U.S. Balks at Cleanup of Hazardous Canal Zone Sites

By LARRY ROHTER, October 14, 1998 NY Times
http://search.nytimes.com/search/daily/ (search "uranium AND depleted")

PANAMA CITY, Panama -- For nearly a century, the U.S. military has used the jungle terrain surrounding the Panama Canal as a testing ground for explosives and chemical weapons. Now, a little more than a year before those ranges must be handed back to Panama, Washington is balking at cleaning up some of the most hazardous of the ordnance its troops are leaving behind.

The deadly debris consists mostly of bombs and other unexploded munitions that for decades were tested at three ranges near the west bank of the canal. But the dangerous materials either tested or stored here also include lethal nerve gases, mustard and phosgene gases dating back to World War II, biological agents and, for a short time earlier this decade, depleted uranium projectiles.

The United States, which engineered Panama's secession from Colombia in 1903 in order to build the canal, is required to give up all its military bases here by Dec. 31, 1999. With that deadline fast approaching, though, Washington and Panama are locked in an apparently intractable dispute over to what extent the United States must clean up its mess.

The issue was supposed to have been settled by the Panama Canal Treaties, which were signed in 1977 and require the United States to pay for any environmental cleanup. But faced with a task more complicated and expensive than anticipated, U.S. military officials now contend that the treaties in fact exempt them from carrying out the comprehensive cleanup Panama demands.

The treaties oblige the United States "to take all measures to insure insofar as may be practicable that every hazard to human life, health and safety is removed" from all areas being returned to Panama. The treaties also require the United States to "gather and provide information concerning environmental hazards caused by its activities in Panama" and to "provide compensation for irremediable environmental damage."

Panamanian officials say that since 1979, when formal sovereignty over the former Canal Zone was transferred from the United States to Panama, at least 21 people have been killed by U.S. ordnance left on the ranges. The Pentagon contests that figure, saying its records indicate only seven people, all of them scrap dealers digging for metal in off-limits areas, have died.

W. Lewis Amselem, the U.S. co-chairman of a joint working group set up to deal with range issues, acknowledged in September that "a small part of the reverted areas will not be available for unrestricted use." That land may amount to perhaps as much as 7,500 acres, or 2 percent of the territory being handed over. But he and other U.S. officials argue that every "practicable" step to restore the ranges is already being taken and say they simply cannot do what Panama wants.

"The issue is not time and it is not money," Col. David Hunt, the chief treaty implementation officer for the U.S. Southern Command said in an interview in Panama. "The issue is the technology available to do the job safely while protecting the environment."

Panama disputes that interpretation, pointing to successful environmental restoration efforts in other parts of the world, including the United States itself. The cleanup operation here may be proving more costly and time-consuming than initially expected, Panamanian officials maintain, but that does not exempt Washington from its treaty obligations.

"We believe that the only criterion that should prevail is the technical feasibility of a cleanup," said Jorge Ritter, who is both minister of foreign affairs and minister of canal affairs in the Panamanian government, in an interview. "There should not be an economic limitation for the United States to clean up so small an area in relation to those it has used on its own territory and elsewhere."

Panama also complains of what it describes as the unwillingness of U.S. officials to provide information on what types of tests were conducted at what sites and on what dates. That information is needed, they say, not only to assure that the cleanup is comprehensive but also to dispel Panamanian suspicions that defoliants like Agent Orange were also secretly tested here in the 1960s before their use in Vietnam.

To Pentagon planners, the extensive U.S. military presence here and Panama's tropical climate made the Canal Zone and its environs an ideal testing ground for all sorts of conventional, chemical and even biological weapons. The United States still operates a Tropical Test Center here and as recently as 1993 conducted experiments with the deadly herbicides tebuthiuron, glyphosate and hexazinone to determine their efficiency in coca eradication in antidrug efforts in South America.

