 2011 (6.6); July 10, 2011 (7.0); Oct. 26, 2013 (7.1); Nov. 26, 2016 (6.9); and Feb. 13, 2021 (7.3).

Earthquake shocks are not the only recurring nightmare to haunt the survivors of the record quake that killed 19, 630. Typhoon Hagibis slammed into Tamura City in October 2019, and swept away an unknown number of bags of radioactive debris that had been stacked near a river.

Since March 2011, over 22 million cubic meters of contaminated soil, brush and other matter from areas hard hit by fallout have been collected in large black plastic bags and piled in temporary storage mounds in thousands of places. (“Fukushima residents fight state plan to build roads with radiation-tainted soil,” Japan Times, Apr. 29, 2018) Yet the volume is the tip of the iceberg: According to R. Ramachandran, in The Hindu, January 31, 2020, no decontamination activities are planned for the majority of forested areas which cover about 75 per cent of the main contaminated area of 9,000 square km.”

Cover-ups and disinformation

Reporting Feb. 14 about the latest quake, the AP noted that Tepco “has repeatedly been criticized for cover-ups and delayed disclosures of problems.” On June 22, 2016, Tepco’s President Naomi Hirose publicly admitted that the company’s lengthy refusal to speak of the “meltdowns” it knew of at its three reactors was tantamount to a cover-up and apologized for it.

The Washington Post reported March 6, 2021 that, “For years, Tepco claimed that the treated water stored at the plant contained only tritium, but data deep on its website showed that the treatment process had failed.” The tanks now hold almost 1.25 million tons of highly contaminated waste water. “In 2018, [Tepco] was forced to acknowledge that 70 percent of the water is still contaminated with dangerous radioactive elements — including strontium-90, a bone-seeking radionuclide that can cause cancer — and will have to be treated again before release,” the Post reported.

Harvey Wasserman reported for Columbus Institute for Contemporary Journalism’s The Free Press on a July 2007 earthquake that shook Japan and forced dangerous emergency shutdowns at four reactors at Kashiwazaki. “For three consecutive days [Tepco] was forced to issue public apologies for erroneous statements about the severity of the damage done to the reactors, the size and lethality of radioactive spills into the air and water, the on-going danger to the public, and much more. Once again, the only thing reactor owners can be trusted to do is to lie.”

Radioactive Particles Newly identified

Work just published in the journal Science of the Total Environment documents new, highly radioactive particles that were released from the destroyed Fukushima reactors. The study was led by Dr. Satoshi Utsunomiya and Kazuya Morooka of Kyushu University. “Two of these particles have the highest cesium radioactivity ever measured for particles from Fukushima,” the research found. The study analyzed particles that were taken from surface soils collected 3.9 kilometers from the reactor site.

Speaking with Science Daily Feb. 17, Dr. Utsunomiya said, “Owing to their large size, the health effects of the new particles are likely limited to external radiation hazards during static contact with skin.” The particles were reportedly spewed by the hydrogen explosions that rocked the reactor buildings and fell within a narrow zone that stretches ~8 kilometers north-northwest of meltdowns.

But Dr. Utsunomiya also said the long-lived radioactivity of cesium in “the newly found highly radioactive particles has not yet decayed significantly. As such, they will remain in the environment for many decades to come, and this type of particle could occasionally still be found in radiation hot spots.”

Smaller radioactive particles of uranium, thorium, radium, cesium, strontium, polonium, tellurium and americium were found afloat throughout Northern Japan, according to a report by Arnie Gundersen and Marco Kaltofen published July 27, 2017 in Science of the Total Environment. The radioactively hot particles were found in dusts and soils. About 180 particulate matter samples were taken from automobile or home air filters, outdoor surface dust, and vacuum cleaner bags. Some142 of the samples (about 80 percent) contained cesium-134 and cesium-137 which emit intense beta radiation and is very dangerous if ingested or inhaled. “A majority of these samples were collected from locations in decontaminated zones cleared for habitation by the National Government of Japan,” the authors revealed.

