Nuclear Shorts - Spring 2004

Nuclear Waste Shipping Accident

ROWE, Mass. — On March 3, a cargo container holding 46,000 pounds of radioactively contaminated construction debris from the decommissioned Yankee Rowe reactor spilled while being transported on a flat-bed. The container slid off the truck when a tie-down holding the load snapped, spilling the concrete, steel and re-bar onto the road. Ten to 20 shipments of waste are moving every day from the decommissioned reactor site to a railway stop, where it is then shipped by rail to a dump in Utah. Company workers gathered up the material and brought it back to the reactor site. A spokeswoman for Yankee Atomic Electric Co. said, “The radioactivity is so low that there is no impact to [those who live nearby] or the environment or the community.” However, a hazmat team was not called to assess contamination.

Deb Katz, a Rowe, Mass., resident and director of the Citizens Awareness Network, says that the utility’s answers are inadequate. “If it was really not radioactive, they wouldn’t have to ship it to Utah,” she said. “This is the company that had the spill telling hazmat there’s no danger, and that’s not very comforting.” Over 2,000 similar shipments are planned before Yankee-Rowe is fully decommissioned in 2005.
—North Adams Transcript, March 3, 2004; NukeNet, Jan. 20, 2004

U.S. Nuclear Arsenal: 140,000 Hiroshimas

CHICAGO, Ill. — From 1945 to 1990, the U.S. produced approximately 70,000 nuclear warheads for more than 120 weapons systems. Annual production rates rose dramatically during the 1950s. In 1959 and 1960 respectively, exactly 7,088 and 7,178 new bombs were turned out — about 28 warheads each workday. By 1967, the stockpile reached a historic high with approximately 32,000 warheads of 30 different types, from sub-kiloton landmines (atomic demolition munitions) to multimegaton strategic bombs. The historic high for megatonnage was reached in 1960 with nearly 20,500 megatons (that’s 20 billion tons, or 40 trillion pounds, of TNT) — the equivalent of about 1,400,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. Today the total is about 1/10 the 1960 level, or about 2,000 megatons, or 140,000 Hiroshimas.
—Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jan./Feb. 2004

Pentagon: Climate Change Worse Than Terrorism

WASHINGTON, D.C. — While the White House warns of the danger to civilization posed by gay marriages, a report commissioned by the Pentagon and kept secret for four months warns that impending climate changes are a far greater threat than terrorism. The study, entitled “An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for U.S. National Security,” predicts that “abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies.” Environmental crises may lead to global catastrophes that will cost millions of lives. The report did not mention that the Pentagon is the world’s biggest consumer of petroleum products.

Describing nuclear weapons proliferation as “inevitable,” the report states that “nuclear energy will become a critical source of power, and this will accelerate nuclear proliferation as countries develop enrichment and reprocessing capabilities to ensure their national security.” The authors predict that Japan, South Korea, Germany, Egypt and North Korea will all develop nuclear arsenals.
— The Sunflower, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, March 2004

New Bomb-building at Lawrence Livermore

LIVERMORE, Calif. — In February, the Energy Department released a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) on Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s plans for increased production of plutonium, radioactive tritium, and an overall boost to weapons related programs.

The proposal would more than double production of plutonium at the lab from 1,540 pounds to 3,300 pounds. It triples the amount that scientists can work with at any one time, from 44 pounds to 132 pounds. One microscopic particle of plutonium can cause lung cancer if inhaled or ingested.

The DOE plan revives the “vapor laser isotope separation” project, a scheme to heat and vaporize plutonium and then shoot toxic-dye laser beams through the vapor to separate plutonium isotopes. The DOE proposes a ten-fold increase in the manufacture of radioactive tritium to be used with the National Ignition Facility megalaser, and makes Lawrence Livermore the site of new technologies for manufacturing plutonium pits.

A previous environmental impact statement predicted an increased risk to the health of those living and working nearby. The SEIS downplays this heightened risk for workers and the local population. The DOE report failed to look at the unusually high breast cancer rates in the San Francisco Bay Area. Women living in this area have a 1 in 7 chance of contracting breast cancer.
— Contra Costa Times, Feb. 21, 2004

Toxic Waste Dumps Renamed

VIEQUES, Puerto Rico — More than 10,000 residents and activists from around the world helped close the U.S. bombing range on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. The U.S. Navy has used about 80 percent of the island for bombing exercises. More than 1,100 people were arrested in a civil resistance campaign to end the war games. The bombed areas are now a radioactive and toxic mess. Pentagon public relations officers have renamed half of the area a “wildlife refuge” and turned it over to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Pentagon has similarly renamed radioactively contaminated sites in Colorado and Idaho. The Rocky Flats plutonium trigger factory near Denver, with about two million cubic feet of buried nuclear waste, is now an “Environmental Technology Site.” And the Idaho National Laboratory, where for 40 years the military did chemical separation of plutonium from irradiated fuel rods, has seven million cubic feet of highly radioactive waste and soil on site. It’s now officially the “Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.”
— WISE Uranium Project, Mar. 8, 2004; Washington Post, May 15, 2001; Deadly Defense, Radioactive Waste Campaign, 1988, p. 50 & 89.

