Radioactive Materials going in Main Landfills

Radioactive Materials going in Main Landfills



 
May 2007 - Radioactive materials from 
nuclear weapons facilities are being released to regular landfills and 
could get into commercial recycling streams, finds a report issued today 
by the nonprofit Nuclear Information and Resource Service, NIRS. 
Radioactive scrap, concrete, equipment, asphalt, plastic, wood, chemicals, 
and soil are placed in ordinary landfills, researchers learned. 
Contaminated by nuclear bomb production at Department of Energy, DOE, 
facilities, some of the radioactive waste is processed by state-licensed 
companies. In some cases it is "redefined" as "special" and then disposed 
of in regular landfills. 
"People around regular trash landfills will be shocked to learn that 
radioactive contamination from nuclear weapons production is ending up 
there, either directly released by DOE or via brokers and processors," 
says lead author Diane D'Arrigo, NIRS' Radioactive Waste Project director. 

"Just as ominous," she said, "the DOE allows and encourages sale and 
donation of some radioactively contaminated materials." 

Typical waste disposal practices used in the 1950s through early 1970s at 
the Y-12 area of the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. 
This free release opens up the potential for the materials to enter the 
recycling stream to make everyday household and personal items or to be 
used to build roads, schools, and playgrounds. 
D'Arrigo and her team researched what happens to radioactive materials 
from the DOE national headquarters and seven nuclear sites - Oak Ridge, 
Tennessee; Rocky Flats, Colorado; Los Alamos, New Mexico; Mound and 
Fernald, Ohio; West Valley, New York; and Paducah, Kentucky. 
The state of Tennessee is the most active state in licensing processors 
that can release radioactive materials for the nuclear waste generators, 
the report found. 
"Tennessee is serving as a funnel to bring in nuclear weapons and power 
waste from around the country to disperse into the landfills and recycling 
without public knowledge," D'Arrigo said. 
The Department of Energy is charged with removing the radioactive 
materials from more than 50 years of energy research and weapons 
production at Tennessee's Oak Ridge Reservation. The program includes what 
the DOE calls "an aggressive effort" to complete the majority of the 
environmental cleanup by 2008. 
The sheer volume of radioactive material the Energy Department’s Office of 
Environmental Management must deal with is enormous. This agency is tasked 
with cleanup of the environmental legacy of the nation’s nuclear weapons 
program and government-sponsored nuclear energy research. 
One of the largest and most technically complex environmental cleanup 
programs in the world, the effort includes cleanup of 114 sites across the 
country, including those on the Oak Ridge Reservation. 
On September 30, 2005, the Department of Energy announced that it had 
accomplished "a major milestone in environmental cleanup with the safe 
disposition of over one million cubic feet of legacy waste," from the Oak 
Ridge Reservation. 
A shipment of boxes containing radioactive waste departs the Oak Ridge 
Reservation for disposal off site. The shipment is one of hundreds that 
were disposed of on and off Oak Ridge as part of the Legacy Waste 
Disposition Program. 
This volume equates to a football field covered more than 30 feet high. 
The waste consisted of radioactive scrap metal, contaminated soil, 
construction debris, organic liquids, waste water and sludge residue, the 
DOE said. 
Bechtel Jacobs Company, LLC, the department’s environmental cleanup 
contractor, completed the project safely and on-time, the DOE said. 
But it is where the radioactive material goes when it is removed from the 
DOE sites that NIRS researched. 
By permitting radioactive materials to go directly to unregulated 
destinations and to licensed processors who subsequently release it, DOE 
is enabling manmade radioactivity to get out into the open marketplace, 
landfills, commercial recycling and into everyday consumer products, 
construction supplies and equipment, roads, piping, buildings, vehicles, 
playgrounds, basements, furniture, toys, zippers, personal items, without 
warning, notification or consent, NIRS researchers discovered. 
The NIRS report tracked the laws, guidance and technical justifications 
that DOE uses to rationalize allowing commercial businesses and recreation 
areas - places unprepared to handle radioactivity - to recycle and reuse 
these materials. 
"DOE is ignoring public opposition to unnecessary exposures and releasing 
radioactivity even though the U.S. Congress revoked such release 
policies," said Mary Olson, director of the NIRS Southeast office and a 
co-author of the report. 
"DOE is using its own internal guidance to allow radioactive weapons 
wastes out of control, claiming the doses to people will be 'acceptable' 
even though they are not enforced or tracked," Olson said. 
Under the current system, the DOE and other nuclear waste generators 
release materials directly, sell them at auction or through exchanges or 
send their waste to processors who can then release it from radioactive 
controls to landfills, to recyclers or for reuse. 

The Disposal Area Remedial Actions Soils Storage Facility at Oak Ridge was 
built in 1989 to store contaminated sediments and excavation wastes. 

This dispersal of radioactive materials is being done without 
comprehensive complex-wide tracking, without routine public reporting of 
the releases from each site and processor and usually without independent 
verification that it is within the DOE's self-imposed limits, the NIRS 
researchers found. 
"As long as DOE and other nuclear waste generators can slip their 
contamination out — letting it get out of control — On purpose — there is 
really no limit to the amount of additional radiation exposure members of 
the public could receive," D'Arrigo concluded. "Only an informed, outraged 
public can force DOE and agreeable states to shift the goal from dispersal 
to isolation of radioactive waste." 
While approving of DOE's ban on recycling of radioactive metal from 
nuclear weapons, the report cautions there are loopholes and the Bush 
administration is considering lifting the ban. 
Olson and D'Arrigo say NIRS is submitting a new Freedom of Information Act 
request to the Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security 
Administration to identify and quantify how much nuclear weapons generated 
radioactivity has been released, is being released and may be released and 
its destinations. 
"Our previous efforts have only begun to answer these questions," they 
said. 
Based on the information in this report, NIRS is calling for a 
comprehensive, permanent ban to be placed on release for recycling, 
regular (unregulated) disposal and reuse of all radioactive wastes and 
materials, including potentially contaminated metals and materials from 
all DOE sites and activities. 
A copy of the full report, "Out of Control — On Purpose: DOE's Dispersal 
of Radioactive Waste into Landfills and Consumer Products," is online at: 
http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/outofcontrol/outofcontrol.htm    

       
      

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