Greenpeace Reports Cleanup Failures and Deception

Greenpeace Japan released two major reports March 4 that also contradict the country’s positive decontamination and human rights claims after 2011.

“Successive governments during the last 10 years … have attempted to perpetrate a myth about the nuclear disaster. They have sought to deceive the Japanese people by misrepresenting the effectiveness of the decontamination program and ignoring radiological risks,” said Shaun Burnie, Senior Nuclear Specialist at Greenpeace East Asia and co-author of the first report.

Key findings of the radiation report Fukushima 2011-2020 are:

  • Most of the 840 square kilometer Special Decontamination Area (SDA), where the government is responsible for decontamination, remains contaminated with radioactive cesium. … an overall average of only 15% has been decontaminated. • No long-term decontamination target level will be achieved in many areas. Citizens will be subjected for decades to radiation exposures in excess of the … recommended maximum. • In the areas where evacuation orders were lifted in 2017, specifically Namie and Iitate, radiation levels remain above safe limits, potentially exposing the population to increased cancer risk.

Key findings of The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station decommissioning report are:

  • The current decommissioning plan in the timeframe of 30-40 years is impossible to achieve and is illusory. • Radioactive waste created at the site should not be moved. Fukushima Daiichi is already and should remain a nuclear waste storage site for the long term.

— This is a report is the Spring 2021 Nukewatch Quarterly soon in your mailbox. A version of the article was published at CounterPunch, March 12-14, 2021 

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Treaty Banning the Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction Enters Into Force

BUS activists join 2019 protest against US nuclear weapons deployed at Germany's Buechel Air Basey John LaForge

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) takes effect Friday, January 22, 2021.

After decades of campaigns of every kind to “ban the bomb”, to prevent the nuclear arms race, and later to freeze the arms race, and, the nuclear weapons prohibition outlaws not just their development, testing and possession, but forbids any threatened use — commonly known as “nuclear deterrence.” Like with other multi-generational struggles against slavery, torture, the death penalty, child labor, TPNW campaigners justly call it “the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons.”

The new international law  — which for the first time in weapons treaty law requires reparations and compensation to victims of H-bomb testing and production — is similar to earlier global prohibitions such as the Geneva Protocol (outlawing gas warfare), the Hague Conventions (forbidding poisoned weapons), the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Ban the Convention on Cluster Munitions and the anti-personnel Mine Ban.

The difference here is that the world community has finally added to the list of despicable, loathsome, appalling and shunned weapons of war those devices whose effects contain and exceed beyond comprehension the accumulated evil of the all the rest—nuclear and thermonuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons have been earnestly condemned for 75 years by legal scholars, religious leaders, peace groups, military commanders, prime ministers, presidents and corporate CEOs. They’ve been called “the ultimate evil” by the International Court of Justice in 1996 and any use of them was declared by the UN General Assembly as early as 1961 “a crime against [hu]mankind and civilization.” The TPNW’s language makes clear why: “Cognizant that the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons cannot be adequately addressed, transcend national borders, pose grave implications for human survival, the environment, socioeconomic development, the global economy, food security and the health of current and future generations, and have a disproportionate impact on women and girls, including as a result of ionizing radiation…”

Yet nuclear-armed countries all hold that their plans and threats to commit atomic violence are legal. For example, the US Navy Field Manual says, “There is at present no rule of international law expressly prohibiting States from the use of nuclear weapons in warfare. In the absence of express prohibition, the use of such weapons … is permitted.”

No more. The TPNW rebukes and nullifies this artful dodge, which is partly why its establishment is a monumental accomplishment. Forbidding nuclear weapons by name is also a triumph of harrowing urgency, considering the number of doddering heads of state with access to nuclear launch codes and especially in view of the atomic scientists’ “Doomsday Clock” being set at 100 seconds to midnight.

