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Ohio School District Rejects Energy Dept. Directive to Reopen Contaminated Middle School

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2019
By Kelly Lundeen
“I have a creek that runs through my property, and we have spent much time fishing and swimming in it. Does that mean my daughters [pictured] are going to possibly have reproductive issues? I think that’s a valid question at this point,” said Penny Beckwith-Carter, of Piketon, Ohio, who took the photo.
The Zahn’s Corner Middle School website announced: “Grades 4 and 5 will be located at Jasper Elementary School for the 2019-2020 school year” and “Grade 6 will be located at Piketon High School for the 2019-2020 school year.”

This fall, the middle school’s 300 children, mostly between the ages of eight and eleven, will not have to be unknowingly exposed to disputed levels of radioactivity in order to attend class.

The Columbus Dispatch reported Sept. 13 that: “cancer-causing toxins including plutonium, neptunium, americium and uranium were detected on the property, and officials say the toxins are likely from the US Department of Energy’s decommissioning and disposal of radioactive materials from the former Portsmouth Gas Diffusion Plant about 3 miles from the school.”

The area school board officially quarantined the school site in September with the superintendent, Wes Hairston reported to have said, “No student should ever be unnecessarily exposed to dangerous chemicals or toxins. (DOE officials) like to use the words ‘trace amounts.’ Well, maybe that’s accurate. If that’s your child, would you want your child exposed to those things?”

The Piketon, Ohio school was closed May 14, 2018, after an independent study reported radioactive contamination that month, followed by the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) admission that it had detected the presence in the school of—but had not informed the public about—radioactive americium in 2018, and neptunium-237 in 2017 (See Summer 2019 Nukewatch Quarterly cover story). The middle school is 3 miles from the giant Portsmouth uranium processing factory, which did uranium enrichment for nuclear weapons and reactor fuel for 47 years. Closed in 2001, the factory is being demolished by the DOE. Its 10 million square feet of floor space made it one of the largest industrial facilities in the world.

In May, additional studies were planned in order to “determine the source, levels, extent, and most importantly, the risk to human health related to the offsite contamination,” stated a Pike County Health District press release. In July, the DOE and independent researcher Michael Ketterer—the Northern Arizona University professor emeritus of chemistry and biochemistry who originally alerted the community to the contamination—reported conflicting results from samples taken at the school.

The DOE’s Portsmouth Environmental Monitoring website says, “Results from sample analyses conducted by experts at Savannah River National Laboratory show no radioactivity detected above naturally occurring levels, and no cause for public health concern. There is no public health or safety risk from radioactive material preventing Zahn’s Corner Middle School from opening this fall.”

Ketterer on the other hand duplicated his earlier findings of enriched uranium contamination. When he was asked about discrepancies, he explained that he had detected uranium contamination in the blank filters used to collect samples. “I was thinking when I saw that, ‘Why would [the DOE] choose this medium because it’s contaminated?’” the Columbus Dispatch reported. In a public meeting at Piketon High School August 10, Ketterer said that the DOE agreed, “with the findings that non-fallout (uranium, neptunium and plutonium) are present in some samples, and the elemental and isotopic signatures of those materials are consistent with (uranium) from [Portsmouth’s enrichment process],” the Portsmouth Daily Times reported. Ketterer also revealed that the samples he took outside of the school indicated the presence of neptunium in the Little Beaver River that feeds the Scioto River, a primary source of drinking water for south and central Ohio.

To help resolve the issue, the DOE is funding a third study by Solutient Technologies, a firm chosen by the Pike County General Health District. After the conclusion of the study currently underway, the local school board will decide the fate of the Middle School.

Not surprisingly, area residents have been in an uproar following the disclosure of radioactive contamination in the school. At least two class action lawsuits and a cancer cluster study have been launched. The Pike County General Health District is seeking assistance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the cancer cluster study. “There has always been speculation that the cancer rates are higher in people that live near the plant, but there has never been a scientific study to show that correlation,” said Matt Brewster, a Pike County Health commissioner. Ohio Department of Health records show that Pike County has the fifth highest rate of cancer in the state. Over the last five years, elected officials have reported five students contracting cancer while attending local schools.

