Abstract
Remember the North Gate
I was astonished to read a misleading report, “Sellafield, Salmon, and the Irish Sea,” in the September/October Bulletin.
The author, Andy Oppenheimer, asserts that following the 1957 Windscale fire, the site was renamed Sellafield at a cost of millions. The truth is that in 1971 the British government decided to separate the commercial, “reprocessing contract” side from the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), and British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL) was formed. In 1981, the BNFL-owned section of Windscale was renamed Sellafield. The Windscale site is still there and houses the UKAEA, something which can be clearly observed when approaching the North Gate entrance.
More specifically, Oppenheimer states that BNFL is using concern over a possible terrorist threat as a reason to withhold the details of radioactive leaks found in its 44-year-old cooling pond. But searching the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive's Nuclear Installations Inspectorate's (NII) Web sites (environment-agency.gov.uk; hse.gov.uk/nsd) or contacting the NII directly will give access to a mountain of information on this and many more subjects relating to Sell-afield. Those sites reveal that the author's claim that “the material stored in the tanks is technetium 99” is untrue. A simple search on the Environment Agency's Web site indicates that the contents of the tanks are “technetium 99-bearing waste,” not technetium 99.
Ashfield, Workington
Cumbria, Britain
I accept the distinction made between the UKAEA Windscale site and the major reprocessing facility known as Sellafield. The Windscale reactor was shut down in 1981 and now serves as Britain's demonstration project for decommissioning a power-generating reactor. Although UKAEA refers to Sellafield/Wind-scale as “an industrial complex,” the entire site is to all intents and purposes known as Sellafield, and most people are unfamiliar with specific entrances such as the North Gate of the plant. The name of the entire site has never been officially changed, but the operators were clearly trying to put distance between the 1957 Wind-scale fire and the nuclear plant as a whole.
As to the technetium 99: Large volumes, discharged into the marine environment from the Sellafield site every year, have given rise to international concern. In the Irish Sea, high concentrations of technetium 99 have been detected in both lobsters and seaweed. Both the Norwegian and the Irish governments have strongly opposed the discharges. With a halflife of 213,000 years, technetium 99 will remain in the marine environment for a very long time. Sellafield's discharges have been detected as far north as the Barents Sea.
The owner of the Sellafield site, BNFL, first reported the presence of small amounts of technetium 99 in the groundwater inside the site, but claimed that the level was so low that it posed no threat to safety–and BNFL also asserted that there were no indications that the material had moved off site. In 2002, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) reported that technetium had been detected in boreholes outside as well as inside the site. Small volumes were leaking, they said, and the event was classified “level 0” on the International Nuclear Event Scale. However, the actual figures for concentrations found in the boreholes are currently unavailable.
According to BNFL and the HSE, the tanks inside a 40-year-old storage building, B-241, are the source of the leakage. These now-redundant concrete tanks are used for “settling out” the treated reprocessing wastes from the plutonium product and finishing streams. HSE and the Environment Agency undertook an audit of B-241 in 1995. Their joint report described the tank complex as holding 7,400 cubic meters of waste with a total solids content of 3,000 metric tons. HSE demanded that BNFL find the exact source of the leakages, and that it submit a report on how the company planned to stop them. BNFL plans to empty the old tanks, but how the stored liquid waste will be treated is not yet decided.
In June 2003, BNFL agreed to reroute the treatment of “medium-active concentrate.” The concentrate is currently treated at the Enhanced Actinide Removal Plant, where alpha-emitting radionuclides–americium, cesium, and plutonium–are separated. The process does not remove the technetium, however, so after treatment, it is discharged into the sea. Under the new agreement, it is expected to be kept on site. The legal bid lodged by the government of Ireland against the plant is ongoing.
Oops
In an otherwise illuminating article on Britain's consideration of northern Canada as a site for early Cold War weapons tests (“O Lucky Canada,” July/August Bulletin), authors John Clearwater and David O'Brien misstate a fact that should be corrected. They report: “In 1950 the dangers of nuclear testing were still largely unknown. Las Vegas residents watched the Nevada tests from deck chairs.”
The first atomic test in Nevada was not detonated until January 27, 1951.
Austin, Texas
A bad mix
Siting bioweapon research at the Energy Department's weapons labs (“Mixing Bugs and Bombs,” September/October Bulletin) is yet another disconcerting policy decision in the seemingly endless list by the current administration. Unilateralism, military adventurism, economic blackmail, and treaty withdrawals are just a few of the things that only the shortsighted could believe will enhance national security. These actions only foster mistrust, hatred, and fear among friend and foe alike.
With no sign of moderation of policy in sight, one can only hope that in a year's time, a new, rational, and farsighted administration will be elected to office.
Quartz Hill, California
Keeping promises
In “The NPT: Can This Treaty Be Saved?” (September/October Bulletin), Richard Stanley and Michael Ryan Kraig conclude that “stopping the spread of [weapons of mass destruction] and reducing existing stockpiles will only become a reality if the rule of law is strengthened.”
On August 7, Secretary of State Colin Powell's announcement that “the president has no intention of testing nuclear weapons” went unnoticed in the United States–but not elsewhere. Russian President Vladimir Putin responded on the same day, saying that Russia would also respect the not-yet-binding test ban: “We intend to continue to adhere to our commitments, but on several conditions, the most important of which is similar adherence to these commitments from the other nuclear powers.” This tit-for-tat reaction demonstrates that the world is watching and waiting for U.S. leaders to reduce nuclear dangers.
