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Cancer-causing chemical spreading from Cotter uranium mill site near Cañon City
Posted: 04/10/2011 01:00:00 AM MDT
The cancer-causing chemical trichloroethene has been detected spreading from Cotter Corp.'s defunct Colorado uranium mill, contaminating groundwater at concentrations up to 360 times the federal health limit.
State regulators Friday confirmed this new element in the toxic and radioactive waste from the mill, adjacent to Cañon City, and said they've asked Cotter to investigate.
"It's in the groundwater. It's not in the public drinking water supply that we know of," said Jeanine Natterman, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Cañon City's 16,000 residents, many of whose wells already are tainted, received no notification.
"Nothing surprises me anymore," because the plant "is like an octopus with 20 arms," said Sharyn Cunningham, 64, who lives 1 1/2 miles away and co-chairs Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste.
"This year, I'm not doing any gardening. They've been doing demolition out there, and I don't trust the soils anymore."
Cotter employees apparently detected the trichloroethene, used to remove polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the 1980s, in water samples taken in October, according to documents filed last week with state regulators.
Cotter officials declined to comment.
The documents indicate that Cotter, a subsidiary of San Diego-based General Atomics, tentatively plans to initiate groundwater sampling in May to determine the amount of trichloroethene and its spread.
They've accelerated dismantling of old structures and declared an intention to re-engineer and reopen the mill while also, at the end of March, submitting a required decommissioning plan. Last week, Cotter also disclosed sampling and monitoring errors from last year at its lab caused by equipment problems.
Starting in 1958, Cotter processed uranium for weapons and fuel at the mill. Liquid waste laced with radioactive material and heavy metals was discharged into 11 unlined ponds from 1958 to 1978. Those were replaced in 1982 with two lined impoundments. After well tests in Cañon City showed contamination, federal authorities placed the mill on a national list for Superfund cleanups.
The cleanup is slated for completion in 2027.
The chemical trichloroethene is known to cause damage to the liver, kidneys, nerves and circulatory systems if ingested or inhaled in large quantities. The federal Environmental Protection Agency has regulated the chemical since 1989 with water suppliers required to test for it and remove it from drinking water.
Cotter documents show that samples collected from four wells north of the mill in October, analyzed at outside labs, indicated trichloroethene concentrations of 1,800 parts per billion, 1,200 ppb, 490 ppb and 386 ppb. The EPA standard is 5 ppb.
"Vapors can seep up through the soil and get into homes. Then you have not only a drinking issue but an inhalation risk," EPA spokeswoman Sonya Pennock said.
"We need to find out how much there is and where it is. Then you would make a decision as to whether people could be exposed to it."
Some residents now are questioning the government's ability to protect them.
"We wish the health department and the EPA would take the initiative to do more of their own sampling, as quality assurance, to make sure we're getting correct analysis. Our community has asked and complained about that for years," Cunningham said.
"We'd like to see Cotter be required to actually clean up the groundwater."
Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com
Read more: Cancer-causing chemical spreading from Cotter uranium mill site near Cañon City - The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_17811381?source=rss#ixzz1JDvBG4Dk
Nuclear Reactors, Materials and Waste Sector
5. March 24, Dow Jones Newswires – (National) NRC Inspector: U.S. nuclear plants not reporting equipment defects. Nearly 30 percent of U.S. nuclear power plants fail to report equipment defects that present "substantial" safety risks because of contradictions in the federal law, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) inspector general (IG). If the issue is not resolved, "the margin of safety for operating reactors could be reduced," the IG said. In a new report, the IG said U.S. nuclear plants are confused about what they are required to report to federal regulators. That is because one section of the law, known as Part 21, requires them to report defects that can cause a loss of safety functions while another section of the law requires them to report only actual losses of safety functions. "Licensees representing at least 28 percent of the operating reactor fleet do not, as standard practice, notify NRC of defects under Part 21 unless they are reportable under event reporting regulations," the report said. NRC has been aware of the reporting lapses since at least 2009. In that time, the commission identified 24 instances, between December 2009 and September 2010, where nuclear plants did not report defects under Part 21. These instances pose "a substantial safety hazard" and prevent federal regulators from spotting manufacturer defects that could surface at other plants around the country, the IG said. Because U.S. plants are failing to report defects as a result of confusion over the law, the NRC has not imposed violations or civil penalties. It has not imposed any civil penalties or significant enforcement actions for the reporting failures in at least 8 years, the IG said. Source: http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201103241018dowjonesdjonline000372&title=nrc-inspectorus-nuclear-plants-not-reporting-equipment-defects
userfiles/file/DHS_Daily_Report_2011-03-25.pdf
The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in A Brighter Spotlight Needed 2010
Download: The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in 2010 | The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in 2010: Executive Summary | Press Briefing on The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in 2010 The crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami is a stark reminder of the risks inherent in nuclear power. One of its consequences has been heightened concern about the safety of nuclear power facilities in the United States.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the federal agency responsible for ensuring that U.S. nuclear plants are operated as safely as possible, gets mixed reviews in a March 2011 UCS report, The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in 2010: A Brighter Spotlight Needed. The report—the first of an annual series—was prepared and scheduled for release before the crisis in Japan began to unfold, but the disaster makes the report’s conclusions more timely than ever.