Countries with nuclear arsenals rejected the UN negotiations in 2017 that produced the TPNW, and they dismiss its obligations because the law applies only to states that ratify it. The duplicity of the nuclear-armed governments was displayed by then US UN Ambassador Nicki Haley who led 35 countries in a boycott of the talks. Haley said the treaty would end up disarming the nations “trying to keep peace and safety”. At the time, the United States was militarily occupying and/or at war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Niger. Haley’s speech must have reminded the more than two-thirds of the UN Ambassadors that “hypocrisy is the respect that vice pays to virtue.”

The power of the new Treaty is worth celebrating for now, but then it must be employed by us all to end the public’s ignorance, denial, forgetfulness, and habituation regarding plans for nuclear war, and to bring the nuclear weapons states into compliance. ###

— John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, and with Kelly Lundeen co-edits its newsletter, Nukewatch Quarterly.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/20/treaty-banning-the-ultimate-weapon-of-mass-destruction-enters-into-force/

http://www.peacevoice.info/2021/01/19/treaty-banning-the-ultimate-weapon-of-mass-destruction-enters-into-force/

 

 

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Court Orders Veterans Affairs Department to Replace Flawed Science Used to Deny Benefits to Vets Poisoned in 1966 Plutonium Disaster

In a major class action ruling issued December 17, the US Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims in Washington, DC has ordered the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to re-examine how it evaluates disability claims from veterans exposed to deadly alpha radiation during cleanup operations following a disastrous nuclear weapons accident at Palomares, Spain.

The Veterans Legal Services Clinic of Yale Law School, which since 2016 has assisted in litigating the case, Skaar v. Wilkie, along with the New York Legal Assistance Group, announced the decision. The ruling follows oral arguments made September 2, 2020, and comes one year after the Court’s historic decision to certify “class action” status for the veterans of the disaster.

On Jan. 17, 1966, during an airborne refueling gone wrong, an Air Force B-52 bomber exploded over the village of Palomares. Seven crewmembers were killed and four hydrogen bombs were thrown to the Earth. Upon impact, conventional explosives inside two of the H-bombs detonated, blasting two giant craters and spreading as much as 22 pounds highly radioactive, carcinogenic pulverized plutonium across the Spanish village and countryside. (See Dec. 18 report, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/18/air-force-veterans-of-plutonium-dust-disaster-win-class-action-standing)

In its new decision, the Court said the VA violated federal law requiring that its assessment of veterans’ radiation exposures be based on sound science. The VA has so far relied on faulty methods to deny disability benefits to veterans for radiation-related illnesses caused by the nuclear weapon disaster, the legal services clinic said, calling the decision “a long-awaited step toward recognizing the Palomares veterans’ service and ensuring they have access to the benefits they earned,” it said. Even a single particle of plutonium if inhaled or ingested can cause cancer.

The injured veterans are led by Chief Master Sergeant Victor Skaar (USAF, Ret.) of Nixa, Missouri, who participated in the clean-up. Skaar and the class argue that the VA’s radiation exposure methodology “ignored 98 percent of the radiation measurements taken from veterans after the incident,” an error so grave that, “Dr. von Hippel and even the VA’s own consultant have faulted the method,” the law clinic said.

Skaar and at least 1,500 others were sent to clean up plutonium-contaminated debris and lived amidst the wreckage and the plutonium dust for weeks — handling it, cleaning it from clothes, washing it off of village surfaces, placing contaminated soil in barrels, and even incinerating truckloads of poisoned debris. Now, “many of the veterans of have radiation-related illnesses that require medical treatment. Others have died from these conditions…” the law clinic said.

Referring to a December 2017 report by Princeton University physicist Frank von Hippel about 26 GIs who were identified in 1966 as having received the highest exposures, the Court wrote: “Dr. von Hippel concluded that ‘The Air Force’s dose estimates have huge uncertainties and the maximum doses incurred by those not in the “High 26” could be hundreds of times higher than those that the Air Force has recommended to the VA for determination of benefits.’”

The Court said that the VA never explained why it adopted the flawed methodology.” The Court’s opinion written by Judge Michael Allen admonished the Board of Veterans’ Appeals, declaring that it may not “abdicate its responsibility to assess whether the evidence before it is ‘sound.’” The Court ordered the VA to review the parties’ evidence and provide considered analysis of the methodology to ensure that only sound scientific evidence is used to determine veterans’ eligibility for disability benefits.

