Maps Reveal Scattering of Ky. Plutonium
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52663-2000Sep30.html
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
October 1, 2000

A uranium processing plant in Paducah, Ky., spread plutonium farther around the facility than was previously known and even contaminated ground water in the area, according to newly released documents.

Maps drawn last summer but not released to federal investigators reveal that plant officials had taken hundreds of measurements over 10 years showing plutonium in soil and water more than a mile from the plant's fence. Most disturbing was the discovery of the highly dangerous metal in dozens of ground-water tests, which has potentially ominous implications for local drinking-water supplies.

The results of these tests suggest that government contractors knew far more about the extent of the contamination than was previously acknowledged, and the spread of plutonium was much more extensive than Energy Department officials reported after an investigation last fall. The probe was launched after The Washington Post reported such problems in August 1999.

Until the new documents were obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request to the Energy Department, federal officials had reported finding no plutonium in ground water other than the minute traces found everywhere from nuclear weapons testing.

A department spokesman said yesterday that investigators had no knowledge of the maps until they were alerted by reporters. However, they stressed that they believed there was nothing in the maps that suggested greater threats to the public or wildlife, partly because area residents had stopped drinking water from potentially contaminated private wells.

"We don't see any information on the maps that would have changed our approach during our environmental investigation," said Ray Hardwick, acting deputy assistant secretary for the department's Office of Oversight. "Nor do we see anything that would change our conclusions."

Department officials, however, were clearly uncomfortable at having just learned of such detailed information and promised to investigate. "Obviously, this the kind of thing that would be interest," said Don Seaborg, the department's site manager for Paducah.

Others who learned of the maps' existence questioned whether the plant and its federal overseers ever intended to tell the community the full truth.

"It's mind-boggling," said Mark Donham, an environmentalist who serves as chairman of the Paducah plant's local citizen advisory board. "For years they never wanted to talk to us about what they found in the water. Obviously this is why."

The plant in southwestern Kentucky, called the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, was built in 1952 to produce enriched uranium for nuclear bombs. Soon after it opened, Atomic Energy Commission officials began quietly supplying the plant with a dirty form of uranium containing plutonium and other radioactive metals far more hazardous than ordinary uranium. Although the tainted shipments continued for more than 20 years, most workers and neighbors never knew about plutonium until it was revealed in a Post report.

Energy Secretary Bill Richardson immediately launched an investigation, which culminated last fall in a pair of reports highly critical of safety and environmental practices of the plant's former contractors, including Union Carbide and Lockheed Martin. Independent tests confirmed that plutonium had polluted plant grounds and revealed pockets of contamination in ditches and stream banks a couple of hundred yards north of the plant's security fence.

The problems depicted in the agency's reports are mild, however, compared with the picture that emerges from the documents that came to light last week. Four maps prepared for the government were posted on the Energy Department's Web site after being released in response to an FOIA request. They show plant officials had been searching for plutonium for years--and found it nearly everywhere they looked.

The diagrams reflect what knowledgeable agency sources described as a composite of all positive test results for plutonium recorded by plant contractors since they began regular environmental sampling in 1989. The unsigned maps, bearing a handwritten date of Aug. 26, 1999, show a plant ringed with contamination that extends in some cases for well over a mile. The diagrams also show elevated levels of plutonium in the Ohio River, about two miles north of the plant.

Tests found plutonium in dozens of other places never publicly documented. Elevated levels were found, for example, a half-mile to the east, near a residential area, and to the southwest, in a wooded area now part of a state wildlife park. The concentrations in both spots were above 32,000 picocuries per kilogram, a level 1,200 times higher than normal "background" levels. By comparison, the U.S. government has set a maximum safe limit of 1,600 picocuries per kilogram when cleaning up the aftermath of nuclear testing in some Pacific islands.

Plant officials also found elevated plutonium levels in streams and ponds in more than 30 places, reporting levels as high as 17 picocuries per liter, or 170 times above background. They also detected the metal in more than three dozen ground-water samplings at concentrations as high as 59 picocuries per liter, or 590 times above background, documents showed.

The risk to the public and wildlife is unclear. Although the quantities of plutonium detected are still microscopically small, plutonium is regarded by many scientists as one of the deadliest substances known. A particle of plutonium as small as a millionth of an ounce, if inhaled, can cause a fatal cancer.

Experts who reviewed the maps for The Post said the risk to nearby residents was probably slight. Far more troubling, they said, was the plant's failure to make its findings public.

"I think people would like to know if there's plutonium in their ground water," said Tom Cochran, a senior scientist and director of nuclear programs for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer formerly with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said he was troubled that pollution was found "at all points of the compass" surrounding the plant. "It tends to suggest there was extensive contamination over long periods of time," said Lochbaum, now with the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists.

