Nuke Sites May Not Rid Contaminants

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

Nuke Sites May Not Rid Contaminants

WASHINGTON (AP) - More than two-thirds of the government sites 
involved in decades of nuclear bomb production will never be 
completely cleaned of contamination, according to a study by the 
National Academy of Sciences. 

``Long-term stewardship will be required for over 100 of the 144 
waste sites,'' said the report released Monday by a special panel 
examining government plans to deal with this legacy of the Cold 
War years. 

And the scientific panel warned that any plan for managing long-
term isolation of contaminated sites should anticipate problems 
because the likelihood of the containment ``measures failing ... is 
relatively high.'' 

The sites are in 27 states and range from the massive Hanford 
reservation in Washington state, where government reactors made 
plutonium for the first nuclear bombs, to portions of the nation's 
federal research labs such as Argonne in Illinois and Sandia in New 
Mexico. 

The time for remediation of the sites, contaminated with radiation 
and dangerous chemicals, range from several years to nearly 50 
years. And for decades after that continued stewardship of many of 
these sites will be required, the scientists said. 

Furthermore any plan for dealing with these sites must be flexible 
with continued involvement by the federal government because ``the 
likelihood that institutional management measure will fail at some 
point is relatively high,'' said the report. 

The report was requested by the Energy Department as it develops 
long-term strategies cleaning up materials that in some cases are 
expected to remain dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. 

``The Academy did a good job at pointing out the many things we 
have to look at,'' said Gerald Boyd, the department's deputy 
assistant secretary for science and technology. 

Boyd said the department agrees that many of these sites cannot 
be abandoned even after the contamination is clearly contained. 

``We can't walk away from these sites. We can't turn our backs to 
them. That's what they (the Academy) are recommending to us 
and that's what we're planning to do.'' 

While some areas likely will never be clean enough to be used, 
other areas - or parts of facilities - are expected to be cleaned 
sufficiently of contamination for restricted uses, the scientists said. 

The DOE strategy involves two stages: first containment of the 
contamination and remediation, a process already underway. 
Secondly, long-term ``stewardship'' of sites where residual 
contamination will be left for the foreseeable future, perhaps 
always. 

But such long-term management is full of uncertainties, the report 
said. 

``At many sites future risk from residual wastes cannot be 
predicted with any confidence because numerous underlying 
factors that influence the character, extent and severity of long-
term risks are not well understood,'' said the report. 

Thomas Leschine of the University of Washington, chairman of the 
committee that wrote the report, said that as a result the 
government model for long-term stewardship of these sites must be 
flexible and anticipate failure. 

``Understanding this and developing a highly reliable organizational 
model that anticipates failure while taking advantage of new 
opportunities for further remediation and isolation of contaminants 
remains a significant challenge for DOE,'' said Leschine. 

Mary English, a researcher at the University of Tennessee-
Knoxville, and the committee's vice chair, said that any plans for 
these sites ``will need to be periodically revisited'' because of 
changing conditions and new technological developments. 

The Energy Department must ``acknowledge gaps'' in its technical 
capabilities today as they would be used to contain and isolate 
radioactive wastes hundreds of years into the future, the study said.
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Sandy Perle					Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100   				    	
Director, Technical				Extension 2306 				     	
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Division		Fax:(714) 668-3149 	                   		    
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