And now:[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: DOEWatch page: http://members.aol.com/doewatch ------------------------------------------------------------------------ There are 9 messages in this issue. Topics in today's digest: 1. No tritium detected in workers From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2. Senate Rejects Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 3. Utah Won't Get 2nd 'Hot' Dump From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 4. Commission hears public outcry over Yucca Mountain From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 5. Settlement ends Hanford whistleblower dispute From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 6. Project could profoundly affect Hanford From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 7. Meetings on FFTF future start today in Tennessee From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 8. Radiation stories told by families From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 9. FFTF-----PEIS------Comments to DOE From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] =================== Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 08:03:50 EDT From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: No tritium detected in workers Source: http://www.sunsix.com/pw/PaducahSun/news/October/oct13a.html October 13, 1999 No tritium detected in workers By Bill Bartleman The Paducah Sun Initial test results of health physics technicians at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant showed no signs of the presence of tritium in their bodies. "It is what we expected," said Elizabeth Stuckle, spokeswoman for USEC Inc., the plant operator. "We do not use tritium in any aspect of the uranium enrichment process." Seven workers were tested last week after a plant employee notified USEC that tritium was discovered in April in the urine of a man who had left the Paducah plant to work at another nuclear facility. ..................... In recent months, the plant has attracted nationwide attention regarding the possible existence of highly radioactive contaminants stored on the site and buried in landfills. Allegations in two federal lawsuits include the existence of trace amounts of neptunium and plutonium contained in spent nuclear fuel that was reprocessed at the plant from 1952 to 1976. The U.S. Department of Energy, which owns the plant and leases production facilities to USEC, has confirmed those elements' presence but said the plant is safe for workers and neighbors. DOE is also planning a $1 billion cleanup of contaminated waste. ======================================================= Message: 2 Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 21:26:58 EDT From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Senate Rejects Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Source: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991013/ts/arms_treaty_25.html October 13, 1999 Senate Rejects Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate Wednesday voted to reject ratification of a global treaty banning nuclear testing, handing an embarrassing defeat to the Clinton administration, which had fought for U.S. endorsement of the accord. Ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) failed by a vote of 48 to 51 with one voting present. The Senate's Republican majority overwhelmingly opposed the pact. The final vote fell far short of the two-thirds majority --67 votes -- needed to ratify the treaty. ``With this fateful vote tonight, the world becomes a more dangerous place,'' said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat. It was the first time the Senate has voted down a major arms control accord since the Treaty of Versailles after World War I and means the test-ban pact is now effectively doomed. The Senate's refusal to endorse the landmark treaty was a stinging setback for President Clinton, who was the first world leader to sign the treaty in 1996 and has set nuclear non-proliferation as a major foreign policy goal. The treaty has been signed by more than 150 countries, but cannot go into force unless 44 nuclear-capable countries, including the United States, ratify it. ====================================================== Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 21:35:32 EDT From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Utah Won't Get 2nd 'Hot' Dump Source: http://www.sltrib.com/10131999/utah/37239.htm Utah Won't Get 2nd 'Hot' Dump October 13, 1999 BY JIM WOOLF THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE Attempts to build a second disposal site for low-level radioactive wastes in Utah have been abandoned by Safety-Kleen Corp. Company officials notified the Tooele County Commission they are withdrawing a request for a zoning change needed to accept radioactive material at their Grassy Mountain landfill for hazardous chemical wastes, about 70 miles west of Salt Lake City. Safety-Kleen, based in Columbia, S.C., is the nation's largest industrial-waste service company. It has about 10,000 employees in 48 states. "It was apparent we were not likely to get local approval" to accept low-level radioactive wastes at the Grassy Mountain site, Lowell Peterson, Safety-Kleen's Utah lobbyist, said Tuesday. "It is a very profitable business we would like to be in. But we are intelligent enough to know if we can't get a permit we can't pursue the waste." ====================================================== Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 21:46:41 EDT