Authored by UCS nuclear engineer David Lochbaum, the report examines 14 “near-misses” at U.S. nuclear plants during 2010 and evaluates the NRC response in each case. The events exposed a variety of shortcomings, such as inadequate training, faulty maintenance, poor design, and failure to investigate problems thoroughly.
Since NRC inspections cannot reveal more than a fraction of the problems that exist, it is crucial for the agency to respond effectively to the problems it does find. The report offers examples of both effective and ineffective responses:
Effective
Oconee. NRC inspectors averted a possible safety problem by refusing to accept plant operators’ rationale for allowing a component in Units 2 and 3 to go untested after a similar component in Unit 1 had failed.
Browns Ferry. Inspectors’ probing questions about an oil leak prompted a fruitful “recalibration” of plant workers’ thinking and led to the recall of a potentially defective part used in multiple U.S. reactors.
Kewaunee. Inspectors noticed a subtle, longstanding issue in the plant’s procedures for routine testing of pumps and valves that could have produced a safety problem if an accident had occurred during testing.
Ineffective
Peach Bottom. Workers slowed down control rod testing to evade regulations that would have required a plant shutdown; NRC inspectors were aware of the problem but failed to address it adequately.
Indian Point. Inspectors documented that the liner of the refueling cavity had been leaking since 1993; NRC management chose to ignore the problem.
Vermont Yankee. The NRC ignored regulations requiring that all releases of radioactively contaminated air be via controlled and monitored pathways—regulations that had been grounds for shutting down a Baton Rouge plant two years previously.
Lessons learned
The chances of a disaster at a nuclear power plant are low—and current events remind us how important it is to keep them that way. The new report shows that the NRC is capable of functioning as a highly effective watchdog, but also makes clear that much work remains to be done before the agency can fulfill that role as consistently as the public has a right to expect.
Gaps in US radiation monitoring system revealed
Japan's Own Erin Brockovich Laments: 'I Wish I Could Have Done More'
Dana Kennedy Contributor / AOL News: www.aolnews.com/2011/03/18/japans-own-erin-brockovich-hitomi-kamanaka-laments-i-wish-i/
Hitomi Kamanaka remembers the reaction she got six months ago when she confronted a top official in the city of Fukushima with her fears about the local nuclear power plant.
"I told him the reactors were too old, that they were dangerous, and he didn't say a word," said Kamanaka, 52, a filmmaker who has been on a 13-year crusade to educate Japan about the potential hazards of the country's 54 nuclear reactors. "He was silent. He couldn't answer. And I know why. I know the tremendous pressure he was under and how powerless he was."
One of Kamanaka's worries that day in Fukushima concerned the Japanese government's increasing reliance on mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, which contains reprocessed plutonium as well as uranium.
MOX fuel, which was loaded into Fukushima's Reactor 3 last year, gets hotter than regular uranium-based fuel and is harder to cool down. Critics say MOX is especially dangerous for use in older reactors such as the ones at Fukushima. Because of the plutonium, MOX is also believed to pose a bigger health risk in the event of serious accidents.
Courtesy of Hitomi Kamanaka
Filmmaker Hitomi Kamanaka has been on a 13-year crusade to educate Japan about the potential hazards of its nuclear reactors.
"I wish there had been more of me, I wish I could have done more," she told AOL News today via Skype from her Tokyo apartment.
"I'm both angry and sad. It's like I have a burning inside myself but I can't cry. It's too big to hold myself. I wish the mass media here had taken all this more seriously."
Kamanaka, who is single and does not have children, is Japan's answer to U.S. environmental activist Erin Brockovich and perhaps the most influential figure in the country's small, grassroots anti-nuclear movement.
She has made a trilogy of documentary films since 2003 designed to raise Japanese awareness on over-reliance on nuclear energy and has shown them around the country, sometimes during protests at nuclear power plants. The most recent, "Ashes to Honey," was released last month. She was showing the film in a Tokyo theater when the quake hit March 11.
Kamanaka said that while making a documentary in Iraq in 1998, she found many children there dying as a result of low-level radiation from Desert Storm-era U.S. weapons using depleted uranium.
She said a 14-year-old girl named Rasha who grew up near the weapon-littered battlefields of Basra wrote her a note saying "Don't forget me" right before she died of leukemia.
