Not Just Paducah's Problem? from today's Washington Post

["Jacobus, John (OD)" <JJacobus@exchange.nih.gov>]

This appeared inside of today's Washington Post.  Apparently, the
"investigations" of contamination and adverse health effects to workers will be
expanded to include other DOE production facilities. 

----------------  
Not Just Paducah's Problem? 
Other Sites Possibly Handled Contaminated Material, Panel Told
By Joby Warrick

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 23, 1999; Page A11 

The same plutonium-laced material that contaminated a Kentucky uranium plant may
have passed through as many as nine other sites during the Cold War, sometimes
in a concentrated form that would have posed potentially higher risks to
workers, senior Energy Department officials said yesterday.

"The days of secrecy and hiding information are over," David Michaels, assistant
secretary for environment, safety and health, testified in the first
congressional committee hearing on worker safety at the Paducah Gaseous
Diffusion Plant.

Michaels, a leader of a two-month investigation of worker safety at Paducah,
pledged a thorough review of health risks at all facilities where workers may
have handled contaminated, recycled uranium in the 1950s, '60s and '70s. He
acknowledged that the government does not yet know what happened to some of the
material or whether it posed serious threats.

"We are committed to getting accurate information," Michaels said.

Members of the House Commerce oversight and investigations subcommittee
questioned government officials, contractors and workers for nearly six hours
about allegations of contamination and cover-up at Paducah, one of three U.S.
plants built to produce enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and power plants.
Republicans and Democrats expressed outrage at workers' stories of plant
conditions, and several pledged to seek compensation and cleanup from those
responsible.

"We owe it to the Paducah community to cut through the culture of silence and
deceit," said Rep. Thomas J. Bliley Jr. (R-Va.).

Current and former contractors at Paducah insisted they had complied with
government regulations on radiation safety.

"To the best of our knowledge the corporation did not mislead workers or DOE as
to the state of worker safety, environmental protection or any other matter,"
said John Jay Hummer, director of environment, safety and health at Lockheed
Martin Corp., which ran the plant from 1984 until May.

Workers who presented graphic accounts of contamination and alleged illegal
dumping at the plant said they fear that answers are coming too late.

"Many of my good friends are dead, or dying," said Garland "Bud" Jenkins, a
worker who had to have his esophagus removed after three decades at the plant.
"I always wonder whether plant conditions caused their sicknesses and deaths."

Energy Department officials said the recycled fuel blamed for the contamination
was produced at four facilities: the Hanford nuclear reservation in Richland,
Wash.; the Savannah River Site in Barnwell, S.C.; the Idaho National Engineering
Laboratory in eastern Idaho; and the West Valley Demonstration Project site near
Buffalo. A key mission of the department's probe, they said, is tracking where
and how the recycled material was used.

Michaels said a preliminary probe shows that the material was handled to varying
degrees in at least 13 facilities in 10 locations. The sites include the four
production centers; the Paducah plant and its sister uranium plants at
Portsmouth, Ohio, and Oak Ridge, Tenn.; the department's uranium foundry at
Fernald, Ohio; and two smaller facilities at Weldon Spring, Mo., and Ashtabula,
Ohio.

Department records showed unusually high levels of plutonium in some waste
shipments from Paducah, suggesting the plant's processes concentrated the
cancer-causing metal in ways that could have increased the risk to workers.
Containers of ash sent from Paducah to Fernald contained levels of plutonium
that were 100 times higher, on average, than the government has reported for
recycled uranium. In one case the level was 700 times higher.

Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company

 

-- John 


We may not be heard tonight, but we will carry out our purpose at the poll.  We
will not submit to the bullying tyranny of the featherheads.  We will not submit
to the roar of the mob.

Winston Churchill




John Jacobus, MS
Health Physicist
National Institutes of Health
Radiation Safety Branch, Building 21
21 Wilson Drive, MSC 6780
Bethesda, MD  20892-6780
Phone: 301-496-5774      Fax: 301-496-3544
jjacobus@exchange.nih.gov (W)
jenday@ix.netcom.com (H)
************************************************************************
The RADSAFE Frequently Asked Questions list, archives and subscription
information can be accessed at http://www.ehs.uiuc.edu/~rad/radsafe.html