Cathy Eick is a former staff member at Zahn’s Corner Middle School and a parent of two children who attended the school. “My kids have had friends that have either passed away or they’ve watched them fight cancer and it’s just not acceptable, especially when you hear the reports that they find something in your school that can make your child sick,” Eick told the Columbus Dispatch at a protest outside of a DOE event in May.

—Columbus Dispatch, Sept. 13, July 25, & May 21; Portsmouth Daily Times, Aug. 12; Department of Energy, July 2019; Cincinnati Enquirer, June 5 & May 14; WOSU Public Radio, May 15; Pike County General Health District, May 14; Ohio Department of Health, Jan. 18, 2019.

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Fukushima Waste Water Crisis Raising Alarms

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2019

Japan’s environment minister Yoshiaki Harada said Sept. 10 that the operator of the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors will have to dump huge quantities of radiation-laden waste water directly into the Pacific Ocean—a threat that has enraged local fishermen and nearby countries that share Pacific Ocean-front territory.

Over 1 million cubic meters (or tons) of contaminated water has accumulated at the site since it was struck in March 2011 by the strongest earthquake in Japan’s history and the subsequent tsunami that triggered three reactor meltdowns and forced 164,865 residents to flee their homes.

“The only option will be to drain it into the sea and dilute it,” Harada told a Sept. 9 news briefing in Tokyo, the Guardian reported. “There are no other options,” he said. This claim is false, as there are at least four alternatives to ocean dumping including long-term storage.

Reactor owner Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) has repeatedly claimed that its filter system removes all the radioactivity from the waste water except tritium. But last year Tepco admitted that its enormous filter system had failed, and that water in the tanks still contains highly radioactive contaminants including radioactive cesium, cobalt, antimony, iodine, strontium, and tritium. The level of contamination in the stored water far exceeds legal limits allowing release into the ocean, and Tepco has promised to refilter the water, a process that will take 5-to-6 years.

Moreover, Greenpeace reports* that the water processing failure was known by Tepco from the beginning of its operation. The company kept the information secret for the five years between 2013 and 2018 because public disclosure would have ruined Tepco’s plans “to solve the enormous water crisis by discharge to the Pacific Ocean.”

Held in 1,000 huge tanks at the site, each with 1,000-1,200 tons of radioactive liquid, Tepco has said that it will run out of on-site space for more tanks by the summer of 2022. The amount of processed water increases between 2,000 and 4,000 tons each week. Dr. Gordon Edwards notes that, “In the next 4-5 years, another 750,000 tons will be added to the inventory.”

According to critics, Japan’s government and Tepco repeatedly suggest the idea of dumping the waste water into the Pacific in order to weaken resistance to the plan and to foster its acceptance among skeptics.

Japan’s Neighbors Complain

The governments of South Korea and Taiwan have formally objected to any ocean dumping of Fukushima waste water, warning that currents will bring the contamination to their own shores.

In addition, South Korea’s Olympic committee has raised concerns about the risk to Olympic athletes who will attend the 2020 summer games in Tokyo. With baseball and softball games set to be played in Fukushima City, South Korea’s committee asked in August whether food served in the Athletes’ Village could be contaminated with radioactive fallout that was widely dispersed by the wrecked reactors. Japan’s Olympic Committee replied by down playing the concerns.

South Korea should restrict imports of processed foods from Japan’s Fukushima region as radiation has been found in shipments, an opposition lawmaker said Aug. 19, Korea Times reports. Citing data from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety, South Korean Rep. Kim Kwang-soo of the Party for Democracy and Peace has reported that radiation was discovered in almost 17 tons of processed foods imported from the eight prefectures, or 35 shipments, over the past five years. South Korea banned seafood imports from states or prefectures near Fukushima in 2013 over reports of radioactive contamination. But no import restrictions have been put on processed foods from the areas. —JL

—Guardian, Sept. 10; Asia Times, Sept. 25; NHK Japan Public TV, Aug. 21; Korea Times, Aug. 19; Seattle Times, Sept. 28, 2018.

