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Reassessing Tritium’s Threats to Humans and the Environment

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2021
By Ian Fairlie

Tritium decays via beta particle emissions and can be more dangerous than most X-rays. It has a radioactive half-life of 12.3 years. While most of its atoms will have decayed in ten half-lives (123 years), many scientists believe it might take 20 half-lives (246 years) or more to reach safe levels. The safety of tritium after centuries depends partly on how much was emitted, since a small fraction of a large amount can still be very hazardous.

Tritium’s gaseous form, tritium oxide (i.e., radioactive water or radioactive water vapor), enters the body by inhalation, ingestion, or absorption through the skin. Tritium in the body immediately mixes with body fluids and is dispersed widely because water is found everywhere in our bodies. Once inside the body, it becomes organically bound and can concentrate in cells and certain organs.

Because of its long half-life, it resides in tissues and organs for extended periods. This can increase cancers and congenital malformations for those living near nuclear facilities. 

For most of the 20th century, tritium was often dismissed as a “weak” radionuclide which led many to underestimate its hazards. All this changed in the 21st century when scientists began to realize that tritium is much more dangerous than previously suspected. Although tritium is a low-range beta [particle] emitter, it can be very harmful as an internal emitter (when it gets inside the body). … It is also quite dangerous because it remains in the body for long periods.

Studies reveal that tritium is one of the most common internal emitters found in humans. As an internal emitter, tritium can alter cellular DNA and cause a variety of damaging health effects. One of the most significant effects is cancer which sometimes takes years to develop. Many epidemiological studies have reported increases in cancers and congenital malformations among people living near nuclear facilities.

The new concern about tritium is partly because all nuclear facilities emit very large amounts of tritium. In its elemental form, tritium diffuses through most containers, including those made of steel and concrete. Tritium is difficult to contain, and in its oxide form it is generally not detected by commonly used survey instruments. … large amounts are produced in nuclear reactors. It contaminates the concrete structures at nuclear power reactors so that the older the station, the more the contamination. Large amounts of tritium continue to be released for decades after a reactor is closed.

We now know that tritium has an exceptionally high molecular exchange rate with stable hydrogen atoms thus making it extremely mobile in the environment. Emissions from nuclear facilities can rapidly contaminate all biota in adjacent areas. Tritium binds with organic matter to form organically bound tritium.

Tritium is the only one of the three hydrogen isotopes that is radioactive. It is an essential component of every nuclear weapon.

— Dr. Ian Fairlie is a radiation biologist and author of “The Other Chernobyl Report,” updated as “TORCH-2016: An independent scientific evaluation of the health-related effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster,” of March 2016

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Compensation Proposed for Vets Harmed in Palomares Plutonium Disaster

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2021

A proposed federal law would see over 1,600 veterans exposed to plutonium dust while responding to a 1966 US nuclear weapons disaster in Palomares, Spain become eligible for VA benefits and health care. Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Representative Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., introduced the Palomares Veterans Act April 15 to remove barriers to benefits and compensation for the vets who responded to the 1966 disaster. Most of the 1,500 service members were sent to the site without protective clothing or warnings of the radiological hazards. They were exposed to internal and external alpha radiation, after two of the B52’s nuclear warheads were blown to pieces dispersing as much as 22 pounds of highly radioactive pulverized plutonium. (See Spring Nukewatch Quarterly.) 

The Palomares Veterans Act would amend current law and add the cleanup operations at Palomares to the Pentagon’s list of its “radiation risk activities.” Since many of the veterans of the dangerous cleanup duty have already died, the law would also make surviving spouses and their children eligible for Dependency and Indemnity Compensation — a monetary benefit paid to eligible survivors of veterans whose death resulted from a service-related injury or disease.

In January 1966, a US Air Force B-52 bomber collided with an Air Force KC-135 tanker aircraft over the Spanish village of Palomares, resulting in one of the largest plutonium disasters in history.

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Workers Evacuated after “Alarming” Leak from Maryland Research Reactor

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2021
By Christine Manwiller

On February 3, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland had a radiation leak during the restart of its research reactor. Temperatures inside a single fuel element reached over 850⁰ F leaving it damaged. An alarm sounded, and the reactor was shut down. Although the amount of radiation released has not been revealed, it was high enough to warrant decontamination of ten employees who were then sent home. Federal regulators revealed later that the leak was “three times higher than originally thought.” This fact was followed with the assurance that the leak posed no danger to thousands of residents living in homes or visiting several large shopping centers close to the reactor. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission reported a month later that it was “satisfied that people around and near NIST remain safe.” However, the National Academy of Sciences concluded in its book-length Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation-VII that any amount of radiation exposure is dangerous, especially for women and girls.

