Thrilling application of surplus DOE funds.

[maury <maury@webtexas.com>]

Maury Siskel   maury@webtexas.com

___________

"The only way to make sure that government doesn't abuse its 

power is to not grant it in the first place." --Tom DeWeese 



PittsburghLIVE.com: Nuclear legacy studied - 

 KQV Radio [http://www.kqv.com/] 



       Monday, August 16, 2004   



Professor studies island's nuclear legacy

 

Professor Dan Volz 

Joanna Burger/For the Tribune-Review

 By Jennifer Bails

TRIBUNE-REVIEW



In the icy rough waters where the Pacific Ocean meets the Bering

Sea, the island of Amchitka still bears the radioactive waste

burden of the Cold War. In 1971, the now-defunct Atomic Energy

Commission conducted the largest underground nuclear explosion

in the nation's history on the remote Aleutian outpost to test a warhead

for missile defense. 



The nearly 5-megaton bomb named Cannikin (pronounced CAN-ick-in

and meaning "airtight container") was detonated a mile beneath

the earth, lifting Amchitka one foot in the air and drowning its

rugged cliffs in waves two stories high. Felt throughout Alaska as a

massive earthquake, the thermonuclear blast was almost 400 times more

powerful than the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima. 



More than 30 years later, it's still unclear whether radioactive

particles released underground by Cannikin and two smaller

nuclear test blasts on the island are leaking from the bomb-created

glass-lined cavity where they are supposed to be

contained. This nuclear legacy could pose a threat to marine life in the

waters around the island and to the health of people across the world

who consume fish caught there. 



Two-month expedition 



To assess this risk, Conrad "Dan" Volz, a professor at the

University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, spent

about two months this summer as project director of a $3.1

million scientific expedition to Amchitka (an Aleut word

pronounced am-CHIT-kah) paid for by the U.S. Department of

Energy. 



The DOE is moving to designate the island as a national wildlife

refuge under the stewardship of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife

Service. Before this transfer can take place, the federal

government is seeking to find out whether radioactive material

from the three nuclear tests is seeping from the bomb craters

into Amchitka's marine ecosystem. 



"There may not be a leak on Amchitka now, but it will leak

someday," said Volz, 51, of West Deer. "We need to get a

complete picture of what's going on so the government can

develop a plan for the island's future." 



The environmental and economic stakes are high. Amchitka is home to a

diverse web of marine life that includes kelp beds, king crab, bald

eagles, puffins, halibut, cod, sea otters, sea lions and killer whales.

Also, the waters off the island are popular with both commercial and

native fishermen. 



Statewide, fish and shellfish brought in more than $1.1 billion

in revenue in 2003, along with $50 million in taxes for Alaska,

according to the state's Division of Commercial Fisheries. In

addition, more than 100,000 subsistence fishermen in Alaska

depend on what they catch to survive, Volz said. 



Therefore, cancer-causing radioactive particles detected in the

heavily fished waters around Amchitka could have consequences

not only for marine life, but for the health of the Alaskan

fisheries industry, native Aleutians and seafood consumers

worldwide. 



The Amchitka research study is being conducted by CRESP, the

Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation.

Launched in 1995, CRESP is an independent partnership among

university researchers, including Volz, working to help the

federal government make decisions about cleaning up the nation's

nuclear weapons sites. Dr. Bernard Goldstein, the dean of Pitt's

Graduate School of Public Health, serves on CRESP's management

board. 



Volz came to the university about six years ago to pursue his

doctorate in public health after selling his Harmar-based

environmental services company. CRESP tapped him to lead the

Amchitka field expedition because of his project management and

outdoors experience. "What Dr. Volz accomplished on Amchitka epitomizes

environmental public health practice under very challenging conditions,"

Goldstein said. 



'Adventure of a lifetime' 



Volz is an accomplished mountaineer and river raft guide who has

trekked across Glacier National Park in Montana, hiked the

beaches of Normandy and traversed the Paintbrush Divide in the

Grand Tetons. But he calls his journey to Amchitka "the adventure of a

lifetime." 



