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October 18, 2013 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

‘Extra Pollution Allowed’ in EPA’s Draft Radiation Disaster Planning Docs 

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2013
By John LaForge 

On April 15, the EPA issued new so-called Protective Action Guides (PA guides) for dealing with large-scale radiation releases. The rules are meant to provide federal, state and local officials with protocols for responding to and cleaning up after reactor disasters or other industrial explosions, fires or spills — like the catastrophic triple meltdowns at Fukushima, Japan. 

As published in the Federal Register, they would allow drinking water contamination 20,000 times less stringent than the EPA’s current rules. They also suggest that officials cleaning up after a radiological accident do not have to follow EPA Superfund guidelines for environmental remediation. 

As such, the new PA guides are a government bailout of the utilities, that will, if unchanged, save reactor owners the staggering costs of adequate disaster decontamination. Industry has for years pushed for weaker regulation. In 2002, Roger Clarke, then President of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), warned in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Some people think that too much money is being spent to achieve low levels of residual contamination.” Since Fukushima, government and industry officials have said that using rigorous EPA/Superfund standards would be too expensive at several sites, including the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (see story below). 

According to comments by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Public Citizen and the Sierra Club, the PA guides “essentially admit that nuclear power is so dangerous that it could contaminate vast areas with extraordinarily high radiation levels, but rather than protect the people, [EPA] is proposing that government just let people be exposed to massive carcinogenic risks.” 

The PA guides took effect in April but can be amended or rescinded. 

The new PA guides: 

* Weaken drinking water standards for radioactivity and no longer comply with current Safe Drinking Water Act limits.

* Eliminate a 1992 nuclear disaster recovery recommendation from EPA that no one should be exposed to more than 5,000 millirems of radiation over 50 years. This benchmark may have eliminated the possibility of following the far weaker National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP) recommendation that people could be exposed to 2,000 millirems/year, or 100,000 millirems over 50 years. 

* Weaken or eliminate existing protections and increase permitted dose limits far beyond what the EPA now uses for radiation, which particularly endanger women, infants and children. 

* Weaken current rules established by the EPA regarding relocation due to radiation doses to the thyroid and skin and weaken the limit of 5 rem over 50 years. 

* Recommend outdated 1998 guidelines that allow markedly increased levels of radioactivity in food. 

* Allow radioactive waste to go to regular landfills, incinerators or recyclers or to hazardous waste sites. 

EPA documents show intent to weaken cleanup regs 

Douglass Guarino, writing September 11 in The National Journal for Global Security Newswire reports that he obtained EPA records about the PA guides. In them Paul Kudarauskas, of EPA’s Consequence Management Advisory Team, said last March that US residents are used to “cleanup to perfection,” but that in view of the Fukushima catastrophe, “People are going to have to put on their big-boy pants and suck it up.” 

In one response, Dave Kraft, the Director of the Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service, demanded that EPA rescind the PA guides and fire Mr. Kudarauskas. 

Daniel Hirsch, President of Committee to Bridge the Gap, emphasizes that the NCRP’s plans for implementing the new PA guides would allow the public to be exposed to more radiation. “In essence,” Hirsch reports, the PA guides say “nuclear power accidents could be so widespread and produce such immense radiation levels that the government would abandon cleanup obligations” forcing people to absorb and live with far more cancers. 

One document released to Guarino/GSN is a talk by Mike Boyd, an official in the agency’s radiation office, given about the new Protective Action guide during a May meeting in Paris in which Boyd praised cleanup standards suggested by the private NCRP and the nongovernmental ICRP. Both bodies recommend exposure standards to governments for industry workers and the public. 

However, the recommendations of these two groups have been previously criticized as too lax by the EPA, state cleanup officials and environmental activists because they suggest cleanup standards “thousands of times less rigorous than what has ever been permitted in the United States.” 

No exposure to radiation is safe, since even the smallest dose has cellular-level effects that can lead to immune dysfunction, birth defects, cancer and other diseases. The definitive National Academy of Sciences’ 2006 report Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, BEIR-7, declared “It is unlikely that there is a threshold below which cancers are not induced.” 

In accordance with BEIR-7, official EPA policy assumes there is no safe level of radiation exposure. 

But when John Cardarelli — an official in EPA’s emergency management office and a colleague of Kudarauskas on the EPA Consequence Management Advisory Team — spoke in May 2012 to Japanese emergency managers dealing with Fukushima, he presented sham theories explicitly rejected by the National Academy in BEIR-7. In particular, Cardarelli endorsed the “hormesis” hypothesis (that a little radiation is beneficial, acting like a “vaccination”), which the NAS debunked by name in BEIR-7. 

The EPA’s letter to GSN defends Cardarelli’s presentation, arguing that the “scientific community is not unified on radiation health effects. But to the contrary, every US governmental agency that regulates radiation exposures has adopted the NAS finding that no matter how little, any radiation exposure can cause cancer. 