Kamanaka has battled big utility companies and politicians over Japan's heavy dependence on nuclear energy, using letter-writing campaigns, in-person confrontations and repeated showings of her films. She has also spoken in the U.S. on the issue, most recently at the University of Chicago in 2008.
"They hate me," Kamanaka said. "But I wasn't just pointing fingers. I want us to change and go forward together. I wanted to open a dialogue so the Japanese people could have more information about what was going on at all the reactors and so we could talk about other sources of energy. But they refused."
The country's 54 reactors provide some 30 percent of Japan's electricity. Before this week's nuclear crisis, that share was expected to increase to at least 40 percent by 2017.
Kamanaka symbolizes the struggle faced by anyone who challenges the Japanese government and the country's big utilities, like Tokyo Electric Co. (TEPCO), which operates the Fukushima nuclear plant.
"The Japanese government are the ones behind TEPCO, make no mistake about it," Kamanaka said. "Everything is tied together in Japan at these high levels. It can get depressing and lonely to try to fight it."
As part of its plan to push for the use of MOX fuel in Japanese reactors, Japan began offering subsidies of $250,000 a year for five years to local governments that agreed to the use of the fuel in the reactors in their regions, according to documents available on the Tokyo-based Citizens' Nuclear Information Center website.
Kamanaka's crusade also takes aim at what it considers a too-cozy relationship between Japan's mainstream media and the government. The majority of important Japanese journalists are almost all members of so-called "press clubs" that are attached to the various ministries, such as the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).
Because Kamanaka is not a member of a press club, she and others can't get into the government news conferences. The big newspapers and TV networks, in turn, were not terribly interested in writing about the issues she presented, she said.
"Hitomi has been a very significant influence in the movement against nuclear energy and power plants within Japan," the Australian-born Philip White of the Citizen's Nuclear Information Center, told AOL News today. "Her films have had an impact on Japanese of all ages, and she's especially managed to get a number of young people involved."
Kamanaka, White and others interviewed by AOL News said that big Japanese media also are hamstrung by the fact that Tokyo Electric is one of the biggest advertisers on television and in newspapers.
White recalled that his boss was invited by one of Japan's biggest TV news personalities to be on a televised panel after the Japanese earthquakes three years ago.
The TV anchor "is somewhat progressive, and before the show started, he began thinking out loud that he should say something against nuclear power plants," White said. "But then he asked if TEPCO was a sponsor and he was told it was. So he didn't say anything. This is how they control criticism."
Calls and e-mails to TEPCO by AOL News this week were not returned.
Kamanaka has also faced the Japanese people's centuries-old aversion to revealing too much in either their professional or private lives.
"There is a Japanese cultural phenomenon of not being that transparent," said Mark Hibbs, a Berlin-based nuclear policy expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "They don't have the belief system that a lot of communication is a good thing. That's one of the many issues that cropped up at the start of the disaster at the plant. They weren't necessarily holding things back; it's just not their style to tell all."
Kamanaka is not so sure that the Japanese are hearing the whole truth about damage at the plant and resulting radiation levels.
"I don't think they're telling the truth," she said. "They're afraid that everyone will panic. And then what? Because we have nowhere to go. We're on an island."
Kamanaka herself is planning to leave Tokyo soon because of rising radiation levels and seek refuge in the western end of the country.
"After World War II, the Japanese felt the world didn't respect them and they just wanted money and success," she said. "But they ended up destroying nature and polluting everything. I hope we learn from this. I hope we get rid of nuclear power plants and shift to
sustainable energy."
Posted: Mar 26, 2011 2:08 AM CST Updated: Mar 26, 2011 9:49 PM CST
By GARANCE BURKE and NOAKI SCHWARTZ Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Parts of America's radiation alert network have been out of order during Japan's nuclear crisis, raising concerns among some lawmakers about whether the system could safeguard the country in a future disaster.
Federal officials say the system of sensors has helped them to validate the impact of nuclear fallout from the overheated Fukushima reactor, and in turn alert local governments and the public. They say no dangerous levels of radiation have reached U.S. shores.
In California, home to two seaside nuclear plants located close to earthquake fault lines, federal authorities said four of the 11 stationary monitors were offline for repairs or maintenance last week. The Environmental Protection Agency said the machines operate outdoors year-round and periodically need maintenance, but did not fix them until a few days after low levels of radiation began drifting toward the mainland U.S.
About 20 monitors out of 124 nationwide were out of service earlier this week, including units in Harlingen, Tex. and Buffalo, N.Y. on Friday, according to the EPA.
Gaps in the system - as well as the delays in fixing monitors in some of Southern California's most populated areas - have helped to prompt hearings and inquiries in Washington and Sacramento. Read More... userfiles/file/Gaps in US radiation monitoring system revealed.pdf
EPA underreports radiation in America’s drinking water
by Mark Greenblatt / 11 News
HOUSTON -- Americans remain largely in the dark about their true exposure to a number of radioactive contaminants that could be in their drinking water.