* “Tepco Water Crises,” Greenpeace Germany, Jan. 22, 2019.

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Contaminated Middle School Indefinitely Closed in Ohio

Zahn’s Corner Middle School in Piketon, Ohio, was closed May 14, after the Department of Energy disclosed that it had two-year-old evidence of radioactive contamination in and around its buildings. The school is two miles from the uranium enrichment factory known as the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. Photo by KDAK, Channel 2/CBS, Pittsburgh.
Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2019
See Fall 2019 update here.

Cancer-causing radioactive poisons found outside and inside an Ohio middle school near a former H-bomb materials factory have led to the school’s abrupt closure. Students won’t be returning there in the fall.

Zahn’s Corner Middle School in Piketon—two miles from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant which for decades processed uranium for nuclear weapons—was closed in the face of parents’ frantic concern for their children’s health.

In mid-May 2019, the US Department of Energy (DOE) acknowledged that in 2017 it found trace amounts of highly radioactive neptunium-237 in air monitors on the school grounds, the Ironton Tribune reported. The DOE also admitted that it found similarly toxic americium there in 2018. The Dayton Daily News reported that neptunium is a carcinogen linked to bone cancers. Why the discovery of radioactive chemicals was not made public at the time—and the school closed then—has not been explained by the DOE.

A more recent and independent study, conducted by Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, found enriched uranium actually inside the middle school itself, and it found “plutonium, uranium, and neptunium in water and dust samples from other parts of the community” the Associated Press reported.

Fifteen years ago, in 2003 and 2004, the DOE disclosed that it had found traces of uranium in milk and eggs from area farms, and in vegetables from gardens next to the factory. Uranium, plutonium and or technetium were found in air, water, sediment and fish from area waterways, the Dayton Daily reported in November 2006. “Energy officials say none of the amounts are large enough to pose a health threat,” the Dayton Daily reported at the time. This reassurance is untrue because internal radiation exposures can never be considered safe, no matter how small.

In a May 14 press release, the Pike County General Health District raised concern that the government’s radioactive waste clean-up and disposal activities at Portsmouth have spewed radioactive dust clouds causing widespread dispersal downwind. The DOE has so far refused the Health District’s request to suspend its operations, claiming more data is needed.

Dusty bulldozing and open air demolition operations are now under way at the site to deconstruct the complex, decontaminate the grounds, and build a radioactive waste abandonment facility. NBC News reported May 15 that although “the contamination came from [the Portsmouth] plant … the Department of Energy has repeatedly refused to cease operations there.”

While environmental contamination with uranium-235 and other uranium isotopes is worrisome, more troubling still is the detection of neptunium, americium, cesium, technetium, and plutonium in surrounding homes, surface waters, gardens and farmlands.

Between 1954 and 2001, the Portsmouth complex did uranium “enrichment” for US nuclear weapons—the dirty, dangerous process of increasing the amount of uranium-235 in large volumes of uranium.* The factory made weapons-grade uranium (more U-235) for H-bombs, and low-enriched uranium (less U-235) for nuclear reactor fuel.

*******

As before, the Department of Energy said the radioactive contamination in and around the school is “well below established thresholds of concern for public health.” Likewise, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency’s deputy director said “the amount reported is far below the risk level.” And in a May 16 letter to the DOE, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine said his understanding was that the amounts of neptunium and americium detected “are far below any public health risks.”

In the case of the neptunium, uranium, plutonium, americium and technetium found in the water, vegetables, fish and school yards of Piketon, Ohio, the authorities do not know what has happened or for how long, or, like before, are withholding the information. They do know that alarmed parents could become enraged.

Plutonium is an extremely toxic alpha radiation emitter that if ingested or inhaled seeks bone and attacks the body’s ability to make red blood cells.