In a Sept. 2012 talk to an interagency group led by Homeland Security, Cardarelli recommended a 100 millirem-per-year radiation dose limit. About 1-in-300 people would be expected to develop cancer if exposed to this level for 30 years, according to NAS and EPA risk models. 

Guarino reports that the authors of the Dept. of Homeland Security paper “have defended their recommendations in part by arguing that the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan contaminated an area the size of Connecticut and demonstrated the impossibility of a Superfund-level cleanup of that scope.” But rather than declare that evacuation is the only safe response to severe contamination, DHS wants to raise radiation dose limits to between 100 and 2,000 millirems per year. Over 30 years, this equates to a cancer risk of between one-in-23 and one-in-466 from long-term radiation exposure. 

Normally, the EPA does not permit cancer risks greater than one-in-10,000. 

Daniel Hirsch, with GAP, says the cancer risk would likely be higher. Accounting for the greatly increased susceptibility of women, infants and children to radiation, or the likelihood that chronic doses would last for an entire 70-year lifetime, up to one-in-six people would be expected to develop cancer, Hirsch said.

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste

October 18, 2013 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Santa Susana: Meltown Coverup Uncovered

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2013

The partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor in 1959 at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) in southern California put the 2,850-acre site on the list of environmental “dead zones.” Decontaminating the soil and groundwater in the area, which borders the Simi Valley community 30 miles north of Los Angeles, could take centuries. Groundwater could remain radioactive in perpetuity.

Santa Susana began operating in the 1940s and 10 small nuclear reactors and a plutonium production factory were put to use. Fires in 1957 and 2005 resulted in massive radiation releases. Another fire in 1971 involved highly radioactive primary reactor coolant. At least four reactors, none with containment structures, had malfunctions that intensified radioactive saturation of the grounds. Radioactive sodium-contaminated components were burned in open pits. Barrels of volatile toxic materials were exploded using gunfire.

The DOE covered up the July 12, 1959 meltdown of the Sodium Reactor Experiment, but University of California students uncovered the secret two decades later. Secrecy and poor record keeping still hamper the search for information. The destroyed reactor was dismantled although thousands of pounds of radioactive sodium coolant have never been recovered. Researchers estimate that 500,000 gallons of trichloroethylene, a cancer causing solvent, lie beneath the surface and dioxin, perchlorate, tritium, plutonium-238, plutonium-239, iodine-131, strontium-90, cesium-137, cobalt-60, thorium-228 and uranium-235 contaminate the soil and water. If high cleanup standards are maintained, 126,421 truckloads of waste will be taken somewhere else.

Prior to its purchase by Boeing Corp., Rocketdyne, Inc. conducted research and development for the space program, rocket engines, liquid metals and nuclear reactors. SSFL did work for the SNAP-10A, the only nuclear reactor ever launched into low orbit above the Earth.

Boeing is responsible for clean-up, but by 2006 had violated toxic discharge permits more than 80 times. The corporation allowed chromium, dioxin, lead, mercury and other toxins to pollute Bell Creek and the Los Angeles River. Environmental groups have filed suit in an attempt to halt Boeing’s dumping of demolished buildings into unlicensed area landfills. Some 4,888 tons of radioactive debris have gone to dumps and recyclers. On-site operations include removing 50,000 cubic yards of tainted soil and junk. More than 400 monitoring wells on and off site have been installed. In October 2007, Boeing turned over 2,400 acres to the state for park land earmarked for “limited use.”

The EPA claims no radiation migrated off property, but American Jewish University sits along the property line on the northeast and in 2012 its well water tested positive for radioactivity. The Santa Susana Advisory Panel concluded that up to 1,600 deaths may be attributable to radiation exposure from the site.

In 2005, Boeing paid restitution to 100 families affected with cancer. A study released in November 2012 shows a 10 to 20 percent increase in cancer among nearby women compared to the rest of California’s female population.

More than 150,000 people live within five miles of SSFL, and half a million within 10 miles. — BLU

Filed Under: Environment, Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste

October 18, 2013 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Great Lakes Citizens Succeed in Halting Radioactive Shipments

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2013

In a show of authentic precautionary ethics — and in response to broad-based public opposition — Canadian authorities on July 26 canceled plans to transport 16 over-sized, radioactively contaminated steam generators from aging reactors, each weighing 100 tons, through the Great Lakes. Operators of the giant Bruce Power reactor complex in Owen Sound, Ontario, intended to ship the decommissioned nuclear power scrap through the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence Seaway and across the Atlantic to the Studsvik facility in Sweden for “recycling.” 

Gordon Edwards, a co-founder of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), said in a July 27 post, “Concerted efforts by an unusually diverse and powerful movement of ordinary citizens led to an unequivocal victory….” 

“This outcome is entirely due to public opposition, since Bruce Power had received all the necessary authorizations — including a Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission license — to proceed with the shipments,” Edwards said. 

Mike Bradley, Mayor of Sarnia, Ontario on the southernmost tip of Lake Huron, also claimed victory. “It’s a real testament to citizen power.… We’re fighting a very large and powerful organization,” he said to the Sarnia Observer. The paper reported that the mayor “has been a vocal critic of the move, along with a growing list of Ontario mayors, coalition groups, environmental activists and US Senators.” 