"They have been telling us they will be making information available for as long as I can remember," said Rodrigo Noriega, a Panamanian Foreign Ministry official. "I asked for a precise list of sites early in 1997, but we still have not been given meaningful information regarding chemical and other testing activities."

Panama's concerns about the ordnance problem are shared by Rick Stauber, once an instructor at the Army's bomb disposal school, who initially was contracted by the U.S. military to assess the extent of the damage. But Stauber later became a consultant to the Panamanian government after, he said in a recent interview, the Pentagon pressed him to limit the scope of his investigation and then rejected his findings.

"As I did my investigation and developed my report, I was finding things that were, to say the least, a little disturbing," Stauber said. "The problem was that the recipient of the report was not eager to see what I was uncovering. There were a lot more problems than they wanted to admit to and I opened a can of worms."

U.S. officials deny Stauber's contention that "a lot of information in my report was changed and set in a biased situation" so it would conform to their own pre-established conclusions. But they acknowledge that it has been, as a senior U.S. official put it, "painfully slow and frustrating getting cooperation" from U.S. military authorities, whose interest in Panama seems to be waning as the date of their withdrawal approaches.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that some chemical weapons tests and exercises took place outside the Canal Zone, most notably in four major installations the Panamanian government made available during World War II. Information about those areas, which were returned to Panama after the war, is especially scarce.

Panama has never had a registry of the chemical tests conducted on its territory, Ritter said, "so we need to be clearly informed by the United States about the testing of chemical weapons in Panama."

While the canal treaties do not obligate the United States to clean up areas outside the former Canal Zone, another treaty does. Both the United States and Panama have joined the international Chemical Weapons Convention, which requires them to halt the manufacture and use of all chemical weapons and to destroy their remaining stockpiles. One section of that pact states that when materials found in one country are determined to have come from another, the original user-country is required to clean up the site.

Hunt argued that for environmental reasons Panama would be wise to leave alone the jungle and watershed areas it is pressing the United States to repair, since any tampering "will affect the canal, rainfall and temperatures." He and other U.S. officials also maintained that whatever chemical weapons may have been buried, sunk or lost in Panama no longer pose a danger because they have dissipated.

Stauber disagrees.

"The idea of a limited shelf life is nothing but a red herring and a direct contradiction of the truth," he said. "As long as field munitions are in a container, they are still as good today as 50 or 60 years ago."
 

Aumento del traffico delle scorie nucleari (settembre 1998)

Increase of illegal traffic of radioactive scrap metal

Although the overall illegal traffic of nuclear material has been decreasing since 1994, illegal scrap metal imports into Europe are increasing. For the first time illegal traffic was the theme of an international conference held in Dijon (France) organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

(498.4920) WISE Amsterdam - Experts of 83 countries, the European Commission, Interpol and of the World Customs Organization participated at the conference. This illegal traffic covers radioactive material stolen or abandoned by smugglers, or terrorists as well as industrial or medical radioactive sources "lost" by negligence, nuclear-contaminated scrap metal and illegally transported nuclear waste. In early September a British scrap metal merchant in the north of England discovered part of a highly radioactive reactor vessel in a shipment of steel from Russia. In the early 1990s contaminated metal imported to the US via Mexico ended up in chairs manufactured for a fast food restaurant. According to the IAEA, some 100,000 radioactive sources are unaccounted for in the Ukraine alone, which can be very easily end up in scrap metal. In the Netherlands, the past three years some 200 radioactive contaminated scrap metal shipments were discovered. It costs the merchants dearly veverytime they discover contaminated material because they are obliged to send it to the COVRA, the organization responsible for storage of radioactive waste, and have to pay for that. Therefore, it is expected that some scrap metal dealers try to avoid "finding" contaminated material. An unknown radioactive source melted in a scrap metal mill and melter in southern Spain is the reason for cesium contamination of parts of Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Italy and France in early June (see WISE NC 495: 'Cesium-137 contamination in Europe')

The IAEA intends to start a "war without mercy" against this traffic and will be focusing on prevention. According to Geoffrey Webb of the IAEA, the agency would produce a guide so that the countries which are not equipped can organize their strategy, according to their means and specific risks. The IAEA centralizes all the information in a databank.