      There is Pu and Tc-99 [see dissertation by Owen Hoffman] around these plants from the processes losing process gas to the air over many decades, but it also lost something else that is being obfuscated.   The Washington Post and this reporter kicked off the radiation scares and the latest bill is a radiation bill, but the biggest health problem at gas diffusion sites is not radiation, and a chemical called fluoride and HF in particular.   This reported was hand fed ONLY the radiation information by Bob Alvarez and an inadequate bill like RECA was forced onto the unsuspecting chemically injured workers.   Joe Harding's lawyer, Kittrell, is also allied with Alavarez and typically speaks only radiation.

    Pictured in this article is Joe Harding, who worked decon in the gas diffusion plant and was inside the pipes and valves which had coatings of UF-6 and HF, which soak into coverall at all points of contact, ie ankels, knees, elbows, and wrists/hands.   Harding suffered rashes early in his employment and this is typical HF effect on skin.   HF will soak thru the skin as well and its a very dangerous and cumulative poison.  HF soaking into tissues at all the points of contact will harden the tendons and these will shear off.    This effect is seen in severe fluorosis, and this case is special because of the localized HF contact points.

    The Washington Post again is playing up the radiation angle, and omitting that the ground water around these plants is polluted with fluoride, as its rained onto the landscape for decades similar to the Pu and Tc-99, except there was much much more quantities of fluorides rain outs.

   The Post and its information suppliers obfuscate these fluoride health effects by playing up the radiation angle.   Just like Joe Harding, who wasted away with fluorides toxic effects, most of the other ills at the gas diffusion plants have HF dominately as the root of the health effects. Fluoride poisoning causes asthma, arthritis, foggy memory, fatigue, brittle bones, blood calcium upset, rashes, allergy, heart problems, thyroid damage, and the list goes on; all of which are the dominate worker health and community health effects around these plants.

  In areas like Oak Ridge the HF also damages the thyroid gland from the huge losses of HF here.   In Oak Ridge the I-131 losses of ORNL are used to obfuscate the HF effects on the thyroid here.   The HF and fluoride were also not done in the ORHASP studies here and its really obvious that should have been done.   Which calls into question the validity of a study, the studies panel, and the studies contractors, that/who omit the largest health effect for these plants.

KEVIL, Ky. -- Highly radioactive plutonium in and around the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant is at levels hundreds of times higher than previously revealed, Department of Energy maps show.

The three maps, created from water and sediment samples collected around the plant between 1988 and 1998, show levels of radiation much higher than what the government has been required to clean up in other locations. The maps were obtained by The Courier-Journal through a year-old Freedom of Information Act request.

Energy Department officials, who have insisted for years that plutonium levels at the site were insignificant, said they didn't know the maps existed.

The officials say the levels don't pose a threat to the health of nearby residents.

"Clearly it needs to be taken care of, but I don't see it as something that requires a mass exodus" of people living nearby, said Don Seaborg, the Energy Department's site manager.

But some experts who reviewed the maps said the pattern of plutonium dispersal into the environment is troubling.

John Volpe, director of Kentucky's Radiation Control and Toxic Agent's Branch, said he was "extremely concerned" by readings showing plutonium in surface water.

"I can't ever remember seeing it in the data before," Volpe said.

Ty Miller, a former health physicist in radiation control at the plant, said: "It's not a very desirable situation. But for there to be exposure, you have to have a pathway, ingestion and retention."

PLUTONIUM IS thousands of times more radioactive than uranium, but its intense alpha rays travel only a few inches and can be deflected by an envelope. It has a radioactive half-life of 24,000 years.

Even in the areas with the highest soil readings, a person could breathe nearby air or ingest the dirt or stand on it for six hours and still get far below the minimum safe radiation dose, Seaborg said.

Steven Wyatt, an Energy Department spokesman in Oak Ridge, Tenn., said Friday that the maps are difficult to interpret because they contain results from several years of testing and may not reflect current conditions.

"There is no easy way for anyone to assess what it means," he said, adding that he wasn't sure why the maps hadn't been made public. He speculated that they may have been misplaced during the transition before Seaborg was hired in January.

Wyatt said Jimmie Hodges, the previous site manager, ordered the maps in August 1999, and they were prepared as a reference for an Energy Department oversight team investigating past environmental practices at the plant. Hodges quit as site manager in September 1999.

William Eckroade, a senior Energy Department official on the investigation team, said he never saw the maps.

"We asked for maps," he said. "To our understanding, these maps did not exist. It would have sped up our review of the data."