From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Commission hears public outcry over Yucca Mountain Source: http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/1999/oct/13/509422478.html October 13, 1999 Commission hears public outcry over Yucca Mountain By Mary Manning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> LAS VEGAS SUN A Nuclear Regulatory Commission advisory panel heard public frustrations over the burial of high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountaina -- a massive public project that has never been done before anywhere in the world. The nuclear industry and nuclear regulators see their mission as taking care of a serious national problem. Many Nevadans see it as the nation dumping on a small state with little clout. What most of the public doesn't know, state technical expert Steve Frishman said on Tuesday, is that the role of Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has changed drastically. "The objective is to no longer isolate radiation, but to delay releases," Frishman said, using the Department of Energy's own drawing of escaping radiation to prove his point. "This picture scares the hell out of me." The Department of Energy plans to submit a license for opening a high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain about 2003, if the site passes scientific muster. Most people believe the remote, rugged mound of volcanic ash layers will contain the radiation, Frishman said. "Does the general public see the same thing we do?" he asked an advisory committee to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "The answer is no." DOE Sandia National Laboratory environmental risk expert Paul Davis said technical people ignore the big risks from a project such as Yucca Mountain. Most scientific opinion is based on belief, not fact, he said. NRC Nuclear Waste Advisory Committee Chairman John Garrick reassured those attending a workshop at the Alexis Park Resort, saying the commission is asking the DOE what can go wrong, how likely it is for something to go wrong and what the consequences of a disaster at the mountain would be. "We consider the public the ultimate customer, the decision-maker on nuclear waste," Garrick said. Yet most of the public cannot find a way to get in on the debate, critics said. Since Congress singled out Yucca Mountain as the only site under study for a national nuclear waste dump, residents face an involuntary risk, Nuclear Waste Task Force Director Judy Treichel said. The task force tries to inform people about the government project. "You need to tell people what the risk is then let them decide whether to accept it," Treichel said. "If people came and said we don't want it (the repository) here, what is the first thing we do?" Treichel asked. The NRC advisers said it was beyond the commission's duty and its regulations to advise either the public or the DOE on how to tackle Yucca Mountain. "Is there any channel for people to go?" Treichel persisted. "That is why more people are not here. They feel like they are not heard." The public distrust of the DOE and even the Nuclear Regulatory Commission comes from the vested interests held by the experts trying to communicate the risks, Eureka County nuclear waste director Abby Johnson said. Most experts dismiss risks from radiation. Crescent Valley is the centerpiece of Eureka County in north-central Nevada. Most residents have no phones, let alone the Internet, Johnson said, making communications hard. "People live in Crescent Valley because they want to get away from the federal government," she said. "The risk of living in a valley with nuclear waste is one risk they don't want to assume." Johnson wanted to know who has the power to stop Yucca Mountain. "How can any of us say 'No' to Yucca Mountain?" she asked. "As long as there is no way to get to 'No' on this project, risk assessment is a farce. People are not stupid. They do understand." Neither the DOE nor the NRC is interested in finding anything wrong, she said. "If we were looking for flaws in the project, it would have already been stopped," Johnson said, referring to rapid water flow and earthquake faults running through the mountain, nearby volcanos and transportation risks posed from moving 70,000 tons of radioactive waste to the mountain. Pahrump resident Sally Devlin said she became interested in Yucca Mountain when she learned she lived on one of the possible transportation routes. "And I said, 'Over my dead body.' " Besides bringing a permanent NRC office to Nevada, Devlin urged regulators to make the DOE responsible morally, fiscally and ethically for the integrity of the mountain. ====================================================== Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 21:50:51 EDT From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Settlement ends Hanford whistleblower dispute Source: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/1999/1013.html#anchor596559 Settlement ends Hanford whistleblower dispute By John Stang Herald staff writer A 20-employee Hanford subcontractor and one of its former employees have settled a whistleblower dispute over safety concerns raised at a site just north of the 300 Area. The settlement has employee Matthew Taylor agreeing to leave Roy F. Weston Co., while Weston would get rid of any negative references in his personnel file. Weston is a subcontractor of Bechtel Hanford Inc. Weston also agreed to join the Hanford Joint Council, a coalition of Hanford parties designed to look at and mediate whistleblower