The authoritative Institute for Energy and Environmental Research reported on plutonium contamination in drinking water in its September 2005 edition of Science for Democratic Action. The institute concluded that the maximum contaminant level (MCL) for plutonium-239, and for toxins akin to it, in drinking water “should be tightened by about a factor of 100.”

“The black star in the middle shows the tracks made by alpha rays emitted from a particle of plutonium-239 in the lung tissue of an ape. The alpha rays do not travel very far, but once inside the body, they can penetrate more than 10,000 cells within their range. This set of alpha tracks (magnified 500 times) occurred over a 48-hour period.” Robert Del Tredici, At Work in the Fields of the Bomb (1987), plate 39.

Children are more vulnerable to the damaging health effects of radiation than are men, according to the National Academy of Sciences and independent experts. As Science for Democratic Action (SDA) reported in August 2009, “This is because radiation doses received in childhood are more likely to lead to cancer than the same dose received as an adult.”

In spite of this, radiation risk models still in use today are often based on an outdated “reference man” standard. The model estimates the risk that radiation poses to a hypothetical adult white male between 20 and 30 years of age, 5’7” tall, and weighing 154 pounds. As SDA made clear, the vast majority of people fall outside the definition. Not a single middle school kid falls inside of it.

—Beyond Nuclear’s Kevin Kamps contributed reporting to this story. Other sources were WKRC, May 27; Downwinders, Washington Bureau, May 22; the BBC, and the Ironton Tribune, May 15 & 16; WOSU Public Radio, May 15; Newsweek, and the Pike County General Health District, May 14; the Columbus Dispatch, May 13, 2019; the Dayton Daily News, May 15, 2019 & Nov. 12, 2006; and Science for Democratic Action from the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

—John LaForge

* Separating uranium-238 from the bomb-grade uranium-235 produces mountains of radioactive waste. Some 700,000 tons of waste uranium-238, known as depleted uranium, is now stored in the United States, although some is given to weapons producers that make armor plate for tanks and poisonous armor-piercing ammunition.

See Fall 2019 update here.

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Bomb Test Fallout Spread Farther and Deeper Than We Knew

The Muir Glacier, in Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska, has undergone well documented and very rapid retreat. According to Wikipedia, from 1892 to about 1980, it retreated nearly 20 miles; and from 1941 to 2004, it retreated over 7.5 miles and thinned by over 800 meters or 2,600 feet. Ocean water has filled the valley, replaced the ice, and created Muir Inlet at right. Photos by United States Geological Survey.
Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2019
By Kelly Lundeen

From the South and North Poles, to the deepest ocean trenches, human-made radioactive material is being discovered in new places. Two recent studies reveal the distances that radioactive effluent and fallout have been dispersed. One international research team found radioactivity in all 17 glaciers they tested in both of the Earth’s hemispheres.

Another global study found the first evidence of fallout from bomb tests in marine life in the deepest place on Earth. With unabated production of radioactive waste, runoff, gases, and accidents, it’s no surprise to find it farther away and deeper than ever.

Fallout Found from High Glacier to Deep Ocean

The first study found measured amounts of radioactive cesium-137 and americium-241 in glacial sediments thousands of times greater than expected. “Our samples are exceptional in terms of the levels of fallout radionuclides that we find outside of nuclear exclusion zones” (contaminated “no-go” areas), said Caroline Clason, a member of the study team and a lecturer in Physical Geography at the Univ. of  Plymouth, UK. “We’re talking about weapons testing from the 1950s and 1960s onwards, going right back in the development of the bomb,” Clason told Agence France-Presse. “If we take a sediment core you can see a clear spike where Chernobyl was [in April 1986], but you can also see quite a defined spike in around 1963 when there was a period of quite heavy weapons testing.” While most of the fallout from Fukushima has yet to return to land, evidence is already appearing.

After an accident or explosion, radioactive particles travel through the atmosphere and fall to Earth as radioactive rain or snow. Radioactive particles in snow fall on glaciers settling into the temporarily stable environment. However, Clason warned, “we all know that glaciers are increasingly melting and that material has to go somewhere.” The study did reveal some good news: the unique glacial sediment where radioactive particles settle is very efficient at accumulating those contaminants and may provide opportunities for bioremediation.