Surprisingly, it’s because of intentional decisions by the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal government office that is supposed to protect the nation from contaminated water.
“Where I think the EPA was wrong was in neglecting some natural radioactive materials altogether,” said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, a physicist and former advisor to the EPA on radiation science.
Makhijani, a physicist and an engineer who has a PhD from Berkeley, has testified before Congress, and has served as an expert witness in Nuclear Regulatory Commission proceedings. He now runs the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.
“I have told them that their drinking water notions are dating from science from 1959,” he said.
Cold War-era science
Makhijani said that the EPA’s regulatory approach dates back to the beginning of the Cold War, when above-ground nuclear testing was a common occurrence. For years, man-made radiation from nuclear fallout dominated the concerns of scientists.
Strontium 90 is one such man-made contaminant found in that fallout, and eventually across the world, as particles from the explosions drifted in the upper atmosphere.
However, KHOU has discovered the EPA never updated its regulations to make sure water utilities test for or measure certain naturally occurring types of radiation that may actually produce a far greater radiation dose, and thus a greater health risk, than Strontium 90.
For instance, lead 210, which is not the form of lead commonly found in pencils and other industrial uses, is a common byproduct of radon gas and is in itself radioactive. However the EPA does not regulate the element, effectively ignoring the threat from the very real possibility of it contaminating your water.
In a written statement to KHOU, agency officials said they do not regulate naturally occurring radioactive lead 210, “since the rule covers man-made radionuclides only.”
However, lead 210 is a prime example which shows how naturally occurring radiation can harm the public more than certain man-made types, Makhijani said. By his calculation, naturally occurring lead 210 produces nearly seven times the radiation dose to your bones as Strontium 90, the man-made form of radioactive contaminant the EPA does regulate. Both radioactive elements have a tendency to “target” your bones and produce cancer and other health effects there.
Years ago in the 1990s, the EPA considered regulating radioactive lead 210, but eventually decided not to do so. When it finalized changes to its rules in 2000, the agency suggested it would, instead, simply monitor for the presence of the contaminant under another federal program. The EPA recently confirmed to KHOU-TV that no such monitoring ever took place.
Makhijani and many other scientists are concerned.
KHOU: "Shouldn’t I know about how much of that is in my drinking water?"
MAKHIJANI: "I think you should."
Intentionally underreporting “gross” radiation exposure
KHOU also discovered that politics and pressure from utilities can play a part in the EPA’s regulatory decisions about drinking water. In some instances, the agency’s solution for fixing a problem with high amounts of certain radioactive elements in water is to not look for the problem.
Take radium 224, which emits a form of radiation called alpha particles. In a Federal Register entry dated Dec. 7, 2000, the EPA stated in its final rulemaking on regulating radiation in drinking water that if water systems actually had to test for radium 224, “doing so could cause many systems to find themselves to be out of compliance with the (law).”
As a result, national rules for testing for alpha radiation do not include appropriate methods that would pick up radiation from radium 224.
Ironically, the EPA mandates that all states and water systems inform the public about their “gross” exposure to alpha radiation. However, because the energy for radium 224 is not included in that measurement, the “gross alpha” result that the public is told about by their water utilities isn’t truly a “gross” number at all.
The EPA said in that federal register notice from December of 2000 that “further action (on radium 224) may be proposed at a later date.” Now, more than 10 years later, no action has taken place.
In a separate statement to KHOU, the EPA defended this inaction by saying the agency currently regulates other types of radium with larger radiological risks. The agency said consumers can use those measurements of other types of radium as a warning sign that radium 224 might also be in their water.
“In most cases in which a system has high radium 224 levels, it will also have high radium 228 levels,” the agency said in a statement. “Treatment for radium does not differentiate between the isotopes.”
However, physicists like Makhijani say the “gross alpha” characterization is misleading to the public. He says physicists like him use the true “total” exposure to a type of radiation to calculate your actual risk level for coming down with cancer or other health problems. Without that true total, Makhijani said, you’re in the dark about your real risks.
KHOU: "Bottom line, you’re concerned for the safety of the nation’s drinking water?"
MAKHIJANI: "Yes."
Dr. David Ozonoff, a current environmental health professor and chair emeritus of the Department of Environmental Health at the Boston University School of Public Health, agreed.
OZONOFF: "Right now, I don’t know those things because they’re not giving me the information."
KHOU: "What’s your reaction when I tell you one reason they’re intentionally not giving you some of the information because it would force some water systems to fall out of compliance?"
OZONOFF: "That’s not good enough. I have to say, my colleagues in public health are sometimes guilty of saying ‘we’re not going to tell people everything’ because it will panic them. Well, the first thing that makes me panic is when someone says, ‘I don’t want to panic you.’ I’m in favor of telling people everything so they can make their own decisions about it."