In a statement to the law clinic, John Rowan, Air Force Veteran and National President of Vietnam Veterans of America said, “Thanks to the Court’s decision and the continuing advocacy of Mr. Skaar and other class members, the VA must now justify its practice of arbitrarily dismissing the exceedingly high levels of radiation these veterans encountered and continue to suffer from … [and] fulfill its duty under law to assist these veterans and ensure their claims are evaluated using methods that are both scientifically and legally sound.”

Startlingly, the Air Force has never included the weeks-long Palomares plutonium cleanup on its list of “radiation risk activities” which it uses to rule on disability claims, in spite of the its own 1967 determination that service members’ “health is in no jeopardy from retention of radioactive materials as a result of participation in the [Palomares] operation.” Asked how the Air Force can keep such a radiation-heavy clean-up operation off the list, the law clinic’s Molly Petchnik told me list was drawn up long ago and the military is reluctant to expand it.

The official list in the Code of Federal Regulations (38 CFR § 3.309) does recognize four radiation activities since 1966, including service at H-bomb production sites in Paducah, Kentucky, Portsmouth, Ohio, and Oak Ridge, Tenn. in 1991; and underground H-bomb test service on Amchitka Island, Alaska in 1974. ###

–John LaForge (a version of this report was published by CounterPunch online, Jan. 1, 2021)

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Air Force Veterans of Plutonium Dust Disaster Win Class Action Standing

Air force veterans exposed to plutonium after a first-ever US nuclear weapons disaster in Spain have won extremely rare recognition as a class in a lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs.

On Jan. 17, 1966, an air force B-52 bomber exploded over the village of Palomares, Spain during a routine airborne refueling. Seven airmen were killed and the bomber’s four hydrogen bombs were thrown to the earth. Conventional explosives (not the nuclear warheads) in two of the bombs detonated in massive explosions, one right in the village, gouging massive, plutonium-covered craters and spewing as much as 22 pounds of pulverized plutonium dust over houses, streets and farm fields.

On June 19, 2016, the New York Times published a 4,500-word investigative report about the lawsuit filed in the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims by chief master sergeant Victor Skaar (USAF, Rt.). Skaar, who was 30 at the time, was part of a clean-up team, dubbed Operation Moist Mop, assigned to the disaster response. A throng of some 1,700 soldiers were put to surveying 400 acres and washing the inside and outside of village buildings. Over a period of 80 days they filled 4,810 barrels with plutonium-contaminated soil and loaded the drums aboard a ship bound for disposal stateside.

Two years after Skaar retired in 1981, he came down with a blood disorder called leukopenia. He’s been trying ever since to have the illness recognized as service-related. In a phone interview, Skaar told Nukewatch that dozens of the veterans contaminated during the clean-up are also sick. If their claims can be established in court, they would be eligible for free health care and a disability pension. Sometimes “clean-up” amounted to hosing the plutonium dust. It was hosed off houses, streets and even a school, leaving the toxic runoff to contaminate downstream surface waters. When the barrels of collected soil had excessive radiation readings, troops blew the dust off using air compressors. When testing the troops’ clothing, radiation meters regularly went off-scale.

After the 2016 exposé in the Times, Michael Wishnie, a Professor of Law at Yale Law School who runs the Veterans Legal Services Clinic, called Skaar and offered the aide of the clinic in the case. It’s been a David and Goliath battle from the beginning. Skaar told the Times, “First they told me there were no records, which I knew was a lie because I helped make them.” The air force seems determined to keep denying responsibility until the surviving vets die off and the lawsuit becomes moot. Meghan Brooks, a former Yale clinic member, told the Times, “The bunk science the air force was using was not just harming Mr. Skaar, but all the other Palomares veterans. Mr. Skaar really wanted to fight on behalf of others,” she said.

