US military mulls cleanup of plutonium-laden soil

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

US military mulls cleanup of plutonium-laden soil

HONOLULU (Reuters) - Officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife 
Service fear the Department of Defense will not do enough to clean up 
plutonium-contaminated soil on tiny Johnston Island in the Pacific, 
where three failed nuclear missile tests exposed the wildlife refuge 
to radiation 38 years ago. 

This week, the Defense Department is to present its proposed level of 
radiation cleanup for the island, the largest of four islands in the 
Johnston Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. 

The clean-up of the island about 700 miles southwest of Honolulu is 
tied to the military's departure from the island after decades of use 
as a refueling station and, later, as a major Pacific storage site 
for chemical weapons. 

Johnston Island was used as a launch site in 1962 for 36 high-
altitude nuclear missile explosions. However, one blew up on the 
launch pad and two others above the island, contaminating the soil 
with plutonium. 

Military officials have put all the contaminated soil behind a fenced 
area on the island and currently have 45,000 metric tons of so-called 
``hot soil.'' 

Defense officials are working with the Fish and Wildlife service as 
well as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, but have not 
reached an agreement with them as to what level of contamination will 
be safe to leave behind after the cleanup. They also have not settled 
on how the soil would be cleaned and wildlife protected. 

Rob Shallenberger, a deputy project leader with the wildlife service 
office in Honolulu, told Reuters the military must take 
responsibility because the island had been a pristine refuge for 
seabirds and marine life when it took over in 1934. 

He said defense officials have discussed various cleanup options: 
Burying any contaminated soil under coral, sealing it in concrete or 
removing it entirely. 

Shallenberger said he was worried about undiscovered pockets of 
contamination beneath the surface. 

``What is most spectacular at Johnston is the coral reef,'' he said. 
``It is a wonderful marine system isolated in the Pacific. It is a 
special area,'' he said. 

``Things will leach into it. The question is what the affect will be. 
We are very concerned that we know very little about what happens in 
the marine environment under these circumstances,'' Shallenberger 
said. 

Harry Stumpf, an environmental engineer with the Defense Threat 
Reduction Agency, which is organizing the cleanup for the Defense 
Department, said the agency had proposed a cleanup level of radiation 
that ``is safe for unrestricted use''. 

``One of the options we are considering is to leave the material on 
site in a stabilized form,'' he said. ``Basically, bury it.'' 

That could cost about $2 million, he said. Removing the soil and 
burying it in a remote location would cost more than $40 million. 

``It would have to be shipped by barge to Honolulu, then to the U.S. 
through a populated port and then across public highways by truck or 
train,'' Stumpf said. ``We would have to get special authorization 
from congress to do that. I don't think it would be well received.'' 

Defense officials, the Fish and Wildlife service and the EPA hope to 
reach an agreement by this fall but Shallenberger was skeptical. 

``We don't have a lot of expertise in this, so we're having to learn 
on the run,'' he said. ``I am concerned we might make assumptions 
that don't turn out to be true.'' 

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Sandy Perle					Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100   				    	
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