REAL NASTY STUFF'
Huebner, Albert L.
'Real Nasty Stuff' After three decades of secrecy, a tale of radioactive poisoning starts leaking out BY ALBERT L. HUEBNER Each evening after work, commuters by the tens of thousands return to...
...At the end of 1987, the EPA hired a San Francisco-based private consultant to conduct a site assessment...
...Local government was hardly more helpful...
...The company has paid a number of other death-benefit claims, but continues to deny that the workers' fatal cancers were work-related...
...That the half-million people living within ten miles of the Santa Susana facility were unaware of the danger isn't surpising, given the history of SSFL...
...California Assemblyman Richard Katz, who wrote the state's toxic cleanup law, says the Energy Department is to blame for the suppression of information about the hazards at SSFL...
...These cases, a DOE official explains, "don't relate to any particular event...
...He maintains that Rockwell International "hung out under the Department of Energy shield," using "national security" as an excuse to cover up a multitude of abuses...
...Under pressure from his constituents, Representative Elton Gallegly demanded release of the report...
...In 1959, almost thirty years before Chernobyl, there was a a partial core-meltdown in a reactor at SSFL, the first nuclear plant in the United States to produce power for a private utility...
...A recent survey of Rockwell International's Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL) turned up evidence of widespread contamination of soil, ground water, and bedrock...
...a message to EPA that DOE and its management contractors are willing to 'go to the mat' in opposing enforcement actions at DOE facilities," wrote Raymond Romatowski, then manager of the DOE Albuquerque office that oversees Rocky Flats, to a high-ranking DOE official in Washington...
...By now, community and homeowner groups are demanding answers—and accountability—from Rockwell and the agencies that are supposed to monitor its operations...
...Rockwell's records indicate the company investigated radioactive and chemical contamination in May 1987...
...In the 1950s and early 1960s, Santa Susana—with as many as sixteen reactors—was one of the largest nuclear facilities on the West Coast...
...William Lane was one of the workers who never received more than "acceptable levels" of radiation...
...And he added, "The whole area is contaminated with radioactivity, solvents, and heavy metals...
...After studying the events that led up to the accident, Professor Theos J. Thompson, an MIT nuclear engineer, wrote, "During that time so many difficulties were encountered that, at least in retrospect, it is clear that the reactor should have been shut down and the problems solved properly...
...If they don't, it will be back to business as usual at Santa Susana Field Laboratory...
...The company's actions suggest it believes its problem is one of image, not hazardous practices...
...But EPA, the Federal agency that should have had the lead role in regulation, was completely at sea...
...But Government obstruction and media indifference continued to frustrate citizen groups trying to learn more about unsafe practices at Santa Susana...
...paper reported that contamination had been found...
...In fact, no regulatory agency at any level of government had any of the hazards under control, or even knew what they were...
...That Federal and state agencies supposedly responsible for protecting the public against such hazards hadn't even known about them is a commentary on the effectiveness of the regulatory process...
...As for the spirit of openness, a county supervisor criticized "early" disclosure of the DOE survey on grounds it "panicked a lot of people...
...But one member of the Atomic Energy Commission's advisory committee on reactor safeguards took a less sanguine view...
...It's real nasty stuff...
...That's why this sprawling suburban area has long been called the bedroom of Los Angeles...
...Real Nasty Stuff' After three decades of secrecy, a tale of radioactive poisoning starts leaking out BY ALBERT L. HUEBNER Each evening after work, commuters by the tens of thousands return to their homes in the San Fernando Valley...
...For some reason, they [Rockwell] made a decision in-house that some of the state agencies do not have jurisdiction, so they did business on that issue with the Federal agencies...
...A DOE official described these incidents as "minor overexposures" with "no health consequences," yet the total radiation exposure in a typical incident amounted to more than 100 chest X-rays...
...Continuing to run in the face of a known Tetralin leak, repeated scrams [emergencey shutdowns], equipment failures, rising radioactivity releases, and unexplained transient effects is difficult to justify...
...Will similar attitudes prevail at Rockwell's San Fernando Valley facility, and will DOE be just as willing to look the other way...
...The reactor had to be dismantled and removed, along with an enormous amount of contaminated matter...
...However, the threat to workers and to residents of some of the fastest-growing communities in the Los Angeles area didn't end when the sodium reactor was finally closed down a few years after the accident...
...Based on his report, the agency decided not to put the site on the Superfund list...