This traffic demands an international control as well as education and increased sensitization of the services. No international regulation exists on how to handle with the detected radioactive material at the borders. The detected material is often resend to its original country (if that is possible to locate), from where it can be transported again along other ways to foreign countries. Across Europe, environmental agencies rely on scrapyards and steel works to notify them of any radioactive scrap metal. But radiation monitoring equipment is expensive and some smaller merchants do not have the kit which can cost about US$100,000. The airport of Moscow has been equipped with a hundred detection porches. Poland has equipped all its border posts with detectors and Germany is preparing it. The Ukraine and Byelorussia, turntables (hunge) in the traffic, reinforce their controls. An Interpol source told Reuters that scrap metal is a "valuable commodity". "If there's money involved you get criminals involved and they will do whatever it takes, regardless," the source added.

Sources:
  Agence France Presse, 17 September 1998
  Reuters, 9 September 1998
  Trouw (Nl), 11 July 1998
Contact: Sortir du Nucleaire, 9, rue Dumenge, F-69004 Lyon, France.
Tel: +33-4-7828 2922; Fax: +33-4-7207 7004
Email: rezo@sortirdunucleaire.org

Cesium-137 contamination in Europe

At the end of May high measurements of radioactive Cesium-137 activated alarm systems in southern France, Switzerland, Italy and south Germany. Not knowing where the cloud had came from, it caused a lot of consternation. During the next days the concentration of cesium were a hundred times higher than normal. On the mountain Ceneri (Tessin, Switzerland), the cesium level even was a thousand times higher.

(495.4895) WISE Amsterdam - Only on June 11 it was made public that the escape of radioactive material came from the Acerinox metal company at Algeciras in the Cadiz region (south Spain). Officially the escape of radioactive material was revealed to the Spanish Nuclear Security Council (Consejo de Seguridad Nuclear, CSN) on June 9. The Andalucian environmental organization Agaden, however, said that the accident actually occurred on May 25, - a date the company neither confirmed nor denied, but which is more accurate, according to the detected measurements in the other countries.

The Acerinox factory processes metallurgical scrap metal to extract steel for reprocessing. The scrap metal is from the Netherlands, the United States, Canada and Germany. On June 17, the Spanish Minister of Industry and Energy Josep Piqui declared that the radioactivity emitted from the factory of Acerinox came from medical X-ray equipment. The environmental group Aedenat considered it "very improbable" that this was the cause. Later CSN confirmed that it "is impossible" that an X-ray apparatus had caused the release from the Acerinox plant. Aedenat is studying the possibility of initiating a criminal suit against the company, the CSN and the provider of cesium-137.

On June 18, CSN issued an official notice that the cesium-137 has also irradiated two processing plants to which the steel mill sends its wastes for decontamination. The plants in Huelva and Badajoz are contaminated "to the same measurement as the Acerinox plant". The zones most affected by the contamination in all cases are those that are inside the process machinery. Plant personnel received no radioactive exposure, the council advisory said. The CSN has ordered inspections of the rafts in which Egmasa deposits its production waste. Both plants are stopped and isolated; the access of personnel to the contaminated zones has been forbidden. Decontamination of the three factories is to be done under the supervision of CSN. They would not be able to resume activity until the council gives its permission.

The French independent laboratory CRII-Rad (Commission de Recherche et d'Information Indépendantes sur la Radioactivité) has detected high levels of radioactivity coming from ashes of the factory of Acerinox: between 640,000 and 1,420,000 Bequerel per kilo. This is 640 to 1,420 bequerel per gram; the new Euratom norm is 10 Bc/g. The levels are high enough to be a threat to the public, and according to CRII-Rad the ashes should be handled as radioactive waste. The report on the data CRII-Rad, found in samples, was first received by CSN with irritation. However in a later official notice, it was recognized that the values of contamination spread by the French Laboratory were the same as those of CSN. CSN, however, did not want to give the values because "the terminology is too complicated for people".