The seismically active island with weekly earthquakes is a few

miles from the international dateline and much closer to Russia

than to mainland Alaska. Summer days are long and cold, and

violent snowstorms aren't uncommon in the middle of July. 



"You are really at the end of the earth on Amchitka," Volz said. 

In the early 1960s, the government chose the 40-mile-long island

for underground nuclear tests that were too large for Nevada. No

one lives on Amchitka, although native Aleuts on Adak Island 155

miles away fish in the surrounding waters and view the region as

their historic home. Volz accompanied two teams of about a dozen

scientists to the island this summer aboard a 160-foot trawler called

the Ocean Expedition that doubled as a research laboratory and seafaring

hotel. 



The first team was in charge of oceanographic bottom mapping and

land geophysics. They used sonar to survey the ocean bottom near the

blast cavities for fractures that might have been caused by the movement

of the island chain, seismic activity or the bomb

tests. These fractures could make it easier for radionuclides,

such as cancer-causing plutonium, uranium and cesium, to escape

into the ocean, Volz said. 



In addition, the team used electronic underwater probes to look

for indications that freshwater might be entering the ocean

bottom. This could provide evidence that radionuclide-containing

groundwater is flowing from the bomb cavities. They also measured the

depth of freshwater over the blast cavities to better predict the

position of potential seepages. 



The second group of scientists used these physical data to

select the locations where radionuclides would be most likely to

enter the sea. They worked day and night at these sites for about six

weeks to collect thousands of tissue samples from a dazzling menagerie

of algae, small invertebrates such as sea urchins, fish and seabirds. 



To do so, they braved storms on the open ocean with swells

taller than 40 feet and winds fiercer than 80 mph. They

rappelled down steep cliffs to a bald eagle's nest. They went

scuba diving in freezing cold waters. They trekked through

fields of waist-high tundra grass to search for ducks. They

caught 150-pound halibut off the rear of their boat. "Life's a little

too mundane now that I'm back in Pittsburgh," Volz said. "I keep

thinking I'd much rather be at the back end of a trawler with the waves

breaking over my head." 



The next steps 



In the next few months, the samples of marine life collected at

Amchitka will be analyzed for radioactive contamination by

researchers at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory and the

Vanderbilt University Department of Civil and Environmental

Engineering in Nashville. These results will be compared to data

gathered from an uncontaminated reference island nearby. 



Of particular concern are birds and mammals -- including humans

-- at the top of the food chain, which ingest all of the

contaminants accumulated in the tissues of their food. 



That's why commercial fishermen in Alaska and native Aleutians

are anxiously awaiting results of the Amchitka study, which will

not be published until spring, Volz said. "I sincerely hope that we find

no difference between the animals on Amchitka and those at our reference

site," Volz said. "That would take us into really having to define a

problem that might exist." 



There is no way to plug a deep underwater radiation leak. If

higher than normal levels of radionuclides are detected in the

waters around Amchitka, the best solution would be a long-term

monitoring program, Volz said. If contamination is found, restrictions

might have to be placed on fishing in certain areas, he said. Scientists

also would have to determine the real risk posed to human health by

eating fish caught near the island and issue warnings accordingly so

people could make informed dietary decisions, Volz said. 



In Pennsylvania, for example, state agencies caution against 

eating more than one serving a week of fish caught in state 

waterways because of concern about mercury and PCBs. Lessons learned in

the Aleutian Islands could be put to use at 

other so-called nuclear legacy sites, including those in 

Southwestern Pennsylvania, Volz said. 



"We want to do the things we're doing at such faraway sites 

locally," he said. "There are a number of Superfund sites in the 

region that need to be (cleaned up), and the Graduate School of 

Public Health together with CRESP has the institutional 

capability to make this happen." 



Jennifer Bails can be reached at jbails@tribweb.com 

[jbails@tribweb.com] or (412) 320-7991. 



Images and text copyright C 2004 by The Tribune-Review Publishing 

Co.

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