After Sgt. Skaar’s three decades of relentlessly filing Freedom of Information Act requests and repeatedly appealing FOIA denials, he and the Yale team finally broke through. In a Dec. 6, 2019 decision the appeals court granted class action status for some but not all the Palomares veterans. The court also found that Skaar could serve as “class representative” for as-yet-unnamed class members.

Class action status for Skaar and the other appellants “represents a major step forward for veterans with long-term health issues linked to toxic exposure in the service,” the Times reported on Feb. 11, 2020. Then on Sept. 2, 2020, the court heard oral arguments in the case and accepted new evidence including a declaration by Dr. Murry Watnick, a former Strategic Air Command Medical Officer. (Full disclosure: Dr. Watnick is a longtime Nukewatch supporter and alerted us to the class action.) Part of Watnick’s affidavit notes that, “The amount of plutonium-239 released was estimated to be approximately 10 kilograms [22 lbs]. One microgram of plutonium-239 is extremely toxic. The estimated release was three billion micrograms.”

Plutonium’s chief danger is from inhalation, because its deadly alpha particles lodge in the lungs “bombarding the adjacent cells with highly toxic ionizing radiation,” Watnick wrote. Troops involved were exposed to “plutonium dust six to eight hours daily in an environment highly conducive to inhalation of alpha particles.”

The class action is focused on the VA’s denial of Mr. Skaar’s claim of service-related illness, and the military’s “arbitrary and capricious” use of inadequate radiation data which is based on shoddy methods of recording and maintaining urine samples taken from clean-up crew members. The veterans also challenge the VA’s omission of Palomares cleanup operations from its list of radiation risk activities. The appeal is currently ongoing.

–John LaForge (LA Progressive online published this report Dec. 13, & CounterPunch Dec. 18)

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A Second Churchrock Spill in the Making?

A banner in a walk July 16, 2009 as part of the 30th anniversary of the Churchrock uranium tailings spill. Photo: Navajo Times – Leigh T. Jimmie

By Leona Morgan
Nuclear Issues Study Group and Halt Holtec

Editor’s Note: Submit your comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement regarding the Churchrock spill cleanup online by December 28, 2020 here  or during an NRC Public Meeting webinar on Dec. 2 or Dec. 9.

On July 16, 1945, the Trinity Test devastated communities in southeast New Mexico. Thirty-four years later at Three Mile Island Generating Station in Pennsylvania, the United States poured extensive resources into the largest and most expensive nuclear energy disaster of that time. Less than four months later, the country didn’t flinch when it came to the second largest ever release of radiation in the world. The United Nuclear Corporation (UNC) uranium mill “accident” was largely overlooked as it happened in a rural, community of color–a form of environmental racism. The Churchrock Spill occurred in a Diné community on the same day and at the same time as the Trinity Test, July 16th at 5:30 in the morning, but in 1979.

In an August 4, 2020 interview, Edith Hood, a Diné elder and matriarch, explains the impacts from the massive uranium spill and abandoned uranium mines and mill that she and others are still fighting to get cleaned up. Hood and her family are residents of the Red Water Pond Road (RWPR) community, north of Churchrock, New Mexico. They live between the former UNC mill, former UNC Northeast Church Rock Mine (NECR), and two former Kerr McGee/Quivira mines. The mill is on privately owned land, and the rest are on the Navajo Nation, near Navajo allotment, state, and federal lands–all within a few square miles.

“We were just children when the drilling companies came in…in the 1960s, to [do] exploratory drilling for uranium. So, by the end of the sixties, there were buildings going up, setting up the mine…United Nuclear on the south side and of course Kerr McGee, which today is known as Quivira.” Hood worked at Kerr McGee from 1976 to 1982. When asked about the dangers of her job, Hood replied, “Never did I hear ‘unsafe’ or ‘dangerous’… if I was educated about this, I wouldn’t probably have gone to work there.”

Since 2008, the U.S. government has been working with the Navajo Nation to clean up 523 abandoned uranium mines and four former mill sites on Navajo Nation. However, there are hundreds of additional contaminated sites, adjacent to or located within the reservation boundary, but not technically on Navajo Nation proper.