matters in the early stages to try to head off litigation. Also included in the deal was a financial settlement, with both sides agreeing to keep the dollar amount secret. The Government Accountability Project, a whistleblowers advocacy organization that represented Taylor, announced the settlement Tuesday. "An ugly thing happened with Matt," said Tom Carpenter, an attorney with the organization. "But once upper-level management within Weston realized what was going on, it acted responsibly, and I believe that meaningful steps have been taken." The roots of the issue date back to spring 1998. Bechtel was supervising the excavation of a waste burial site just north of the 300 Area that contained contaminated dirt and construction debris. Weston was a subcontractor on the job, providing labor and backhoe and truck operators. The project was prepared to find unexpected items, meaning the workers were in protective gear with orders to set aside any unusual items for study, said Jeff James, Bechtel's task leader for that project. The workers found a huge buried cache of barrels containing uranium shavings and chips. About 350 barrels were removed and set aside. More than 1,000 were left in the ground. Work stopped on the project as Bechtel studied ways to deal with the barrels. Some workers voiced concern when the first barrels were found, Carpenter said. Removal stopped when officials confirmed most or all of them contained uranium shavings, James said. Some barrels also contained oil. Oil prevents uranium chips from spontaneously igniting when coming in contact with air. This can happen if the chips are in the right shapes and masses at certain distances from each other. Taylor worked on the project. In January 1999, he discovered that some of the oil he helped add to the barrels contained polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs. PCBs have been linked to cancer, nervous system damage and other health problems. Taylor raised questions in January at a routine safety meeting regarding the possibility of the workers handling the barrels in spring 1998 suffering ill effects, Carpenter said. Taylor received withering looks and was brushed off, according to a memo from Carpenter to DOE Hanford Manager Keith Klein. The memo outlined two later instances of Taylor raising safety concerns about an improperly and unsafely loaded container on a truck and windblown dust in a radiological area. Those concerns were met with a supervisor yelling at Taylor, a formal, 30-minute "chewing out" by three supervisors, a second yelling incident by a supervisor, a sarcastic mock certificate presented to him and derogatory graffiti written about him, the memo said. Some of that graffiti was written by Taylor's foreman, the memo said. Taylor filed a complaint with DOE. After that, Weston laid off Taylor. Then, the Government Accountability Project filed a complaint with the Department of Labor in June, and Carpenter met with Klein in July. Later, Weston replaced some of the supervisors involved in the matter, Carpenter said. He praised Weston for doing its own investigation on the issue. Klein inspected the Weston operation and started an investigation into the allegations, Carpenter said. Corrective measures were taken. Carpenter praised Klein for pursuing the matter and taking action. ====================================================== Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 22:01:32 EDT From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Meetings on FFTF future start today in Tennessee Source: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/1999/1013.html#anchor596559 Meetings on FFTF future start today in Tennessee By Annette Cary Herald staff writer The first of seven meetings influencing the future of Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility begin today in Tennessee, with meetings planned next week in Richland and other Northwest communities. The Department of Energy is taking comments on the environmental study it is undertaking on future civilian nuclear research and development, isotope production and what role the Hanford reactor should play. The Richland meeting is planned for 7 p.m. Oct. 21 at the Tower Inn, 1515 George Washington Way. The Eastern Washington Section of the American Nuclear Society has hired a bus to take Mid-Columbia residents to meetings Monday in Seattle and Tuesday in Portland. "We want to ensure there is some balance to the impression that the DOE decision makers get," said Jerry Woodcock of the nuclear society. "If we do not counter the anti-nuclear agenda, then we allow them to define who we are, and we cannot permit that." .................... The Seattle meeting is set for 7 p.m. Monday at the Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St. The Portland meeting is 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Marriott Hotel, 1401 S.W. Front Ave. Nuclear society buses will be at the Federal Building parking lot in Richland for boarding at 12:30 p.m. both days and will leave at 1 p.m. A $10 donation is requested. Besides scientists, the nuclear society wants to offer rides to medical workers, cancer survivors and others who might be helped by the production of isotopes for use in new ways of treating cancer and heart disease. Other hearings are planned at 7 p.m. Oct. 20 at the Hood River Inn, 1108 E. Marina Way, Hood River, OR and Oct. 26 in the Washington, D.C., area. Those who would like to make a comment by telephone can call 877-562-4593. Faxes may be sent to 877-562-4592. The electronic mail address is [EMAIL PROTECTED] and letters may be sent to Colette Brown, Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology (NE-50), U.S. Department of Energy, 19901 Germantown Road, Germantown, MD 20874. The comment period ends Oct. 31. ================================================= Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 22:05:30 EDT From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Radiation stories told by families Source: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news/nn10260.htm Radiation stories told by families • Reports of contamination in Marion, Ohio, prompted an investigation. October 13, 1999 By David Lore Dispatch Science Reporter Ralph Hill, 62, says he has known about radioactive hazards at government munitions plants in the Marion, Ohio, area since he was a teen-ager growing up in the town in the 1950s. "I'd overhear my dad saying things to my mom,'' Hill said. "When we were riding around, he'd point and say, 'That's a reactor,' or 'That's where they make the heavy water.' Me being a youngster, I didn't know what he was talking about.'' Family stories — including the one about the time someone confiscated Pop's radioactive sofa — led in 1989 to a report to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to the retired Marion factory worker. A nephew who worked for the commission was alarmed by what he was hearing and notified agency officials, Hill said. Government officials at the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland responded in 1994 — and again early this year — asking for details, Hill said. On Friday, based on conversations with investigators from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine asked the Department of Energy to check the site's history as part of the ongoing probe of pollution around Marion's River Valley High School. The 2-year-old investigation — touched off by a high rate of leukemia cases among River Valley graduates — centered on possible chemical contamination from the Marion Engineering Depot. Now investigators also are looking at the site of the former Scioto Ordnance Plant — a wartime bomb factory. "There's been no indication it was hot, and there wouldn't have been a reactor there,'' Graham Mitchell, federal facilities chief at Ohio EPA, said of the former plant site. Still, Mitchell said that over the years there have been reports by former employees and their families, including the Hills, about postwar radioactive accidents. Hill's father, Ralph Hill Sr., was a heavy- equipment operator at the depot and at times wore a badge measuring radioactive exposure, he said. Hill recalls that three military officers came to his house one day in the early 1950s with Geiger counters. "They proceeded to take the sofa, the chair, his shoes, his clothing, the mattress. Anything from where he would have sat or laid down, they took it,'' he said. The younger Hill, who was 14 or 15 at the time, said the family was paid on the spot for their belongings but never received any explanation. "Back then, you never asked questions,'' he said. Charles Marshall, 88, of Marion worked in a number of nuclear-weapons plants as an electrical engineer during the 1940s and 1950s. Marshall said he heard the same stories from former depot workers but can't confirm them. "People knew all this stuff,'' he said yesterday. "But the point of it was, we couldn't talk — nobody could talk.'' After the Mound nuclear-weapons plant was built near Dayton in 1946 to manufacture nuclear-bomb triggers, a backup facility managed by Monsanto Co. was built at the ordnance plant in Marion in 1949 by the former Atomic Energy Commission, Department of Energy spokeswoman Jane Greenwalt said. "We don't know of any reactor that would have been there (Marion), but we're keeping everything open,'' Greenwalt said. "But there never was a reactor at the Mound Plant.'' The Monsanto building was equipped to produce polonium, an explosive, poisonous element used in bomb triggers. But records indicate it was never operational, Greenwalt said. And the Energy Department hasn't uncovered any evidence that radioactive heavy water was usedat Marion, Greenwalt said. Barbara Kehoe, a spokeswoman for the Corps of Engineers, said reports of radioactive spills from Hill and other Marion residents were included in the corps' 1994 report. Tests for radioactivity at that time found nothing. Kehoe said corps investigators asked for but never received confirmation from Hill of the correspondence with the Army or the commission. "We've not seen any of the documentation he's speaking about,'' she said. "He was always unsure what agency it was.'' Hill said his father was 72when he retired from the Marion County engineering department. He died in 1989 at 78. "They made him retire,'' Hill said. "He was just one of those people who went to work, regardless.'' Hill suspects that radiation exposure sickened both his parents and his sisters. "How this all came about was the people out there kept talking about their kids, and they (the government) kept telling these people there was nothing there,'' he said. "Well, I was aware there had to be something there.'' ================================ Comments: Irradiating water with a nuclear reactor does increase the tritium levels in the water. =================================================== Message: 9 Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 23:19:00 EDT From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: FFTF-----PEIS------Comments to DOE From: Magnu96196 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hello