Agricultural Implications of Fukushima

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The radiological legacy of nuclear weapons

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ANALYSIS

24 FEBRUARY 2014

A primer: Military nuclear wastes in the United States

Robert Alvarez

http://thebulletin.org/primer-military-nuclear-wastes-united-states

ROBERT ALVAREZ

A senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies, Robert Alvarez served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department's secretary and deputy assistant secretary for national security and...

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Research, development, testing, and production of US nuclear weapons occurred at thousands of sites in nearly every state, as well as Puerto Rico, the Marshall Islands, Johnston Atoll, and Christmas Island in the Pacific. Between 1940 and 1996, the United States spent approximately $5.8 trillion dollars to develop and deploy nuclear weapons. As a result, the nuclear weapons program created one of the largest radioactive waste legacies in the world—rivaling the former Soviet Union's.

US nuclear weapons sites—many of them under the aegis of the Energy Department—constitute some of the most contaminated zones in the Western hemisphere, and attempts to remediate those sites are now approaching their fifth decade. It is the most costly, complex, and risky environmental cleanup effort ever undertaken, dwarfing the cleanup of Defense Department sites and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund program. Long-term liability estimates range from approximately $300 billion to $1 trillion. Site remediation and disposition of radioactive detritus are expected to continue well into this century. After that, long-term stewardship of profoundly contaminated areas will pose a challenge spanning hundreds of centuries.

A MISHANDLED CLEANUP: TREASURE ISLAND

Research, development, testing and production of nuclear weapons by the United States created:

• More than 3 billion metric tons of uranium mining and milling wastes.
• More than 1 million cubic meters of transuranic radioactive wastes.
• Approximately 6 million cubic meters of low-level radioactive wastes.
• Approximately 4.7 billion cubic meters of contaminated soil and groundwater (according to an Energy Department document unavailable online).
• More than 10,000 radiation-contaminated structures such as uranium processing and enrichment plants, radiochemical processing and storage facilities and laboratories.
• About 100 million gallons of high-level radioactive wastes, considered among the most dangerous, left in aging tanks larger that most state capitol domes. More than a third of some 200 tanks have leaked and threaten groundwater and waterways such as the Columbia River.
• Areas contaminated by more than 1,054 nuclear weapons tests, 219 of which involved aboveground detonations. As of 1992, underground shots released about 300 million curies of radioactive materials at the Nevada Test Site—making it the most radioactively contaminated area in the United States. Areas in the Republic of the Marshall Islands remain uninhabitable from US aboveground tests in the 1940s and 1950s.
• More than 700,000 metric tons of excess nuclear weapons production materials, in addition to hundreds of tons of weapons-usable plutonium and highly enriched uranium. 

The human health legacy of the US nuclear weapons program is also quite significant. As of February 2014, more than 100,000 sick nuclear weapons workers have received more than $10 billion in compensation following exposure to ionizing radiation and other hazardous materials. 

Even today, the radioactive waste from the dawn of the nuclear age remains a significant challenge to public health in highly populated areas. For instance, in 1973 a large amount of uranium processing wastes, generated to make the first nuclear weapons at the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in St. Louis, was illegally dumped in a municipal landfill in a nearby suburb.  The landfill is experiencing the latest of at least two subsurface fires over the past 21 years and lies on a floodplain approximately 1.2 miles from the Missouri River.

The dump contains the largest single amount of thorium 230 in the country and possibly the world. With a half-life of more than 75,000 years, it is comparable in toxicity to plutonium. Even though these concerns were repeatedly raised with the US Environmental Protection Agency, the agency issued a Record of Decision in 2008 that allows for “in place disposal” of these wastes, subject to institutional controls and with a cap over radiologically contaminated areas. Lost in this process is an important warning by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences in 2000 that "engineered barriers and institutional controls—are inherently failure prone.”

The radiological legacy of nuclear weapons will be with us for a very long time.

La Massoneria IRRADIA Taranto, da vent'anni

La minaccia radioattiva alle porte di Taranto

Migliaia di fusti contenenti scorie che emanano radiazioni sono abbandonati da vent'anni in un deposito a 20 km da Taranto. Ecco le immagini inedite dell'interno del capannone

Da vent’anni è in stato di abbandono, con 1140 metri cubi di rifiuti radioattivi stoccati all’interno. L’ex Cemerad di Statte è una minaccia ambientale a soli 20 km da Taranto, con migliaia di fusti ammassati in torri alte fino a venti metri in un semplice capannone di lamiera. Vi mostriamo per la prima volta le immagini dell’interno del deposito, girate dagli investigatori del Corpo Forestale nel 1995, durante una perquisizione richiesta del procuratore di Matera, Nicola Maria Pace.

Da allora la situazione «non è migliorata» e i fusti hanno subito un «deterioramento inevitabile», secondo l’ex direttore del dipartimento nucleare dell’Ispra, Roberto Mezzanotte. Dopo una lunga vicenda giudiziaria il deposito della Cemerad è stato sequestrato e la ditta è fallita. A pagare la bonifica dovrà essere anche in questo caso la collettività, ma per ora sono stanziati solo i fondi per caratterizzare i rifiuti. Nessuno infatti ha ancora mai aperto i fusti per verificare cosa realmente contengano. Su alcuni dei fusti ritrovati nel deposito è riportata una data di decadenza della radioattività a 10mila anni, ricordano gli ufficiali della forestale che eseguirono la perquisizione.

Il proprietario della Cemerad, Giovanni Pluchino, era un personaggio chiave. Presidente dell’ordine dei chimici di Taranto, massone appartenente alla loggia Pitagora, aveva stabilito stretti rapporti societari con Enea e Nucleco, le società a capitale pubblico che si occupano della gestione del nucleare italiano. Nell’informativa preparata alla fine degli anni ‘90 dal Corpo forestale dello Stato erano indicati i rapporti commerciali della Cemerad: tra le tante società c’era la Setri di Cipriano Chianese, la mente dei traffici di rifiuti dei casalesi, legato - raccontano le indagini della Dda di Napoli - all’ambiente di Licio Gelli.

18 febbraio 2014