Extensive delays of the proposed shipments were caused by public criticism of the threats such unprecedented transports posed for potentially disastrous fresh water radiation accidents. Critics called the long-distance transport proposal “reckless endangerment” and dubbed it the “Edmund Fitzgerald Plan.” 

A coalition of hundreds of community and environmental groups, led by indigenous First Nations, the CCNR, the Canadian Environmental Law Association, the Great Lakes Cities Initiative, and the Sierra Club of Canada — and 300 municipalities which passed resolutions opposing the shipments — had challenged the plan for two years. Ontario Regional First Nation Chief Angus Toulouse said in a news release then, “The Union of Ontario Indians and the Mohawk communities of Kahnawake, Akwesasne and Tyendinaga are at the forefront of opposing the shipment and the Chiefs of Ontario will support them.” 

Bruce Power is the largest single nuclear reactor operation in the Western Hemisphere, with eight reactors on the eastern shore of Lake Huron. Bruce Power authorities had earlier said that they would eventually decommission 64 of the steam generators. Its plan was to set a precedent by moving the school-bus-sized behemoths by rail to Owen Sound (on the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron), then transfer the giant devices to ships for the water-borne journey through Lake Huron, Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and out the Seaway — passing through the major cities of Montreal and Quebec City on the way to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and around New Brunswick and Nova Scotia to the Atlantic. 

Edwards noted that, “The idea of shipping 1,600 tons of radioactive waste through the Great Lakes and along the St. Lawrence River was the main rallying point for most people. But the idea of blending [industrial] nuclear waste materials into scrap metal for general commercial use, without even any labeling to indicate that the “recycled” metal contains [radioactive] waste, was another powerful motivator driving many to oppose the Bruce Power plan.” 

For its part, Bruce Power holds out some hope of another try. James Scongack, Bruce Power’s Vice President of corporate affairs, told the Sarnia paper, “We’ve indicated that if we ever decide that shipping steam generators is an initiative that we want on a certain timetable that we would reapply through the licensing process to do that.” In January 2011, spokesman John Peevers said, “We remain convinced and believe that this is the right thing to do and recycling these steam generators is going to reduce our environmental footprint.” 

Some 40 million people living along the lower Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway watershed, including 106 First Nation communities, depend on its fresh water for drinking and municipal services. The Great Lakes hold about 20 percent of the world’s freshwater. — JL

Filed Under: Environment, Newsletter Archives, Quarterly Newsletter, Radioactive Waste

October 18, 2013 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Red Cliff’s Lake Superior  Barrel Project to Ship Explosives to Incinerator

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2013

RED CLIFF, Wisconsin — Melanee Montano, Environmental Director at the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, reports that the Band’s Lake Superior Barrel Project intends to retrieve “overpack” barrels from Lake Superior beginning September 9, weather permitting. 

The Band’s nine-year-long investigation of the dumping, between 1957 an 1962, of nearly 1,500 barrels of Honeywell, Inc.’s toxic military waste into the lake succeeded in recovering 25 barrels last summer. Twenty-two of the drums held explosive parts of what the Band said were cluster bombs (previous documentation of the contents reported they contained grenade parts). However, because the recovery project had not secured permits required to transport explosives, the band’s contractors onboard the research vessel Blue Heron placed the 15,000 explosive parts in 85-gallon “overpack drums” and put them back into the lake in about 200 feet of water. 

Montano told Nukewatch August 30 that once the overpacks are recovered they will be transported under US Coast Guard authority to Cheboygan, Michigan where the cluster bomb parts are to be incinerated. — JL

Filed Under: Environment, Lake Superior Barrels, Newsletter Archives, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste

October 18, 2013 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Swiss Reactor Contaminates Lake 

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2013

Even renowned Swiss engineering can’t prevent radiation releases from nuclear reactors, it appears. The Muehleberg reactor near Bern has contaminated Lake Biel, which is used for drinking water, in the northeast town of Biel. Cesium-137 has settled into the 9-mile long lake after traveling down the Aare River from the reactor 12 miles upstream. University of Geneva geologists discovered the contamination while conducting research. Authorities say cesium contaminated the river during two incidents in 1998 and 1999. However, according to press reports, the reactor routinely releases contaminated water to the River Aare. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster has also been blamed for cesium-137 deposits in lakes throughout the country. Numerous communities exist along the Aare as it flows into the southern end of Lake Biel. The Swiss Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate reports that the Muehleberg reactor operates with fissures in the core cover. Following the German example, the Swiss government has vowed to permanently shut down all five Swiss reactors by 2034. 

— The Local, July 16; PressTV & Pan European Networks, July 15; Agence France Presse, July 14; Reuters, Mar. 28, 2013

Filed Under: Newsletter Archives, Nuclear Power, Quarterly Newsletter, Radiation Exposure, Radioactive Waste

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