Colette Brown, I was not able to attend the FFTF meeting in Oak Ridge, thus submitting these comments via Email. Here are my concerns. In towns like Oak Ridge, the DOE operated uranium enrichment plants for the productions of enriched uranium for reactors and weapons. In the course of these enrichment operations, facilities like the Oak Ridge Gasseous Diffusion Plant had enormous impacts on human health and environment. I do take note that FFTF does use enriched uranium fuel and that its operation and use of these fuels contribute to environmental impacts in this pathway. Oak Ridge uses extremely toxic fluorides in the production of enriched uranium and these have escaped to the environment in excess of safe levels. The Manhattan Project invented fluoride compatable compounds like freon and teflon for use in these systems and these contribute to the fluoride release problems. Plants like K-25 released UF-6 into the air and this formed HF gas which has a long range when it forms with water vapor in the air. The HF is a cumulative toxic effect like that of rat poision, calcium fluoride, in humans. Inhaling even the smallest amounts of fluorides contributes to the cumulative toxic effects into bones, thyroid, parathyroid, lungs, hearts, etc. Gasseous Diffusion Plants that enrich uranium for use in reactors like FFTF cause an extreme impact on health and environment that must be included in the PEIS of all enriched uranium reactors. Even the tons of depleted uranium tails accumulated in the operations of reactors like FFTF cause problems. Valves on these stored cylinders get crudded up and leak on their metal surface seals. These valves also use teflon seals which is a membrane technology that will pass toxic fluoride gases much like a Gore-Tex jacket and cyclic temperature changes pump fluorides into the air around these plants. Gasseous Diffusion plants also have a number of high heat failures in production that result in exothermic release of fluorides in air, HF, and also overheating of the freon used in the system and breakdown into free fluorides, just like over heating a teflon pan on a stove releases poision gas. Workers and residents around these fluoride releasing plants have significat levels of fluorides in their bodies and the effects are much like the cumulative toxic effects of dioxin. The Manhattan Project also claimed that freon was inert and in the long run this has not proven true. Freon is a fluorinated gas made especially for the UF-6 enrichment process. The US DOE is the largest user of freon because of this and the largest single contributor of environmental losses. Freon became popular and was used in aerosol cans, car air conditioners, and home heat pumps with the assurances of DOE persons that it was safe. Freon now contributes to global health effects due to its release in air and its reactions with the Sun's UV-b ionizing radiations to form free extremely toxic fluorides in air that bioconcentrate into humans globally and increase the cancer, CFS, and HIV health problems. These effects need to be accounted for in the PEIS process for reactor fuels. Fluorides play significant roles in countries with high rates of HIV transmission, via the cumulative toxic damage effects suppressing the immune defensive systems. The health effects for metals or ozone, chlorine, fluorine all involve bioconcentration of these toxic compounds into the lymph nodes that essentially shuts down the immune protection processes and leads to immune dysfunctional diseases. The process is these type toxic materials damage cell DNA, cause T-cell attacks on these damaged cells, then macrophage absorption and bioconcentraton into the lymph nodes. DOE has not accounted for these effects in its health analysis for exposures to metals or fluorides in the uranium enrichment processes. This also causes much of the safety protection levels established by DOE to not be suficient to protect worker or environmental health. This is not helped by places like Oak Ridge that try to suppress these effects because of the extreme liabilities and health damage effects they have directly caused to the workers and public. This health damage mechanism should be fully addressed in the PEIS processes for enriched uranium usage. The macrophage bioconcentration effects on human health and the fluoride damage effects were known in Oak Ridge since the mid 1980s and are the result of safety analysis that I did on the Oak Ridge Gasseous Diffusion Plant that eventually shut the plant down due to health signatures in Oak Ridge being three times the regional norm in the mid 1980's. The D&D process for these plants also contribute significant health effects, as no one ever addressed how to tear down fluoride contaminated systems. Grinding up barrier materials releases extremely volative fluorides into the air and fluride dusts that affect worker and regional health. Moist air migrations into these cut open systems also contribute to toxic fluoride emissions. The PEIS process for enriched uranium reactors should include the full environmental impacts of fluoride releases from the productions of these uranium fuels for FFTF and other reactors that use enriched fuels. Operation of the FFTF at Hanford directly affects the health of person around the uranium enrichment sites and the cost in lives and diminished health from excess cancers, CFS, and HIV must be included in the calculations for PEIS. Sincerely, Jim Phelps 1600 Buttercup Cir. Knoxville, Tn. 37921 Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