As radioactive glacial sediments enter the ocean, it will affect marine life which has already been doused with radioactivity. That is the subject of “Penetration of Bomb Carbon-14 into the Deepest Ocean Trench,” published in April by the American Geophysical Union (AGU). (If carbon-14 sounds familiar, you may remember that it is used to determine the age of geological samples using carbon dating.) An AGU news release explains, “Thermonuclear weapons tests conducted during the 1950s and 1960s doubled the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere when neutrons released from the bombs reacted with nitrogen in the air.” Bomb test carbon has been recorded in marine life at the ocean’s surface since the late 1950s. As these animals die and fall to the ocean floor, deep sea crustaceans as far as seven miles (11 kilometers) below the surface of the Pacific Ocean in the Mariana Trench, feed on their remains and the radioactivity is passed through the food web. “However, the penetration of bomb [test] carbon-14 into the deepest fauna has not been reported until now,” the study said.

The amount of human-made radioactivity moving into the Pacific is mushrooming. New concern is being raised by the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres over a leaking concrete dome built in the Marshall Islands. The concrete covers a large volume of radioactive debris that was collected from the detonation of 67 bomb tests done by the US, contaminating the islands and their people. Radioactive materials from the testing were pushed into an unlined pit and capped with the concrete. Mr. Guterres recently visited the islands, amplifying the voices of Marshall Islanders worried about radioactivity leaching into the ocean through the bottom of the hole, and the increasing potential for damage to the concrete dome by tropical storms.

From the depths of the oceans to the polar regions, more areas are being impacted by the radioactive legacy of humans, impacts accelerated with climate change which itself is rapidly accelerating.

—Sources: The London Sunday Express, May 19; American Geophysical Union, May 18 & 8, 2019; Agence France-Presse, May 16 & Apr. 10, 2019; CNN, May 13, 2019; Live Science, Apr. 15, 2019; European Geosciences Union April 10, 2019.

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Fukushima Disaster Response and Recovery a Vexing Radiation Colossus

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2019
By John LaForge
Art by Mark L. Taylor for Nukewatch

Eight years into Fukushima’s 3-reactor catastrophe of earthquake, tsunami and meltdowns, and after the industry’s and government’s multiple recovery schemes, an overview is in order.*

The three reactor meltdowns at Fukushima-Daiichi caused the worst dump of radioactivity to the Pacific Ocean in history. “This event is unprecedented in its total release of radioactive contamination into the ocean” wrote Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for PBS News Hour in March 2016. Buesseler has been recording Fukushima’s Pacific Ocean contamination since it started on 3/11/11. While Fukushima is often called the “2nd worst” radiation accident behind Chernobyl, Buesseler said, “More than 80% of the radioactivity from the damaged reactors ended up in the Pacific—far more than reached the ocean from Chernobyl.” Buesseler reported that this radiation gusher continues. “It is incorrect to say that Fukushima is under control when levels of radioactivity in the ocean indicate ongoing leaks, caused by groundwater flowing through the site and enhanced after storms,” he wrote.