Residents around the NIST complex were “alarmed” that they were not notified about the incident. No official announcement was made. The fact that workers were exposed to radiation and evacuated is unusual. David Lochbaum, a nuclear researcher with the Union of Concerned Scientists, says, “It’s alarming and uncommon to hear of an incident that requires the evacuation of workers inside a reactor.” The level of caution prompting decontamination and evacuation of workers would also warrant notification of local communities. Four months later the reactor remains shut down.

— NIST, May 6; NBC News, Mar. 31; Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Mar. 4, 2021

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Fukushima at Ten: Aftershocks and Failed Decontamination

Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2021
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.” [The Washington Spectator, Vol. 44, No. 6, June 1, 2018, p.1]

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. [https://www.aerzteblatt.de/nachrichten/121561/Zehn-Jahre-nach-Fukushima-Gesundheitliche-Folgen-nicht-gaenzlich-abschaetzbar] 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.

Pictured: One of three large explosions that were a part of Japan’s Fukushima-Daiichi radiation disaster that began March 11, 2011 with the country’s largest-ever earthquake, the fourth largest since record keeping began in 1900. The quake smashed the reactors’ foundations, pipes and off-site electrical supply, causing a “station blackout” that halted water circulation and all cooling of the reactors. A massive tsunami destroyed emergency back-up generators needed for cooling, resulting in meltdowns in three large reactors, enormous radiation releases, and possibly the worst nuclear reactor disaster in history.

(Five 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 wrote 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. [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/world/asia/earthquake-japan-fukushima.html]

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. [https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-02-19/water-leaks-indicate-new-damage-at-fukushima-nuclear-plant]

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).

At least 20 radioactive waste water tanks near these were “slid” by the February 13 earthquake off Fukushima Prefecture, according to Tepco. Photo by Lars Nincolaysen-DPA

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; https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/04/29/national/fukushima-residents-fight-state-plan-build-roads-radiation-tainted-soil/#.WuYDcy7wbX4] 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.” https://frontline.thehindu.com/science-and-technology/article30543453.ece)

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.” [https://apnews.com/article/fukushima-nuclear-plant-seismometers-3b1411bc433cca1ac73113faf51c9331] 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 [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/fukushima-japan-radioactive-water-anniversary/2021/03/05/b0515cd0-76b8-11eb-9489-8f7dacd51e75_story.html] 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. [https://freepress.org/article/earthquake-screamed-no-nukes] “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. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145639]

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. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969717317953] 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.

A Reuters image of a Fukushima reactor in ruins following three hydrogen gas explosions that were in turn brought on by meltdowns inside three reactors.

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.

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

Nukewatch Quarterly Spring 2021
By John LaForge

In a major class action ruling issued Dec. 17, 2020, the 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 ruling follows oral arguments made Sep. 2, 2020, and comes one year after the court’s historic decision to certify “class action” status for the veterans of the radioactive disaster response effort. 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.

On Jan. 17, 1966, during an airborne refueling gone wrong, an Air Force B-52 bomber exploded over the village of Palomares. Seven crew members 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 of 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)

Air Force personnel worked where nuclear bomb explosions dispersed plutonium dust. Credit USAF

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 weapons 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’ lawsuit is led by Chief Master Sergeant Victor Skaar (USAF, Ret.) of Nixa, Missouri, who participated in the cleanup. 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 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 further 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.

John Rowan, Air Force Veteran and National President of Vietnam Veterans of America said in a statement, “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 its own 1967 finding 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 an admittedly radiation-heavy cleanup operation off the list, the law clinic’s Molly Petchnik told me the list was drawn up long ago and the military is reluctant to expand it.

The official list in the Code of Federal Regulations recognizes only four service-related radiation risk areas since 1966, including work at nuclear weapon production sites in Paducah, Kent.; Portsmouth, Ohio; and Oak Ridge, Tenn. in 1991; and on Amchitka Island, Alaska in 1974, involving underground hydrogen bomb tests.

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