USDOE addresses Environmental Legacy of Nuclear Weapons Production

by John L. Roeder

The end of the Cold War has ended our production of nuclear weapons -- and has even brought about the dismantling of existing warheads. Yesteryear's emphasis on producing fissionable materials has now given way to addressing the environmental consequences wrought by their production. The environmental cleanup of radioactive wastes has received enhanced attention from the US Department of Energy (USDOE) in recent years, as reported in our Spring and Fall 1994 issues. More recently, it has been addressed by Scientific American in a trilogy of articles on "Confronting the Nuclear Legacy" (Resources #5-7, this issue; see also Resources #23 and #31).

Seeing itself "a little more than halfway through the cycle of splitting the atom for weapons purposes," USDOE has now published a 106-page book, Closing the Circle on the Splitting of the Atom, to "foster a sustained and informed public debate" on "the course of the environmental management program." According to Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management Thomas P. Grumbly's introduction, "Dealing with the environmental legacy of the Cold War is in many ways as big a challenge for us today as the building of the atomic bomb was for the Manhattan Project pioneers in the 1940s." Just as new technologies had to be developed for the Manhattan Project, so also must new technologies be developed not only to sequester radioactive wastes and fissionable materials that are no longer needed but also to convert them to a more physically stable form (see strategy in box). This has meant, for example, vitrifying (incorporating into glass) liquid high-level radioactive wastes in Savannah River, SC, West Valley, NY, and Hanford, WA, also low-level radioactive wastes at Fernald, OH, for storage in canisters -- 70 were prepared at Savannah River in 1995 as the beginning of a 20-year program. It has meant calcining liquid high-level radioactive wastes in Idaho Falls, ID, by heating them into a dry powder and reducing their volume by a factor of eight. It has meant cleanup of uranium mill tailings, also the capping of settling ponds at the Y-12 site in Oak Ridge, TN, where a new parking lot has now been constructed. And it has sometimes meant using an already contaminated building to clean contaminated equipment.

But whereas nuclear weapons production was carried out in strict secrecy, cleaning up the mess it left behind is being carried out in unprecedented openness, with all stakeholders, the public included, to be involved in the "sustained and informed public debate" that is the purpose of this book. And, unlike contracts for the operation of nuclear weapons production facilities, which protected the contractors from financial risks and cost overruns, contracts for environmental cleanup are being made in an atmosphere of competitive bidding with insistence on sound business practice.

The amount still to be cleaned up is daunting. According to a 1994 statement quoted by Senator John Glenn (D-OH), the cost then estimated by the General Accounting Office was $300 billion over a 20- to 30-year period. Part of the purpose of this book is to portray to the public how daunting this task is. This is presented most starkly in two three-dimensional graphs, one showing the volume in cubic meters of waste by both type and source, the other showing the radioactive level of the waste in each category.

The amount to be cleaned up might be even larger, had not concerns about safety and environmental practices caused a sudden shutdown of major US nuclear weapons production facilities in the late 1980s. When plutonium production was shut down in 1988, 26 tons were "stranded" in "various intermediate steps" -- in addition to the 100 metric tons that had already been produced since 1944. In addition, about 10 times as much enriched uranium had been produced. Add to this the decontamination of buildings used to process the fissionable materials used to make nuclear warheads and the uranium ore from which these materials were extracted and you get a sense of the proportions of the problem. (Only one gram of plutonium was extracted from each ton of uranium ore, less than the 1/5 oz. of gold the Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, SD, was extracting from a ton of ore when I visited there in 1976.) The bad news is that the amount of radioactive waste is continually increasing ("while cleaning up . . . workers will likely generate huge amounts of new waste. . . ."(p.62)). The offsetting good news is that, due to radioactive decay, the radioactivity level of that waste is continually decreasing (although this rate of decrease cannot be increased).

The openness of the USDOE environmental cleanup is best epitomized by the photographs in this book, which occupy at least half its page area and probably tell more than half the story. Most of them were taken by Robert Del Tredici, and the dates on the photographs give a clear indication of his itinerary. Among those which most intrigued me are the following:

But the two photos which left the longest effect on me were taken in my home town of St. Louis, MO, where just north of the St. Louis International Airport low-level radioactive wastes from the Manhattan Project had been buried. I resided there the first 28 years of my life (1940-1968) but not until I read this book did I know that the airport I flew in and out of was only a mile from a low-level radioactive waste storage site.

It's easy to get a copy of Closing the Circle on the Splitting of the Atom: just call (800)-736-3282 ((800)-7EM-DATA). A human being will answer, so you won't even have to "press 1." Or you can visit the Environmental Management World Wide Web site (http://www.em.doe.gov).

Strategy for Dealing with US Radioactive Contamination

1. Where appropriate, stabilize radioactive materials to avoid accidents, the spread of contamination, and immediate risks to the public.

2. Develop a thorough understanding of complicated waste and contamination problems instead of rushing into solutions that might have unexpected side effects.

3. Develop effective technologies for cost-effective environmental work.

4. Where feasible and appropriate, ensure that site cleanup is part of a long-term solution rather than a hasty fix.

5. Prepare for future uses of large portions of the more than 3,000 square miles reserved for the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.

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