Plutonium byproduct found near Hanford reach spawning beds

["Michael C. Baker" <mcbaker@lanl.gov>]

FYI ... Mike ... mcbaker@lanl.gov

>Salmon close to radiation Plutonium byproduct found near Hanford Reach
>spawning beds
>
>Karen Dorn Steele - The Spokane Spokesman-Review, June 27, 1999
>
>In the shadow of Hanford's old H Reactor, salmon jump as scientist Norm
>Buske's Geiger counter chatters.
>
>This swirling stretch of the Columbia River -- near the White Bluffs that
>overlook Hanford Reach -- is home to the spawning beds of fall chinook
>salmon, who return here from the ocean.
>
>At the edge of this productive fishery, Buske has made a potentially
>ominous discovery: radioactive Strontium 90 at 25 times safe levels in
>mulberry bushes whose roots reach into the river.
>
>The radiation was found only 100 feet from some of the salmon beds.
>
>Strontium 90, a byproduct of plutonium production, is a highly toxic
>element that attacks bone marrow and takes 38 years to decay to half its
>original strength.
>
>Hanford contractors have already detected a spike of hexavalent chromium, a
>powerful chemical and carcinogen, in the river at this very spot. It's
>below H Reactor's old retention basins, where radioactive cooling water and
>damaged fuel rods were dumped during the Cold War.
>
>The chromium is coming from a plume under Hanford in concentrations 25
>times higher than what is known to harm juvenile salmon, according to a
>1996 study for the U.S. Department of Energy.
>
>Buske's discovery this spring raises the stakes: Has Strontium 90 followed
>the same gravelly channel into the river as the chromium?
>
>Hanford officials say there's probably no problem. Others aren't so sure.
>
>known to harm juvenile salmon, according to a 1996 study for the U.S.
>Department of Energy.
>
>Buske's discovery this spring raises the stakes: Has Strontium 90 followed
>the same gravelly channel into the river as the chromium?
>
>Hanford officials say there's probably no problem. Others aren't so sure.
>
>"This is a big deal," said John Erickson, director of radiation protection
>for the Washington Department of Health. "It's a hot issue whenever salmon
>are involved."
>
>Buske's discovery is "extremely unsettling and of serious concern," said
>Glen Spain, Northwest regional director of the Pacific Coast Federation of
>Fishermen's Associations, the largest organization of commercial fishermen
>on the West Coast.
>
>Eighty percent of fall chinook in the Columbia River come from the Hanford
>Reach, as do 25-30 percent of all the salmon caught in Alaska, Spain said.
>
>There's no evidence that Hanford radiation is reaching salmon or their
>spawning beds, but Buske's findings warrant a thorough government
>investigation, Spain said.
>
>"People don't need to worry that fish in the Hanford Reach are radioactive,
>but this cannot be ignored," Spain said. "We owe it to our industry and to
>consumers to seriously address this."
>
>Buske reported his data in a June 23 draft report for the Government
>Accountability Project, a nonprofit group with offices in Washington, D.C.,
>and Seattle that monitors Hanford cleanup efforts.
>
>Buske is being paid $30,000 for his nuclear sleuthing for a year, said Tom
>Carpenter of GAP's Seattle office.
>
>Although the Strontium 90 measurements are preliminary, the discovery
>"raises public concerns for the health of an important salmon stock," the
>GAP report says.
>
>Washington state officials are working with Buske and DOE to decide what to
>do next, Erickson said.
>
>"It may include verification of (Buske's) results and a state sampling
>plan," Erickson said.
>
>Buske alerted Hanford and state officials to his recent findings. On Monday
>scientists from Hanford contractor Battelle Pacific Northwest National
>Laboratory and DOH accompanied Buske to the shorelines of the H Reactor.
>
>Buske used his Geiger counter to point out the most radioactive bushes.
>Then the scientists gathered samples of mulberries and leaves for further
>radiation analysis back in their labs.
>
>Battelle conducts environmental monitoring programs at Hanford for DOE.
>
>Battelle's samples won't be available for 30 days, said Ted Poston, manager
>of the laboratory's surface environmental surveillance program.
>
>"In my opinion, I think the risk (to salmon) is very low," Poston said.
>Strontium 90 in Hanford ground water doesn't reach dangerous levels, Poston
>said.
>
>DOE officials also think the salmon are safe. They've traced a plume of
>Strontium 90 under H Reactor to the river's edge, but no farther.
>
>Ground water samples from near the H Reactor in 1997 showed only two
>radiation hits over the 8-picocurie per liter drinking water limit, said
>Arlene Tortoso, DOE's ground-water project manager in Richland.
>
>"I don't see any danger to the salmon at this point," Tortoso said.
>
>DOE is containing the chromium plume with a pump-and-treat system. It has
>removed 61 kilograms of chromium from ground water near H Reactor since
>1997, Tortoso said.
>
>"We are now preventing most of it from reaching the river," she said.
>
>But DOE hasn't sampled the mulberry bushes below H Reactor where Buske
>found the Strontium 90, she said.
>
>Hanford's officials are ignoring radiation that trickles through the porous
>soils below the reactors, concentrates in the mulberry bushes, and
>reappears in river springs, Buske said.
>
>When he discovered "hot" mulberry bushes near another reactor (N Reactor)
>last year, DOE's response was to chop down the bushes, Buske said. He calls
>that reaction "killing the messenger."
>
>Buske, who holds master's degrees in physics and oceanography and once
>worked for Greenpeace, has been returning to Hanford's springs since 1983.
>
>He and his former spouse, mathematician Linda Josephson, discovered
>hundreds of additional submerged springs leaking Hanford pollutants beneath
>the river -- springs that Hanford contractors hadn't detected.
>
>Hanford sits atop two massive bars of gravel, a legacy of the last Ice Age
>when gigantic floods from ancient Lake Missoula repeatedly surged through
>Eastern Washington.
>
>Engineers from the Manhattan Project, the top-secret mission to build an
>atomic bomb during World War II, ignored Hanford's geology.
>
>They chose the site because it was far from enemy airplanes and provided
>abundant river water to cool the world's first plutonium production reactors.
>
>H Reactor was one of eight original Hanford reactors built from 1948 to
>1955 to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.
>
>Contaminated cooling water from the reactors was held in large ponds to
>allow some of the radiation to decay to safer levels and then was dumped
>back into the river -- a practice that would be illegal today.
>
>Hanford's water table is 300 feet below the Pasco gravels in a layer of
>basalt called the Ringold Formation. Channels scoured in the Ringold basalt
>flow east toward the river -- and are the source of Hanford's current river
>contamination problems.
>
>Early Hanford officials were highly optimistic about how long it would take
>for the radioactive and chemical pollutants to reach the river. In the
>early 1950s, they estimated "travel times" of 50-180 years.
>
>They were wrong.
>
>The first contaminated ground water from Hanford that went beyond the
>boundaries of the nuclear reservation was detected in January 1956. It had
>only taken seven years for radiation in the ground water to reach the
>river, according to a 1963 Hanford report.
>
>Last week, the nation's leading scientific oversight board said more
>attention should be paid to Hanford's impact on the Columbia.
>
>In a June 24 report, the National Academy of Sciences faulted DOE for not
>moving quickly enough to clean up contamination along the Hanford Reach.
>
>---
>
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