The federal agencies working on this cleanup include the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Bureau of Indian Affairs, Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Department of Energy, Indian Health Service, Agency for Toxic Substance and Disease Registry, and Centers for Disease Control. The Navajo Nation (NN) agencies involved are NN EPA and Abandoned Mine Lands Reclamation Department. Other partners include NN Department of Water Resources, the University of New Mexico and Northern Arizona University, as well as the Hopi Nation.

Due to its proximity to the RWPR community, the NECR mine has been a high priority from the beginning, yet is nowhere near completion. The residents have insisted that wastes be moved off the Navajo Nation. Some remediation of the NECR mine has been conducted, including removal of contaminated soils from residences to lands that are not on Navajo Nation, but are close enough to be carried back by the wind.

General Electric, which acquired UNC, is responsible for remediation of the former NECR uranium mine and the former mill. The mill operated from 1977 to 1982 and released over 1,100 tons of radioactive sludge into the environment in the 1979 Churchrock Spill, and over 90 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste that flowed at least 100 miles westward into Arizona.

For cleanup of the NECR mine, GE proposes to move and permanently store approximately one million cubic yards of mine waste on top of existing mill waste and to transport approximately 32,200 cubic yards of more radioactive wastes offsite, most likely to the White Mesa Mill in southeast Utah which impacts another indigenous community. The White Mesa Mill is the only operating uranium mine in the U.S. and also doubles a catch-all nuclear waste storage just three miles from the Ute Mountain Ute community.

The former UNC mill site has been undergoing remediation and monitoring, but the offsite contamination from the Spill has never been adequately addressed. The Churchrock Spill was not widely broadcast on national news, like Three Mile Island. Downstream residents were not informed and not aware of the dangers of the liquid, as children unknowingly played in the wastewater. Ranchers also reported burns to their feet and ankles as they went into the water to get their livestock out. Hood recalls about the Spill, “For us in the community…it was not like today where you instantly get messages…we didn’t hear about it for a few days… not really knowing about radiation and the bad stuff that was in that liquid…At the time, it really was not alluring … for most people, not till they get sick, or not until something affects them, especially physically. Then, you know we were in a dangerous place.” Hood continues, “we never heard about the disadvantages or the bad stuff about this. All we knew [was] that mining was good economy for the country, and it’s all in spirit with…making the country look good. They’re making weapons, but you never know what went into those weapons. Till forty years later, you hear about the bad stuff…Our children were getting sick…All the elements that we use were affected.”

The RWPR community has been demanding clean-up of their area and all sites across the Navajo Nation for over a decade, including demands for new housing, funding for education, and a comprehensive health study. “We want the community and the impacted ground cleaned up… We want this concept of ‘hózhó’ back in the community, all across the Navajo Nation, with us included,” said Hood, referring to the traditional Diné teaching which encompasses the Diné philosophy of living in harmony and balance with the universe.

A banner in a walk in 2014 as part of the anniversary of the Churchrock uranium tailings spill. Photo: The Republic – David Wallace

The proposed cleanup action to move mine waste to the mill site requires an amendment to the NRC materials license (SUA-1475) for the mill. GE submitted a license amendment application in September 2018. NRC notified the public of its intent to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS), to conduct a scoping process, and request for public comments in February 2019. NRC held two scoping meetings in Gallup, New Mexico on March 19, 2019 and on March 21, 2019. At these meetings, locals expressed disappointment in the slow remediation process and strong opposition against moving mine waste on top of the mill waste, which they said is in a flood plain and alluded to the possibility of another Churchrock Spill.

On November 17 this year, the NRC announced it’s accepting public comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement of this proposal until December 28th with two virtual public comment meetings on December 2nd and December 9th. The Final EIS is expected in August 2021, and final decision in January 2022.

Since 2009, on the 30th anniversary of the Spill, the Red Water Pond Road Community Association has held an annual public event around July 16th with a sunrise prayer, walk, and talks to raise awareness about uranium mining, the spill, and cleanup. Due to Covid-19, this year’s event was canceled. According to Hood, next year they plan to “carry-on” and welcome “anyone who is doing something to help Mother Earth.”