KHOU: "What happens if I don’t get that full disclosure?"
OZONOFF: "Well, then we’re operating in the dark."
How the EPA allows Uranium’s radiation to be “subtracted” away
But there is another reason that “gross alpha” radiation totals you are told about, in required annual water quality reports, are actually being underreported by the government and your utility.
For instance, while you’ve just learned about how some naturally occurring radioactive elements are simply never tested by the EPA to begin with, in other cases, the EPA actually allows utilities to subtract off certain types of radiation labs detect in tests of your drinking water.
“I’m alarmed,” said Brian Ruiz, a homeowner in Harris County who gets his water from the Municipal Utility District 238. “An array of emotions just came over me.”
Ruiz stumbled on to the “subtractions” allowed by the EPA after seeing our earlier reporting.
Each year, the local water company sent Ruiz the EPA-mandated “consumer confidence report” on the state of his water quality. For example, take the 2005 report, which showed that Ruiz’s “gross alpha” radiation exposure was an average of 14.5 picocuries per liter, just under the EPA legal limit of 15 picocuries.
But after our first broadcasts, Ruiz went to KHOU.com where we had posted all of the “raw” water radiation testing results the state performed on behalf of the EPA, from 2004 to 2010. There, Ruiz saw that for 2005 the Texas Department of State Health Services lab had actually discovered 36.30 picocuries per liter of “gross alpha particle activity” in his water, not the “14.5” reported to him.
Ruiz was livid.
“I've been lied to,” Ruiz said. “I became outraged, and I was sickened with what I saw.”
But again, the reduction in radiation readings was all legally acceptable under EPA’s rules, which also direct that utilities call the final reading “gross alpha” in reports to consumers. That’s because the environmental agency instructs utilities to subtract out any alpha radiation that came from uranium before they report your “gross alpha” radiation exposure.
Ironically, the dictionary definition of the term “gross” is listed as “without deductions.”
Many health scientists we spoke to were surprised that the EPA does not regulate naturally occurring uranium as a radioactive element to begin with. A few years ago, the agency began regulating uranium as a poisonous metal, as it does with other metals like mercury or arsenic. Uranium, which has high kidney toxicity, can harm you in other ways besides increasing your risk of cancer. However, its radiological risk remains unregulated and uncounted by the EPA.
The EPA explained why it allows the subtraction of uranium’s radiation in a statement last fall to KHOU-TV:
“Gross alpha measurements do not include uranium because its radiotoxicity to the bone is insignificant.”
Makhijani was baffled.
“That, that’s not correct,” Makhijani said. “This thing, radiotoxicity to the bone is insignificant, is flat wrong. It is scientifically wrong.”
Makhijani said naturally occurring uranium, when ingested, actually produces nearly five times the radiation dose to the surface of the bone as that of Strontium 90, a man-made radioactive contaminant the EPA does regulate in the nation’s water supply. He used the EPA’s own reference documents to calculate uranium’s greater radiation dose compared to Strontium 90. KHOU had the calculations reviewed by several nuclear physicists, who all agreed that Makhijani was correct.
“The idea that uranium is a kidney toxin, which it is, as a heavy metal and not radiotoxic to the bone, is silly,” he said.
(Note: it appears that until recently, the city of Houston’s past “gross alpha” scores actually INCLUDED alpha radiation from natural uranium without subtractions. However, the city recently began subtracting uranium in gross alpha, in response to concerns about alpha radiation in the Chasewood neighborhood of Houston. A recently created city website notes:
“In 2004, the level was 11.5 pCi/L; in 2006 it was 12.5 pCi/L. A level reading of 16.9 pCi/L was received in April 2010 from a sample taken by the Texas Department of State Health Services in October 2009…These wells have now been deactivated and will not be used again.”
In the readings the city references above, city officials are taking part in the allowed subtraction of uranium. KHOU asked city officials for comment last week on what appears to be a new practice. They have yet to respond.)
“Rounding” radiation scores down allowed by EPA
In some cases, even where the EPA does regulate or test for radiation, agency rules help utilities avoid legal violations, which would force them to warn consumers about the threats in their water by allowing companies to “round down” radiation scores, even if the scores themselves exceed the actual federal legal limit for radiation.
For instance, state labs at the Texas Department of State Health Services found that Harris County Municipal Utility District 105 tested at 5.4 pCi/L for combined radium in 2008, which is above the legal limit of “5” pCi/L. However, the utility never received a violation notice from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which implements the EPA’s rules in Texas. When they avoided the violation, the utility also avoided having to tell about their increased risks, because federal and state rules allowed the utility to “round down” its test result.
The TCEQ, explained why no legal violation was issued, by explaining their practice of rounding radiation scores down:
“Rounding must be taken into account. For example: a running annual average of 5.4 pCi/L combined radium rounds down to 5 pCi/L, and is within compliance."
