oak ridge to recycle radioactive metals

["Charp, Paul" <pac4@cdc.gov>]

Radioactive recycling OK'd 

By Laura Frank / Tennessean Staff Writer 

Tennessee officials have given the
              OK for radioactive metal from  nuclear bomb-making machinery
to  be recycled for such everyday  household products as forks, frying  pans
and teeth braces -- drawing  strong protest from two  congressmen and a
federal judge.
         The state's action may be illegal, the congressmen say,  and it
leaves the public with no way  to know whether metal objects in  their homes
and workplaces are  made from recycled radioactive  metal.
  State officials acknowledge the  action makes Tennessee attractive  as a
nationwide recycling center for  radioactively contaminated metals,  but
they insist the precedent they've  set is safe.
  The state's approval of the recycling  plan set a standard even federal
regulators have been wary to set,  and the state did so without any  public
input.
  "Tennessee is being used to  basically distribute radioactive  materials
to homes and workplaces  throughout the entire U.S.," said  Reuben Guttman,
an attorney for  Oak Ridge nuclear weapons site  workers who sued the
government  to try to stop the plan.
  U.S. Reps. John Dingell, D-Mich.,  and Ron Klink, D-Pa., have called for
an immediate meeting with officials  from the Energy Department, which  owns
the Oak Ridge site, and the  U.S. Nuclear Regulatory  Commission, which
oversees nuclear  activities. Dingell and Klink made  their request in
letters sent Friday to  Energy Secretary Bill Richardson  and the head of
the NRC, copies of  which were obtained by The  Tennessean.
  The congressmen are upset that the  Tennessee Department of  Environment
and Conservation  approved a foreign-owned  company's experimental process
to  recycle metals from Oak Ridge. That  company, British Nuclear Fuels
Limited, is contracted to clean some  of the nuclear age's most
contaminated facilities at Oak Ridge.  The company then plans to sell the
recycled metal on the open market.
  The new recycling plan could expose  the public to some radiation, said
Mike Mobley, director of radiation  health for the state Environment and
Conservation Department. But the  metal will go through a cleaning  process,
and the company's  estimates show the level of leftover  radiation would be
so low it would  pose no danger, he said.
  At least one top scientist questions  that, however. Even if the amount of
radiation left in the metal is small, it  would be nearly impossible to
control  or guarantee safety of the people  using those items, said Evan B.
Douple, director of the National  Academy of Sciences' Board of  Radiation
Effects Research.
  "The potential problem is, as more  and more radioactive material is
floating around in the marketplace,  you wonder where it's ending up,"
Douple said. "Nobody keeps a  Geiger counter in the house to check  out
their stainless steel silverware  and their frying pan."
  Douple said that he had not seen  British Nuclear Fuels Limited's
Tennessee plan but that the  academy was "very curious" and  would be
watching.
  Mobley said he is confident in the  safety of the plan, adding: "All I can
say is you'd have to have an  extraordinary amount of this metal in  your
home to cause harm."
  But the federal judge who heard the  union's lawsuit said that if the plan
proceeds, "the potential for  environmental harm is great."  U.S. District
Judge Gladys Kessler  ruled June 29 in Washington, D.C.,  that federal law
prevented her from  stopping the project, but she called it  "startling and
worrisome" that the  public had no input or scrutiny before  Tennessee
approved the plan.
  The judge also noted the recycling  process is experimental and she saw
no evidence the process for  removing radioactivity is safe or will  work.
  The criticism of the recycling plan  comes at the same time the U.S.
Department of Energy has ordered  an investigation into whether a
different, decades-old DOE recycling  plan exposed uninformed workers to
highly radioactive plutonium at Oak  Ridge and its sister plants in
Paducah, Ky., and Portsmouth,  Ohio.
  Dingell and Klink said the Energy  Department and British Nuclear  Fuels
Limited purposely used  Tennessee regulators to avoid public  scrutiny and
bypass DOE orders  that would have prevented the plan.
  "The action by the Tennessee  Department (of Environment and
Conservation) -- apparently  anticipated, aided and abetted by  BNFL and the
Department of Energy  -- may well be a violation of federal  law," the two
members of the House  Commerce Committee wrote to  Richardson, the Energy
secretary.  "... This move by BNFL, DOE and  the state of Tennessee has
long-term consequences."
  Guttman, an attorney for the  Nashville-based Paper,  Allied-Industrial,
Chemical & Energy  Workers International Union, said:  "Everything has been
sort of snuck in  the back door here."
  British Nuclear Fuels Limited has a  $200 million DOE contract to clean
three stadium-size buildings at Oak  Ridge and recycle at least 100,000
tons of contaminated metals there,  including 6,000 tons of radioactive
nickel. The buildings, and the  machinery in them, were used to  make
nuclear weapons fuel.
  A company spokesman says its  subcontractor, Manufacturing  Sciences
Corp., commissioned a  safety analysis to estimate how  much radiation
consumers could be  exposed to if the metal were  recycled into such items
as hip joint  replacements, orthodontic braces,  false teeth, eyeglass
frames and  flatware.
  "The radiation dose someone would  get from the amount of X-rays  needed
to install a hip joint  replacement would be 90 times  greater than the
lifetime dose from a  hip joint made from the recycled  nickel," said
spokesman David  Campbell.
  The contaminated nickel at Oak  Ridge is different from the rest of the
metal because it is in a form that is  still classified and must be melted
down before it can be sold on the  market. There currently is no federal
standard for releasing metal like the  nickel that is radioactively
contaminated not just on the surface,  but also internally. This is called
"volumetric" contamination.
  Kessler, in her June 29 opinion,  pointed out that the U.S.  Environmental
Protection Agency  and the NRC, "after taking years to  try to develop
national standards,  were unable to do so because of  (the) inability to
develop consensus  in the scientific community."
  In the absence of national standards,  Kessler said, the Tennessee
Department of Environment and  Conservation, "which has neither the
resources nor the extensive  expertise of a national regulatory  agency, is
the only body with any  supervisory power."
  Mobley acknowledges his agency's  lack of resources, bemoaning the  need
for newer and more equipment  to keep up with Tennessee's  burgeoning
nuclear industry. But, he  says, the state is one of 30 given  regulatory
power by the NRC, and  its actions on the metal recycling are  an adaptation
of the NRC guidelines  that exist for surface contamination.  He says public
input on the action  was not required by law because it  was simply an
amendment to  Manufacturing Sciences Corp.'s  existing license.
  "In a sense, it may be true" that  Tennessee has set a national
precedent, Mobley said. "But it's  really just an addition to the kinds of
things we're doing here in  Tennessee. This is just another step  in the
process." 

Paul A. Charp, Ph.D.
CDC/ATSDR
Senior Health Physicist
Division of Health Assessment and Consultation
Federal Facilities Assessment Branch
1600 Clifton Rd (E-56)
Atlanta, Georgia 30333
(404) 639-6004, fax 6075

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