Earthquake Shakes Reactor and its Cooling Pond

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — On Dec. 22, 2003, a magnitude 6.5 earthquake rattled California’s central coast and shook Diablo Canyon’s two nuclear reactors near here. The quake’s epicenter was 35 miles north of the reactors and workers reported strong shaking of the site. The quake was not even along the fault line upon which the reactors were built. An employee, writing on a nuclear worker’s anonymous chat site, says, “The spent fuel pool water splashed around a bit.” “ Spent” fuel is the hot waste removed from a reactor and is up to a million times more radioactive than fresh fuel. The quaking reactors continued to run at full power while the NRC and operators at Pacific Gas and Electric Company claimed they found no damage.
— San Luis Obispo Tribune, Dec. 22, 2003; Jim Zimmerlin, www.zimfamilycockers.com/jim.html

Two Reactors Spring Cooling Water Leaks

SENECA, South Carolina; BRIDGEMAN, Michigan —The Oconee 1 nuclear reactor, shut down in September for refueling, sprang a leak in its cooling system and had to be shut down three times after restart in December. The company claims “no radiation release” as the leak occurred in the reactor’s containment system. The leak’s rate was 0.3 gallons per minute, but increased to about .778 gpm after the unit’s power was increased to about 26 percent of capacity. The company reduced power to 17 percent to allow workers to enter the containment building to find the source of the leak described as emanating from a “steam generator cavity.”

The Cook reactor in Michigan also had a cooling water leak in December, which forced the reactor into emergency operations. Radioactive water poured onto the floor, contaminating the containment building. Cook operators did not reduce the reactor’s power outage and announced that the leak was repaired in 90 minutes.
— Reuters, Jan. 9, 2004; AP, Dec. 20, 2003

Plutonium in Children’s Teeth

CUMBRIA, England —Traces of plutonium have been found in the teeth of children living near the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria, England. Those living closer to Sellafield had more than twice the plutonium of those living 140 miles away. BNFL, the company that operates Sellafield, denies the contamination of the groundwater with technetium-99 and tritium stems from their site.

British Public Health Minister Melanie Johnson alleged that the plutonium does not pose a health threat. Public health experts challenged Johnson’s opinion, saying that any amount of plutonium is carcinogenic. BNFL runs the facility and operates nuclear facilities in the U.S. and around the world. It is a member of the Louisiana Energy Services consortium that is planning to construct a uranium enrichment facility near Eunice, New Mexico.

BNFL representatives claim that the plutonium found in the teeth is a result of fallout from nuclear weapons testing. The plutonium in the children’s teeth however contains an isotope not found in bomb test fallout. The alpha emitting plutonium found in the kids’ teeth most likely has also contaminated the childrens’ bones and increases the risk of childhood leukemia.
— The London Observer, Nov. 30, 2003; Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, Dec. 27, 2003; London Herald, Dec. 14, 2003

Concord, Massachusetts – Radioactive Superfund Site

CONCORD, Mass. — Main Street is radioactive in Concord. Starmet Corp. and others produced depleted uranium (DU) munitions and armor at 2229 Main, and more than 3,800 barrels of radioactive and toxic waste are buried here that will take at least 10 years and $50 million to clean up. “There is at least 20 times more DU on and under Starmet’s 46 acres on Main Street, than the 340 tons that were fired into Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War,” reports Ed Ericson, Jr. A recently discovered dump contains even more radioactive substances. The company is responsible for contaminating the soil more than a mile from the site, and at least two wells have been poisoned. A 1993 epidemiological study found that area residents suffer higher rates of cancer than the state average. Massachusetts has sued Starmet to enforce state law against radioactive dumping, but it’s having a hard time collecting. The company declared bankruptcy in 2002.
— Emagazine.com, March 5, 2004

Women DOE Employees Studied

BUFFALO, New York — The Energy Dept. has historically employed over 80,000 women, but it has never studied the health effects of their nuclear work because only small numbers of females worked at any one facility. Dr. Gregg Wilkinson from State University of New York at Buffalo developed risk estimates for exposure to ionizing radiation and conducted a mortality study of women employed at 12 Energy Dept. sites. External ionizing radiation exposure in these workers appeared to be associated with increased relative risk for leukemia and breast cancer, and increased risks for all cancers combined.
—National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health/Health-Related Energy Research Branch, 2000

Lancet: Medical X-rays Causing Cancers

LONDON — Radiation from dentist offices and hospitals causes 700 of the 124,000 cancer cases that occur in England every year, according to an Oxford University study published in the medical journal Lancet.

In the UK, the National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) has monitored the doses of radiation used in X-ray examinations for more than a decade. Advancing technology has halved the dose used in X-ray examinations since the early 1990s. However, the board found a 20-fold variance in the doses delivered by different hospitals in its latest review. The NRPB says a single Computed Tomography (CT) scan — which takes a series of X-ray pictures through the body — involves a dose of radiation up to 1,000 times that of a chest Xray. Two German radiology experts, commenting on the new study, say that up to 30 percent of chest X-rays might not be necessary.
—The London Independent, Jan. 30, 2004

“ Chernobyl Heart” Wins Academy Award

LOS ANGELES — An independent film on the continuing effects of the world’s worst nuclear disaster on the children of Belarus, received the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject. The 39- minute “Chernobyl Heart” highlights the work of the Chernobyl Children’s Project International, a nonprofit based in New York City, and its efforts to provide humanitarian and medical aid to the four million children that UN recognizes as suffering from the disaster. On April 26, 1986, reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl station in Ukraine abruptly overheated, exploded and burned out of control for two weeks, spewing radioactive pollution around the world. The catastrophe remains the worst civilian radiation disaster in history.
— Chernobyl Children’s Project International, 217 East 86th Street, PMB #275, New York, NY 10028; Email: info@ccp-intl.org; Web: ccp-intl.org