KHOU asked the EPA about what seemed to be an inconsistent policy of allowing utilities to round some radiation scores down to the nearest whole number, while sometimes allowing them to report fractions of a detected number to consumers.
The EPA defended the practice of allowing the rounding down of radiation scores in a statement to KHOU by saying:
“Because the (legal limit) is 5, not 5.0, rounding is acceptable.”
Other unregulated radioactive contaminants pose cancer risk
Another alpha radiation emitter that is often found where uranium or radium is present is radon. During the 1990s, the EPA came close to forcing utilities to test for radon in drinking water and implementing legal standards that protect against it. The EPA backed off the proposal after receiving intense pressure from utilities concerned about the financial impact such a regulation could have on them.
Today, the EPA does state on its website that radon in drinking water “is a serious public health threat.”
The agency cited a report by the National Academy of Sciences as the “most comprehensive accumulation of scientific data on the public health risks of radon in drinking water… This report goes on to refine the risks of radon in drinking water and confirms that there are drinking water related cancer deaths, primarily due to lung cancer.”
Yet, without regulation in place, any reports utilities receive of radon in drinking water do not have to be passed on to consumers. High readings do not have to be legally cleaned up, allowing the radiation to continue to flow.
“Once there is no standard, you don't have to measure it,” said Dr. Irina Cech, who retired this month after leading research since the 1980s for the University of Texas Health Science Center into radon in Texas water supplies.
Cech’s expertise has long been recognized by public health officials throughout Texas, and by the U.S. Congress, for which she advised a subcommittee on environmental investigations, which was part of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
“If you have water containing radon, your chances of dying of cancer are much increased,” Cech said.
Cech, and her colleagues at the University of Texas, found what she calls a disturbing amount of radon in local and some statewide water supplies. She said our region is situated above what geologists call “the uranium belt,” which means we are especially susceptible in certain areas of Texas to higher amounts of radiation getting into our groundwater.
“We told the city, and we told the state, we have a problem here with radioactive wells,” she said.
In fact, Cech found hot spots all over Harris County, but especially on the west and northwest sides.
Cech said those hot spots are likely caused because the particular water wells were drilled next to natural faults or salt domes, where Cech says some radioactive elements tend to congregate. Another problem is that the water wells are also drilled near thousands of man-made oil and gas wells littered throughout certain areas of Harris County, which help bring the radon gas up from underground deposits, she said.
Inside Houston city limits, Cech also found what she calls elevated readings of radon in drinking water, including some readings that were ten times the EPA’s proposed limit of 300 picocuries per liter. For instance, she found one water well in Houston’s Chasewood neighborhood that had tested above 3,000 pCi/L for radon, as far back as in 1987. The well was not removed from service until recently, after KHOU’s investigation discovered the well also had violated the regulated legal limit for alpha radiation, even with all of the subtractions the EPA allows. But despite Cech’s discovery, the water was not turned off until late 2010, 23 years later.
“Nothing was done,” Cech said. “It would be good if the City of Houston gets its act together.”
Cech says the inaction continued even after she published some of her findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and after she told local government representatives at meetings of regional geological experts about what the university researchers had found.
KHOU-TV has learned that the city of Houston quietly confirmed many of Cech’s findings when it partnered with the United States Geological Survey, a non-regulatory federal agency, to quietly test many of Houston’s remaining groundwater wells for radon. In September of 2010, the USGS reported back, warning Houston officials that:
“Concentrations of radon-222 from the water samples from the 28 wells were greater than the proposed unmitigated standard of 300 pCi/L (legal limit) in all but five samples.”
However, it appears the vast majority, if not all of the wells, the USGS tested for elevated radon levels remain online in Houston today, pumping water and radon gas to dozens of neighborhoods all across the city.
Cech warns, elevated radon levels in area water supplies even affect those residents who don’t drink city tap water. She says you’re likely to breathe the radon gas in after showering in water that contains it. The vapor mist, she says, contains radon which you can inhale directly into your lungs.
But Cech points out that because of the lack of federal regulation, city officials are not legally obligated to do anything about what she believes is a very real public health concern.
“Legally, they’re not required. Morally, yes,” she said.
EPA reverses course on uranium’s toxicity
In spite of multiple requests from KHOU over the past two months, the EPA declined to go on camera for this report. In a recent written statement the agency sent KHOU, the EPA said:
“Protecting the health of all Americans from contaminants that may occur in drinking water is a fundamental element of EPA's mission. EPA takes seriously the risks from radionuclides in drinking water, both natural and man-made, and our regulations are established using sound science and the law to best protect public health.”
As noted above in this article, the EPA had previously defended the “subtraction” of uranium from gross alpha readings by saying its radiotoxicity to the bone was “insignificant.”
