RE: Plutonium byproduct found near Hanford reach spawning beds

["Weiner, Ruth" <rfweine@sandia.gov>]

Norm Buske has been wielding "chattering Geiger counters" and crying wolf
since at least 1984, and the Spokane Spokesman Review is notorious for this
kind of story.  How can he tell it's Sr-90 from a Geiger counter  reading?

Clearly only my own opinion

Ruth F. Weiner, Ph. D.
Sandia National Laboratories 
MS 0718, POB 5800
Albuquerque, NM 87185-0718
505-844-4791; fax 505-844-0244
rfweine@sandia.gov

\-----Original Message-----
From: Michael C. Baker [mailto:mcbaker@lanl.gov]
Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 1999 7:48 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: Plutonium byproduct found near Hanford reach spawning beds




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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