The handful of states with nuclear weapons–especially the two or three most likely to use them against the United States or sell them to terrorists–are rightly of greatest nuclear concern. But it is precisely because these threats are so serious that we must not forget that more than 180 countries have committed not to acquire nuclear weapons and that many could reverse this decision quickly.
Some say that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is just one more piece of paper threatening to lull the United States into a false sense of security in a dangerous world. But like most contracts, the NPT depends more on its terms than it does on trust. The NPT employs inspections, which are not perfect, but add international cooperation to U.S. national capabilities, and nuclear proliferation becomes more expensive, time-consuming, easily detected, and likely to fail.
At the same time, the NPT affords most countries who keep their promise not to build nuclear weapons the confidence that their neighbors will do the same, and it encourages a global norm against the development of more nuclear arsenals. It allows us to identify violators as “rogues” and distinguish their behavior from others. It's a great deal for the United States, which gets to keep its nuclear weapons (as long as any other country has one) while most of the world goes without.
The catch is that the United States must try to get rid of all nuclear weapons. There is no penalty for failure, but failing to try is a violation that invites more violations, and the United States has been teetering on the edge. In 1995, when the NPT turned 25 years old and the parties came together to debate its future at the United Nations, the United States promised not to conduct any more nuclear tests and to join the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by 1996 (locking in a massive U.S. advantage). Instead, the Senate rejected the CTBT.
Although the United States has not yet violated the central piece of its promise with a nuclear explosion, President Putin made it clear that on nuclear testing, where America leads, the world will follow. His message: If the United States wants to keep the nuclear club small, it should keep its promises.
The Institute on Religion and Public Policy
Washington, D.C.
Access still denied
Last year, in “Access Denied” (March/April 2002), Brian Costner and Paul Rogers chronicled the shutdown of public access to previously unrestricted documents from the Energy Department and other federal agencies. After almost two years, little has been done to return information to the public domain.
My chronic beryllium disease was diagnosed in 1993, and soon after I began researching the illness and conditions that caused it. One of my best resources was Energy's Oak Ridge Public Reading Room (www.oro.doe.gov/Foia/DOE_Public_Reading_Room.htm) and its volumes of information released under Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary's declassifi-cation efforts.
As my quest expanded into information concerning other illnesses, and as the roots of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA) emerged, the information became invaluable as a reference and database.
Before the attacks on September 11, 2001, this Web site held more than 10,000 beryllium-related documents alone. Thousands more were specific to other potential health hazards, including radiation, mercury, and nickel. Information was available from dozens of other sites, including Hanford, Washington; Pa-ducah, Kentucky; the Argonne Lab outside Chicago; and Rocky Flats, near Denver.
Following September 11, the Oak Ridge Web site was shut down, and the documents withheld pending review. This has happened in parallel with the flood of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for employment records and medical information needed to file EEOICPA claims.
Locally, the FOIA office, normally responsive to requests, has been bogged down by sheer volume and a reduction in personnel. These circumstances have left petitioners with the old familiar feeling that information is being hidden behind a veil of national security.
Interestingly, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is currently completing its public comment period on the possible reduction of allowable beryllium exposure limits in private industry. Energy recently lowered exposure limits by a factor of 10 (Beryllium Rule, 10 CFR 850), and other government agencies are expected to follow. The public docket on OSHA's Web site contains scores of the very documents which were removed from the Reading Room Web site.
Documents that link a particular job or material to a specific building or location receive particular scrutiny. Energy is concerned that documents of this type may involve classified information or could present targeting information to terrorists. However, the same information is requested of EEOICPA claimants in a dose-reconstruction telephone interview, which determines the work-relatedness of cancer claims.
For those of us still holding “Q” clearances and working in Energy's weapons complex, as well as attempting to aid EEOICPA claimants, this is a confusing and frustrating situation.
Oak Ridge, Tennessee
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Update
In the January/February 2001 Bulletin, Jessica Stern reported on Pakistan's radical religious schools, or madrisas. “By educating, clothing, housing, and feeding the poorest of the poor for free, the madrisas fill a desperate need,” wrote Stern.
But they sometimes serve a darker purpose. “Madrisas are the supply line for jihad,” Sunni leader Mujeeb-ur-Rehman Inqalabi told Stern. Of tens of thousands of madrisas, Pakistani officials estimated that 10-15 percent “promote extremist ideologies.”
Inqalabi also told Stern, “Pakistan and Afghanistan are now the only countries where it is possible to preach jihad in the schools.”
Nearly three years later, there is a third. “The use of a small network of Indonesian boarding schools as a recruiting avenue for the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group has sent alarm bells ringing in the West” (Christian Science Monitor, September 16).
Imam Samudra, convicted for commanding the deadly Bali nightclub bombing, told investigators that Indonesian Islamic boarding schools, pesantren, are being used as recruitment channels. Three men on trial for carrying out the Bali attack helped run a pesantren in East Java.
In the May/June Bulletin, Daniel Hirsch, David Lochbaum, and Edwin Lyman reported on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) “dirty little secret”–its poor job of overseeing security at the 104 U.S. nuclear power plants.
A September General Accounting Office (GAO) study also found serious flaws in NRC plant security regulation. It found NRC drills to defend against attacks were unrealistic: They used more personnel to defend the plant than during a normal day, and the “attacking” forces were untrained in terrorist tactics. The GAO recommended “promptly restoring annual security inspections and revising force-on-force exercises.”