After KHOU sent the EPA the detailed calculations done by Dr. Makhijani, the agency responded in a statement that seemed to reverse its previous claims, saying:
“EPA does not mean to imply that the radiological risk from uranium is unimportant.”
A spokesperson for the agency also told KHOU to say that “EPA is currently conducting a reassessment of the health risks resulting from exposure to uranium.”
The agency also said:
“Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, EPA sets national standards for drinking water based on sound science to protect against health risks, considering available technology, and costs. EPA recognizes that any amount of radiation has the potential to increase risk of cancer, whether it is from man-made or natural sources. For this reason, the agency has set the public health goal for all radionuclides at zero, recognizing that there is no level of exposure considered to be safe.”
The “public health goal(s)” that the EPA refers to (above) are non-enforceable regulations and carry no penalties for exceeding them. Consumers are also not required to be informed when utilities exceed them.
In the case of many unregulated radionuclides like lead 210 and radon, utilities could literally have unusually large amounts of the contaminant in your water and there is nothing the government could do to force a cleanup.
When KHOU asked why EPA still allows uranium scores to be subtracted from “gross” alpha readings considering the real radiological risks it poses, the EPA said:
“As a first point, since the deduction of uranium from Gross Alpha is being questioned, we would like to emphasize that uranium is regulated individually with its own MCL, providing public health protection from this contaminant.”
(KHOU note: the MCL or limit that the EPA is referring to is not for radiation from uranium, but the presence of uranium as a poisonous metal.)
The agency went on to say:
“The interim rules for Alpha emitters and Beta & Photon emitters have been in place since 1976. When these rules were promulgated as final rules in 2000, the agency decided to retain the gross alpha terminology and avoid confusing public water systems that had been implementing the rules for nearly 30 years and are used to this terminology. When developing the rules, EPA accounted for these
deductions in its public health decisions, and despite the difference in
terminology, we believe the standards are protective.”
Dr. Cech believes the EPA should now shift its focus from being more concerned about misleading the American public rather than “confusing” the utilities.
"The point is -- they should worry about customers, and the people," she said.
EPA a failure on chemicals, audit finds
Assessment of toxic risks inadequate, says new chief
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Meg Kissinger
Published January 26, 2009
January 24, 2009: The Environmental Protection Agency's ability to assess toxic chemicals is as broken as the nation's financial markets and needs a total overhaul, a congressional audit has found.
The Government Accountability Office has released a report saying the EPA lacks even basic information to say whether chemicals pose substantial health risks to the public. It says actions are needed to streamline and increase the transparency of the EPA's registry of chemicals. And it calls for measures to enhance the agency's ability to obtain health and safety information from the chemical industry.
Lisa Jackson, the EPA's new administrator, promised to take the report under consideration.
"It is clear that we are not doing an adequate job of assessing and managing the risks of chemicals in consumer products, the workplace and the environment," Jackson said in a prepared statement Friday. "It is now time to revise and strengthen EPA's chemicals management and risk assessment programs."
The Journal Sentinel has chronicled the failure of the EPA to disclose information about toxic chemicals in its series, "Chemical Fallout," which began in 2007. Last month, the newspaper reported that the agency routinely allows companies to keep new information about their chemicals secret, including compounds that have been shown to cause cancer and respiratory problems.
Earlier in 2008, the Journal Sentinel revealed that the EPA's Voluntary Children's Chemical Evaluation Program, which relies on companies to provide information about the dangers of the chemicals they produce, is all but dead. And it disclosed that the agency's program to screen chemicals that damage the endocrine system had failed to screen a single chemical more than 10 years after the program was launched.
Health and environmental advocates pounced on the GAO's findings as proof that the EPA has been shirking its responsibilities for years.
"This just shows that the EPA is not any better able to protect Americans from risky chemicals than FEMA was to save New Orleans or the SEC was to cope with the financial collapse," said John Peterson Myers, a scientist and author who has been writing about chemical risks to human health for more than three decades.
For the EPA to be compared to the collapsed financial markets dramatically underscores the need for a complete overhaul of the regulation of toxic chemicals, said Richard Wiles, executive director of Environmental Working Group, a health watchdog organization based in Washington, D.C.
"The EPA joins the hall of shame of failed government programs," Wiles said.
The EPA is at high risk for waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement and needs a broad-based transformation, the auditors found.
"The EPA lacks adequate scientific information on the toxicity of many chemicals that may be found in the environment - as well as on tens of thousands of chemicals used commercially in the United States," the GAO report said. "EPA's inadequate progress in assessing toxic chemicals significantly limits the agency's ability to fulfill its mission of protecting human health and the environment."
The EPA's ability to protect public health and the environment depends on credible and timely assessments of the risks posed by toxic chemicals, the GAO found. Its Integrated Risk Information System, which contains assessments of more than 500 toxic chemicals, "is at serious risk of becoming obsolete because the EPA has been unable to keep its existing assessments current or to complete assessments of important chemicals of concern."