  • “The worst airborne radiation spill in 25 years.”: Like the 1986 Chernobyl disaster that spread radiation across the Northern Hemisphere, Forbes reported March 28, 2011 that the US EPA recorded Fukushima’s radioactive iodine-131 in rainwater in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts at levels above what the agency allows in drinking water. The EPA’s air monitoring also found Fukushima’s radioactive iodine-131 in California, Colorado, Hawaii, Washington, and Nevada. Nothing close to this immense, hemisphere-wide radiation dispersal has happened since Chernobyl.
  • Japanese foods were tainted widely. Traces of radioactive cesium were found in a popular baby formula according to Japan Today, Dec. 7, 2011. Hundreds of thousands of babies may have eaten it before it was pulled from store shelves. The Japan Times reported April 22, 2011 that Fukushima’s iodine-131 was detected in the breast milk of women living near Tokyo, 150 miles from the meltdowns. The public demanded an investigation into the impact on mothers and babies. In April 2013, Japan’s Ministry of Health reported that levels of cesium-137 and cesium-134 found in produce and rice crackers 225 miles away from Fukushima “are high enough to cause residents to exceed the annual radiation exposure limit in just a few months, or even weeks.”
  • Fukushima is the world’s worst reactor disaster by volume of fuel melted and waste in cooling pools. Major reactor meltdowns at Santa Susanna in California (1959), Windscale in England (1957), Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania (1979), and Chernobyl in Ukraine (1986), involved a single reactor fuel inventory. Fukushima’s meltdowns involve three reactors full of melted and mangled fuel rods, and an additional 1,573 waste fuel rods in damaged condition in damaged pools of cooling water. The three masses of melted reactor fuel may never be recovered or containerized.
  • Fukushima caused the largest evacuation in the history of nuclear power: 160,000 evacuated from the zone first set at 12, and later expanded to 19 miles. (116,000 were forced to leave Chernobyl’s dead zone.) Two weeks after the start of the meltdowns, people from between 12 to 19 miles away were encouraged to “voluntarily evacuate.” The US government recommended that US citizens stay 50 miles away.
  • Of the colossal volumes of radioactive debris produced by the catastrophe, the New York Times provided this list in March 2017: 400 tons of contaminated cooling water produced every day since March 2011; 3,519 containers holding 60,000 tons of radioactive mud or sludge; 64,700 cubic meters of discarded protective clothing; branches and logs from 220 acres of deforested land; 200,400 cubic meters of radioactive rubble; and 3.5 billion gallons [17 million cubic yards] of radioactive soil. According to Greenpeace, 11 million tons of this radioactive soil is to be incinerated, which spreads airborne radioactive contamination in fly ash from smoke stacks, and leaves behind radioactively contaminated bottom ash in need of containment. (Will the consequently contaminated soil again be collected for re-incineration?)
  • The vexing problems of disaster response have seen ever-changing estimates of the amount of radiation released. The amount released to the air was “twice as large as previous estimates by research institutions both in Japan and overseas,” according to a Feb. 2012 report by the Meteorological Research Institute. The volume and variety of contaminated materials that have been collected for disposal is astounding. Greenpeace reported in December 2017 that while towns like Iitate and Namie had contaminated topsoil scraped off from populated areas, the problem remained because the soil removal left “islands … which are surrounded by forested mountains, for which there is no possible decontamination.” Consequently, cleaned-up areas “are subject to recontamination through weathering processes and the natural water and lifecycle of trees and rivers.” Because of how long cesium-137 persists in the environment, “this will be an on-going source of significant recontamination for … 300 years.”
  • The failure of the “ice wall,” designed to divert groundwater away from the three reactor foundations which were cracked open by the record 9.0 earthquake, means that hundreds of tons of water keep pouring every day into the wreckage of the reactor chambers. There the water is contaminated by contact with the masses of melted uranium fuel and either rushes out to sea or is collected for filtration in the failed Advanced Liquid Processing System (ALPS).
  • The notorious failure of the ALPS, which was intended to partially clean up highly contaminated cooling water and groundwater, means that possibly 1-million tons of waste water now held in 1,000 giant tanks near the coastline is not cleaned up at all, and must be filtered again by an as-yet-unknown method that needs to be designed and engineered from scratch. Meanwhile the tanks are vulnerable to another earthquake that could happen any time. One Japan Times headline on March 29, 2018 warned, “Seven years on, radioactive water at Fukushima plant still flowing into ocean, study finds”.

Detailed and well-documented reports by Greenpeace provide some of the best background and investigative information. See:

* Reflections in Fukushima: The Fukushima Daiichi Accident, Seven Years On, March 2018

* Nuclear Scars: The Lasting Legacies of Chernobyl and Fukushima, March 2016

* Fukushima Fallout: Nuclear business makes people pay and suffer, February 2013

* Lessons from Fukushima, February 2012

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