...James D. Werner, a member of the survey team, provided this description of one disposal pit: "When I was there, there were dead rats floating belly-up and bloated, little snakes swimming in it...
...Statements following the release of the recent Department of Energy survey showed that every relevant county and state agency—not to mention the U.S...
...Proclaiming a new openness, Rockwell executives, local lawmakers, and regulators met recently to discuss the cleanup...
...In 1976, a women's antiwar group called Another Mother for Peace verified that radioactively contaminated sodium— a highly corrosive substance that reacts explosively with water—was still stored at SSFL and that a sodium fire in 1971 had exposed fifty-two workers to radiation...
...Statements after the meeting offered little basis for optimism...
...Neither did they recognize death and disease from long-term low-level radiation...
...DOE, running interference for Rockwell as usual, claims the resulting report went to EPA, but a spokesperson at that agency insists that EPA is unaware of the report and, completing the circle of buck-passing, that the "state Health Department and the Regional [water] Board are the ones who are taking the lead at the site...
...To a person, our inspectors were not aware of any nuclear facilities or radioactive materials...
...Werner's NRDC is offering to help such groups if they stand committed to the issue...
...Though the Energy Department's survey was completed in the spring of 1988 and a report finished early this year, the findings were buried until a local newsAlbert L. Huebner, a California writer, has covered a number of environmental issues for The Progressive...
...Hank Yacoub of the state's Water Quality Control Board had a similar comment: "The bottom line is that all along we dealt with organic contamination, and the other issue [radioactivity] never came up," Yacoub said...
...No one at EPA had bothered to tell the consultant that the laboratory had been a nuclear research facility, and the consultant, when asked about it recently, said, "The first I heard of nuclear materials on that site was yesterday...
...Environmental Protection Agency—was in the dark about SSFL...
...Yet the press and the general public were barred, along with James Werner, the only independent observer with comprehensive, first-hand knowledge of contamination at the site, who is now with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an active environmental-protection group...
...Representative Gallegly told reporters there was no need for concern "for the health and safety of people on site or off site...
...Lane, who worked on cleanup after the 1959 sodium reactor accident, died a few years ago, at age forty-nine, of leukemia...
...We were convinced the state had this adequately controlled," explained one official...
...Further digging revealed that the documents from the DOE survey didn't include known overexposures that took place after the 1960s...
...Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to Federal agencies elicited only lists of documents covering the 1959 accident...
...But residents would have slept less soundly over the last three decades if they had known exactly what was happening at a site overlooking their homes...
...Send...
...Just a few days later, however, it was learned that the company made cash settlements for cancer deaths of workers exposed to too much radiation...
...More than six weeks after the event, Rockwell International issued a news release asserting that "fuel element damage is not an indication of unsafe reactor conditions...
...Katz's view has received convincing support from evidence compiled at the Rocky Flats nuclear complex near Denver, which is owned by DOE and operated by Rockwell...
...But the consultant now says he "didn't have nearly the time or scope to do measurements" of his own, and he found no reason to challenge the company's records...
...Rockwell paid a $90,000 settlement after a doctor hired by the company's lawyers acknowledged it was "more probable than not" that radiation exposure "played a role, at least" in Lane's illness...
...But further FOIA requests turned up many instances when workers were exposed to excessive radiation...
...A Justice Department affidavit states there was "probable cause to believe that Rockwell and Energy Department officials have knowingly and falsely stated Rocky Flats' compliance with environmental laws and regulations, and concealed Rocky Flats' 'serious contamination.' " Investigators released an internal memo written in November 1987, showing the blatant disregard for public health and safety that characterized such operations...
...The group also learned that the company had long been improperly monitoring levels of plutonium and other cancer-causing substances, and had a permit to dump 3.5 million gallons of water contaminated with radioactive wastes into a tributary of the Los Angeles River...
...Three years later, the county refused requests from other citizens' groups to have off-site testing done for radioactive particles...
...We had at least ten people who have been at the site," said Jim Marxen of the state Toxic Substance Control Division...
...State agencies and the EPA "backed off or ignored it," he says...
...The 1959 accident was not even reported by the press...
...The Department of Energy report also described outrageously unsafe practices, such as opening containers of hazardous material in a burn pit by firing bullets into them...
...In 1981, the Ventura County board of supervisors hired a consultant to investigate safety policies at the facility following protests by another group, Stop Uranium Now...
Vol. 53 • October 1989 • No. 10