The EPA urgently needs to streamline and increase the transparency of this assessment process, the report says.
"Overall, the EPA has finished only nine assessments in the past three years," the report found. "At the end of 2007, most of the 70 ongoing assessments had been under way for more than five years."
The EPA needs additional authority to that provided in the Toxic Substances Control Act to obtain health and safety information from the chemical industry, the GAO auditors found.
"They need to shift more of the burden to chemical companies to demonstrate the safety of their products," the report found.
Strengthening the EPA is one of the GAO's three most urgent priorities for the Obama administration. The GAO also called for overhauling the nation's financial regulatory system, whose inattention helped trigger the global financial crisis, and improving the Food and Drug Administration's ability to protect the public from unsafe or ineffective drugs and other medical products.
The list is updated every two years and released at the start of each new Congress to help in setting oversight agendas. Recent Congresses and administrations have been particularly alert to GAO's High-Risk List and have used its findings to help tailor agency-specific solutions as well as broader initiatives across government.
http://www.ewg.org/node/27540
Conflicting Stories Surround Fukushima Fuel Pool #4
Marvin Resnikoff
Senior Associate, Radioactive Waste Management Associates
Posted: March 18, 2011 04:15 PM
The tragedy at the Fukushima reactors and the misery in Japan continues to unfold. We can only feel sorrow for our brothers and sisters in Japan. The media frenzy in the U.S. is reaching new heights and has started to take leave of its senses. Consider the fuel pool at reactor #4. This sits 70 to 80 feet above the ground, near the top of the reactor. Is it dry, as NRC Chairman Jaczko has stated in Congress on Thursday? Is the zirconium fuel cladding on fire, as CNN has graphically shown? To this and more, I say, no.
Earthquake and Tsunami of Biblical Proportions
When the 9.0 earthquake struck off shore, and 30 foot waves washed out ten thousand lives and tens of thousands of homes, Fukushima reactors 1, 2 and 3 were operating, and reactors 4, 5 and 6 were shut down for maintenance, and had been since the end of November. The fuel in those reactors had been transferred to the fuel pools. When the tsunami washed out off-site power and backup power from diesel generators, nuclear fuel from reactors 4, 5 and 6 had already cooled for 100 days. But now, all pumps and water circulation ceased.
Heroic Workers and Measures
The immediate problem was the three operating reactors 1, 2 and 3. On immediate shutdown, the fuel in those reactors was more than 100 times more heat-generating than the fuel in pools, 4, 5 and 6. Without pumps, workers had to pump water into the reactors, and let the pressure out before more water could be pumped. "Feed and bleed" it was called, likened to pumping water into a balloon. But hydrogen was created in the process; the bleed exploded. Over 2 dozen workers have been injured, while the radiation fields continued to rise. Cesium, a semi-volatile metal and gaseous iodine, were released. At one point, only 50 workers remained on the site. Tokyo Electric (TEPCO) acknowledges that reactors 1, 2 and 3 had partial meltdowns. TEPCO is in the process of bringing in external power and pumps to begin properly circulating cooling water. But the melted fuel will likely not allow unfettered cooling.
Fuel Pool at #4 Reactor
Meanwhile, two fires occurred at reactor #4, partially destroying the roof and side panels of the building. The fuel pool is a deep pool of water, approximately 40 feet deep, with a lattice work to hold the fuel assemblies that are approximately 12 feet long. The water cover is 20', enough to cool and shield the fuel. The International Atomic Energy Agency says the water had reached 84 oC, about 1½ days after the accident. My calculations show that it would take almost 3 days for the water to reach 100 oC. Steam has been seen emanating from the pool. It would then take less than two weeks for the fuel to become uncovered. As the water levels declined and the vaporization increased, the radiation dose rate above the pool would increase. When five feet of cover remained, the dose rate would begin to increase precipitously. When the fuel becomes uncovered, a zirconium fire would ensue. The heat and radiation levels, including released radioactivity, would be enormous. I estimate, using the standard software, Microshield, dose rates on the order of 3000 rems/hour, 200 meters above the fuel pool. Less than one minute in this dose field would be grave.
Conflicting Reports
The New York Times acknowledges Friday afternoon that there are conflicting versions of what is taking place. On the one hand, Union of Concerned Scientists and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission claim that fuel pool #4 is dry and that zirconium fires have taken place, releasing cesium and iodine to the environment. On the other hand, TEPCO says the #4 fuel pool has water. Who's right? The NRC is right, if the fuel pool had a leak and water drained out. But if the steel liner and concrete walls remained intact, TEPCO is right and there is time to bring the #4 pool situation under control. In this conflict, I agree with TEPCO, and hope that the company quickly resolves the problem. The alternative is unthinkable.
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