Eckroade, who said yesterday was the first time he'd seen the maps, said the team's data was consistent with what was on the maps.

Some people whose homes are near where the maps show the higher readings say there is little consolation in the government's assurances that any risk is negligible. There are about 100 homes near the plant.

"IT'S SCARY," said Ronald Lamb of Kevil, a long-time plant critic. Lamb said the government told him in the early 1990s that "laboratory error" was the reason a minuscule amount of plutonium was found in a well on his family's property.

The maps, however, show levels of 17 picoCuries per liter in surface water taken from a creek near Lamb's home. The Environmental Protection Agency's drinking water standard is 15 picoCuries per liter.

That is 170 times higher than 0.1 "background" -- the level of plutonium already found in ground water due to fallout from atomic bomb testing.

"It makes me mad," Lamb said. "They have always told us we'd have to drink it for 75 years to get any risk. Well, there's no doubt we've had exposures, and if me and my family are the ones at risk from this, that's enough for me."

The maps show a soil reading near his house at 1,100 picoCuries per kilogram. The reading exceeds a standard set by Colorado around the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant.

Lamb said the maps of the Paducah plant area should have been made public. "There ought not to be any background levels of plutonium out here from that plant," he said.

Lamb suggested that nearby residents who have lived with the plant for 50 years be treated a Cold War veterans and provided access to health care and prescriptions at veterans hospitals.

MUCH OF the cleared land around the Paducah nuclear complex is used to grow corn and soybeans.

When The Courier-Journal inquired in the mid-1990s about traces of plutonium found in deer around the plant, the Energy Department attributed it to fallout from nuclear testing.

The recent samples show what experts call potentially troubling plutonium levels inside the plant's security fence. But, according to the maps, the highest levels are outside the fence. The measurements are taken in picoCuries per liter and kilogram, which are parts per trillion.

David Fuller, president of the Paper, Allied Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International union local 5-550 at the Paducah plant, said he hadn't seen the maps. But the reported levels troubled him.

"These levels look highly elevated, extremely high," he said.

He called on the Energy Department to disclose all it knows about the maps and plutonium at Paducah.

"It makes me suspicious that they are underreporting the amount of plutonium that was introduced at Paducah, given the way it is spread out into the environment around the plant. They talk about such a small amount was brought here. It seems to be much more of a problem than what we're being told."

Edwin Lyman, a nuclear physicist with the Nuclear Control Institute in Washington, D.C., who also has examined the maps, said they show a clear pattern of migration off site. Most migration could occur through plant discharges into streams and creeks. Flooding could have carried plutonium further onto land.

"It's quite an eye opener," Lyman said. "Unless they cap the site, it will only continue to migrate."

AFTER A disastrous fire at the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in the 1960s, Lyman said that Colorado officials insisted the Energy Department clean up plutonium levels in the off-site soil above 900 picoCuries per kilogram.

The DOE maps of Paducah show broadly separated soil readings outside the security fence of 240,000, 47,000, 33,400, 32,000, 31,000, 21,000 and 12,000.

More recently, a Rocky Flats consultant has recently recommended a cleanup standard there at above 35,000 picoCuries, Volpe said.

The Energy Department has owned the uranium enrichment plant for 50 years, concentrating on fissile uranium for nuclear bombs and more recently, for commercial nuclear power plants. During production, the plant separates the atoms of the rarer and more desired uranium 235 and uranium 238. They heat the uranium into gas, and then run it through a filter that traps the uranium 238 and leaves uranium 235. The uranium 235 becomes fuel for nuclear power plants. The uranium 238 is stored as waste near the plant.

The plutonium arrived between 1953 and 1977 from Hanford Reservation weapons reactors at Richland, Wash., and from Savannah River. Leaks occurred during storage and production.

An environmentalist and newly elected chairman of the citizens advisory board that monitors the plant's ongoing clean-up said the latest revelation is an example of DOE's credibility problems.

"Every time we try to bring it up and ask what the impact is, they always try to change the subject and downplay it," said Mark Donham of Brookport, Ill. "Don't people have a right to know this information?"

    One must keep in mind that these plants measured the Pu and Tc-99 levels and hid this information from the public, but one must also keep in mind they did not measure the fluorides emissions and conceil these as well, and these are much much worse than the plutonium problems.

    Playing up the radiation problems helps DOE to conceil the fluorides toxic problems at these plants. A particular group and persons connected with Bob Alvarez has been doing this for decades, they are nicknamed "the family". Their handly work is typically visible in the Washington Post.

    Around these plants the fluorides also fowl the well waters and fluorides highly uptake in plants and milk. This greater problem is being covered up.  Around Paducah some of the health effects involved calcium, and this is a sure sign of florides.