Sources:
  die Tageszeitung (Germany) 15 June 1998
  El Mundo (Spain), 19 june 1998
  La Vanguardia (Spain), 3 July 1998
  CRII-Rad communiqué, 2 July 1998 (version 2)
Contact: Aedenat, Campomanes 13, 28013 Madrid 13, Spain
Tel: +34-1-541 1071; Fax: +34-1-571 7108
Email: aedenat@nodoso.ix.apc.org

Japan Times. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/news2-97/news2-11.htm
(February 11 1997)

U.S. apologizes for firing radioactive ammunition

 WASHINGTON -- High-ranking U.S. Defense Department officials apologized Feb. 10 to Japan and the Okinawa Prefectural Government over an incident in which the U.S. Marine Corps mistakenly fired bullets containing depleted uranium in the prefecture in late 1995 and early 1996.

  Marine policy prohibits use of the depleted-uranium ammunition, which carries traces of radioactivity, at training ranges in Japan. They reportedly fired 1,520 rounds of the ammunition on an uninhabited island during drills.

 Walter Slocombe, a defense policy undersecretary, speaking to Japanese Ambassador Kunihiko Saito over the phone, did not comment on why the U.S. did not inform Japan for nearly a year after the ammunition was fired.  And the Japanese government is also under fire for not promptly notifying Okinawa authorities about the case. Tokyo took 26 days to publicly disclose the information after it learned of it Jan. 16.

 Slocombe telephoned Saito to express "deep regret," a Japanese Embassy spokesman said. Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of defense for East Asia and Pacific affairs, raised the incident "voluntarily," promised to prevent its recurrence and apologized at the onset of talks with Okinawa Vice Gov. Mitsuko Tomon, who is now visiting Washington, Tomon said.

 Slocombe promised to cooperate fully if Japan embarks on an environmental assessment, and surveys already conducted by the U.S. have confirmed there is no human nor environmental danger, the spokesman said. Foreign Ministry officials in Tokyo said Feb. 10 that AV-8B Harrier planes accidentally fired 1,520 uranium rounds at Tori Shima gunnery range, some 100 km west of the main Okinawa island, between December 1995 and January 1996. The ammunition can penetrate armored vehicles.

 The rounds were used because they were cataloged improperly, officials explained. Japan was not informed until Jan. 16, the officials said.

ITALY: SPENT FUEL SHIPMENT POSTPONED

(457.4530) WISE-Amsterdam

The Italian state electricity corporation, ENEL, has postponed plans to send 17 spent fuel bars from its 860-megawatt nuclear reactor in Caorso to Selleafield in Britain for reprocessing.

The Caorso plant, about 100 kilometers southeast of Milan in Piacenza province, was shut down in October 1986, having been in production for just eight years.

The decision by ENEL followed objections by Green lobbyists towards transport risks and the problem of plutonium and the large volume of reprocessed waste that would need to be stored.

ENEL's chairman Chicco Testa, a former Green activist, said he is also concerned about the plutonium cycle. However, ENEL has a contract to send a further 53 tons of fuel to Sellefield. According to Testa, the 17 bars are only a small part of the contract which covers two tons. The dispatch would allow evaluation of the situation at the plant. He says ENEL is open-minded about other alternatives.

The postponement of the shipment takes the issue temporarily off the agenda. It will, however, be back in September, when the corporation considers other alternatives.

Source: Power In Europe, 9 August 1996
Contact: Legambiente, Via salaria 403, 00199 Roma, Italy.
Tel: +39-6-862 681;
Fax: +39-6-8621 8474