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New report on LANL contamination
Dr. Marvin Resnikoff has been an activist for many years and is advising the lawyers who are representing the family of the man who died – alleging his early death to exposures as a child playing in the LA/P Canyon system. Marvin wrote the definitive Deadly Defense about the DOE nuclear weapons complex in the late 1980s. In the early days of CCNS, Deadly Defense was our bible.
Recently, Marvin and his team submitted a proposal to the Buckman Board in response to the RFP for an independent assessment. They did not receive the award; ChemRisk did. Nevertheless, Marvin didn’t want that work to go to waste. He wrote an article for his newsletter, which is below. It includes their recommendations to ChemRisk about how to proceed. Some of the recommendations are already being done through the Consent Order and hopefully through the Communities for Clean Water lawsuit.
His 80-page report will be available soon on his website. It may be useful for us.
Joni
http://rwma.com/newsletter_november_2009.1.htm
Los Alamos Waste – You Can’t Sweep It Under the Rug or a Concrete Slab
With Santa Fe County’s plans to obtain additional drinking water from the Rio Grande River, there is renewed concern about the levels of radioactive and toxic chemical concentrations in the river. The project, called the Buckman Direct Diversion Project, would divert Rio Grande waters to complement underground wells and a reservoir presently in use. The contamination in the river arises from surface and ground waters from Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The lab originated in 1943 as one of the Manhattan Project locations established for the development of the atomic bomb. Originally, the Laboratory consisted of an array of activities relating to plutonium work and weapon component fabrication, as well as weapon testing sites. Since World War II the Laboratory has continued to serve as a weapons development location, but has also been used for other nuclear work such as nuclear reactor research, biophysics, and radiobiology. Since the beginning of its operations LANL has disposed of millions of gallons of radioactive and hazardous waste throughout the laboratory grounds and in the canyons that surround the laboratory. This report summarizes the available information about the radioactive waste disposal history at LANL and assesses the waste inventories of various on- and off-site LANL disposal areas.
Local Geology
Los Alamos and its neighboring areas are located on the mesas and in the canyons of the Pajarito Plateau, which slopes east toward the Rio Grande. Some of the major canyons of concern, addressed in this paper because of their uses as waste release sites, include the Acid Canyon, Pueblo Canyon, Los Alamos Canyon, Sandia Canyon, Mortandad Canyon and Water Canyon (See Figure 1, p.1 and Section 5 p.49). In addition to their connection between the top of the plateau and the Rio Grande River, some of the canyons are covered with alluvial deposits, which are unsaturated and have the capacity to absorb large volumes of liquid to the subsurface water table. This geology allows the possibility that the waste released on top of the plateau has or will descend to the river through streams, subsurface water movement, and sediment erosion.
Disposal of Radionuclides
The waste discharge at LANL began in 1944 during the development of the atomic bomb. Due to time pressures, secrecy of the project, and general lack of knowledge at the time about the dangers of radioactive materials, the laboratory took poor precautions in its disposal of radioactive and other hazardous wastes during its early years of operations. Initially, the waste, in the form of liquids, drums and cardboard boxes, was released into the canyons or deposited into unlined pits completely untreated; poor records were maintained about the volumes and activities of these releases. By the 1960s, the waste disposal practices significantly improved and better records were kept.
In order to reconstruct the inventories of radionuclides present at Los Alamos, it is necessary to assess all potential contamination sources including officially designated waste disposal sites, canyons into which liquid waste was released, major accidents that have occurred throughout the years, testing and firing sites, and air particulate releases from vents and stacks.
The Laboratory is divided into 74 sections, referred to as Technical Areas (Figure 2, p.2). Fairly complete information exists about the operations of each site, which allows for identifying the specific locations of firing sites and radioactive hazard buildings like waste treatment plants, plutonium processing labs, and nuclear reactors. Most of the waste disposed of at LANL is buried at 24 officially designated locations, Material Disposal Areas, situated at selected technical areas. These MDAs range in size, in the type and amount of radioactive waste deposited, and in their potential environmental hazard. Most MDAs hold solid waste, but some contain barrels with liquids and/or absorption beds, although LANL disposed of the majority of liquid waste into the aforementioned canyons. In the earlier years the waste disposal practices were crude. Liquid waste was not treated (Figure 36, p.57) and the solid waste was deposited into unlined pits and packaged in plastic bags or in cardboard boxes sealed with masking tape (Figure 27, p. 39). As practices improved, LANL began treating the liquid waste and sometimes solidifying it with cement. Likewise, some of the disposal shafts were lined with 12 inches of concrete (such as at MDA C) or covered with concrete caps (such as at MDA H). This report compiles the available information about the waste disposed of at each Material Disposal Area and into the three canyons, including any recent soil and water sampling results. Some of the sites with the highest deposits of radioactive contaminants include MDA’s C, G, and H with respective inventories of up to 49,679 curies, 1,383,700 curies, and 391 curies. Routine sampling of soil and water is regularly performed and radionuclide contamination above background levels is often found at the burial sites (e.g. TA-21).
Little information is available regarding the airborne radionuclide releases from LANL, in the early days of LANL operation. Some of the point sources would include plutonium from Pu-processing buildings, gaseous fission products from reactors, and radioactive lanthanum tests. Much of the early equipment and plutonium-processing procedures were crude by modern-day standards. Hundreds of stacks throughout the laboratory released unfiltered gaseous waste directly from plutonium-processing hoods. The LAHDRA Project Team has developed a system of priority indices and determined that between 1944 and 1966, plutonium was the most significant contaminant released. LAHDRA estimated that the total amount of plutonium released by LANL throughout its history, even with the improved filtering systems in later years, exceeded 170 curies. Airborne radionuclides have the potential to settle on the ground, depending on meteorological conditions of the area and size of the particles, and can present similar dangers as disposed of solid and liquid waste.
Recommendations
We advise ChemRisk and AMEC to thoroughly identify the original and current contaminant inventories within the LANL site and the neighboring areas. It is essential to identify and model the geological/hydrological formations of the Pajarito Plateau and its surrounding canyons in order to most accurately assess LANL-origin contaminant movement and potential risks to the residents of Santa Fe County. Finally, we recommend designing an environmental monitoring schedule for the disposal areas to monitor future contaminant mobilization and migration, and developing criteria when emergency measures should be taken.
The full report will be available for download shortly.
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Joni Arends, Executive Director
Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety
107 Cienega Street
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
Tel (505) 986-1973
Fax (505) 986-0997
www.nuclearactive.org
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