 

Sources:

“Church Rock, America’s Forgotten Nuclear Disaster, Is Still Poisoning Navajo Lands 40 Years Later”, VICE article by Samuel Gilbert (August 12, 2019)
https://www.vice.com/en/article/ne8w4x/church-rock-americas-forgotten-nuclear-disaster-is-still-poisoning-navajo-lands-40-years-later

The Church Rock Uranium Mill Tailings Spill: A Health And Environmental Assessment
https://semspub.epa.gov/work/06/1000720.pdf

Interview with Edith Hood (starts at 1:31:45)
https://www.facebook.com/537856386561307/videos/633889527249870

Quivira Mines – Red Water Pond Road
https://response.epa.gov/site/site_profile.aspx?site_id=6801

Abandoned Mines Cleanup: Federal Plans
https://www.epa.gov/navajo-nation-uranium-cleanup/abandoned-mines-cleanup-federal-plans

Navajo Nation: Cleaning Up Abandoned Uranium Mines, Northeast Church Rock Mine
https://www.epa.gov/navajo-nation-uranium-cleanup/northeast-church-rock-mine

Uranium-mine cleanup on Navajo Reservation could take 100 years
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/investigations/2014/08/06/uranium-mining-navajo-reservation-cleanup-radioactive-waste/13680399/

UNC–Church RockMill Uranium Recovery Facility
https://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/decommissioning/uranium/is-united-nuclear-corporation-unc.pdf

“Dam Break Investigated; Radiation of Spill Easing”, New York Times Article By Molly Ivins (July 28, 1979)
https://www.nytimes.com/1979/07/28/archives/dam-break-investigated-radiation-of-spill-easing.html

Application for Amendment of US NRC Source Material License SUA-1475, Volume 1, Prepared for UNC and GE by Stantec (10/14/2019)
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1928/ML19287A009.pdf

Application Documents for Amendment of License SUA-1475 for UNC Mill Site Near Church Rock, New Mexico, Volumes I and II (09/24/2018)
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1826/ML18267A235.html

NRC Intent to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) and conduct a scoping process; request for comment re: United Nuclear Corporation License SUA-1475 (02/08/2019)
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/02/08/2019-01642/united-nuclear-corporation-unc-church-rock-project

Official Transcript: NRC Public Scoping Meeting for the Environmental Impact Statement for the Church Rock Uranium Mill Site (03/19/19)
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1909/ML19092A102.pdf

Official Transcript: NRC Public Scoping Meeting for the Environmental Impact Statement for the Church Rock Uranium Mill Site (03/21/19)
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1909/ML19091A160.pdf

NRC Seeks Public Comment on Draft Environmental Study on Waste Transfer at Church Rock Site in New Mexico, NRC Press Release (11/17/2020)
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2020/20-056.pdf

Environmental Impact Statement for the Disposal of Mine Waste at the United Nuclear Corporation Mill Site in McKinley County, New Mexico Draft Report for Comment (October 2020)
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2028/ML20289A621.pdf

NRC Public Meeting Schedule for Dec. 2, 2020: Draft Environmental Impact Statement for proposed disposal of mine waste at the United Nuclear Corporation Mill Site
https://www.nrc.gov/pmns/mtg?do=details&Code=20201275

NRC Public Meeting Schedule for Dec. 9, 2020: Draft Environmental Impact Statement for proposed disposal of mine waste at the United Nuclear Corporation Mill Site
https://www.nrc.gov/pmns/mtg?do=details&Code=20201276

NRC United Nuclear Corporation Uranium Mill Site Status Summary
https://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/decommissioning/uranium/united-nuclear-corporation-unc-.html

“Poison in the Earth: 1979 Church Rock Spill a Symbol for Uranium Dangers”, Navajo Times article by Marley Shebala (July 23, 2009)
https://navajotimes.com/news/2009/0709/072309uranium.php

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