Lynda

Just when you thought it was safe to take your kids to the park.

Lynda
----- Original Message ----- >

> Radioactive Soil From
> Nuclear Plants May Be Sold
> To Homes And Farms
> By Brian Hansen
> http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2000/2000L-10-19-15.html
> 10-22-00
>
> WASHINGTON, DC (ENS) - A controversial plan that would
> allow nuclear power plant operators to market their radiologically
> contaminated soils to construction companies, farmers, golf courses
> and other commercial entities is moving closer to reality.
>
> After a 14 month literature search, the U.S. Nuclear
> Regulatory Commission (NRC) has selected 56 documents with which to
> define "realistic reuse scenarios" for the many tons of contaminated
> soils currently piled up at nation's nuclear power plants.
>
> According to the NRC, the nuclear power industry's
> stockpile of low level contaminated soils could be safely used for a
> number of private and public endeavors, such as home landscaping
> projects, athletic fields, and playgrounds.
>
> Palo Verde Unit #1 nuclear power plant is located 34 miles
> west of Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo courtesy Nuclear Regulatory
> Commission)
>
> The 56 documents selected in the literature search, which
> were culled from a collection of some two million scientific
> articles, academic publications and industry reports, will be used to
> characterize the impacts that the recycled contaminated soils would
> have on public health and the environment.
>
> Specifically, the NRC hopes to use the documents to analyze
> the "exposure pathways" that will result from each soil reuse
> scenario. For example, the NRC will use the documents to analyze the
> exposure pathways in a "suburban scenario," where recycled nuclear
> power plant soils are used as backfill around a domestic residence.
>
> The exposure pathways resulting from any given soil reuse
> scenario would vary according to the activities of the people living
> area, the NRC notes. For example, if people within a suburban reuse
> scenario engaged in gardening activities, the exposure pathways could
> include inhalation, ingestion of vegetables or fruits, inadvertent
> ingestion of soil, and external exposure, the NRC points out.
>
> Curtis Park Adventure Playground, Sacramento, California
> (Photo courtesy Sacramento Parks Dept.)
>
> In order to evaluate the potential overall impact of
> reusing the power plant soils, the NRC will analyze several scenarios
> to determine a "critical group." The NRC defines a critical group as
> a group of individuals reasonably expected to receive the greatest
> exposure to residual radioactivity for any applicable set of
> circumstances.
>
> The dose of radiation received by the average member of the
> critical group will then be used to determine whether limitations are
> required so that soil reuse will be controlled in a way that is
> protective of public health and the environment, according to the
> NRC.
>
> The 56 documents that were culled from more than two
> million during the literature search will provide valuable
> information in setting those parameters, the NRC maintains. Some of
> the document titles selected include:
>
>
> * "Hazardous soils to be used in paving mix." * "Large
> scale adobe brick manufacturing in New Mexico." * "Methodology to
> estimate the amount and particle size of soil ingested by children:
> implications for exposure assessment at waste sites." * "Ash: A
> valuable resource." * "Building with adobe brick." * "Probabilistic
> prediction of exposures to arsenic contaminated residential soil." *
> "Technical basis for establishing environmentally acceptable
> endpoints in contaminated soils." * "We're in the soils business,
> remember!"
>
>
> A key element of the project was to have a team of outside
> experts review the results of the literature search, the NRC
> emphasized. According to the NRC, the role of the outside experts was
> to alert the agency to concepts or information overlooked in the
> literature search.
>
> One of the independent reviewers, Carlo Long Casler, did
> make such an alert to the NRC. Casler, who is affiliated with the
> Arid Lands Information Center at the University of Arizona, asked the
> NRC to review Russian documents pertaining to the accident at the
> Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. Casler also suggested that the
> NRC analyze Japanese documents pertaining to the long term health
> effects of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and
> Nagasaki some 55 years ago.
>
> Severe soil erosion in a wheat field in Washington. (Photo
> by Jack Dykinga courtesy U.S. Dept. of Agriculture)
>
> The NCR, in a report released earlier this summer,
> concluded that the environmental and health impacts of those cases
> were not relevant to the question of reusing radiologically
> contaminated soil from U.S. nuclear power plants.
>
> "The unintentional exposure hazard from the high-level
> radiation that occurred in the cases Ms. Casler mentioned is
> significantly different from the anticipated exposure derived from
> soils intentionally released from NRC-regulated locations," the NRC
> stated in its report.
>
> That's not good enough for Diane D'Arrigo of Nuclear
> Information and Resource Service, a watchdog group based in
> Washington, D.C.
>
> D'Arrigo, like many environmentalists, takes issue with the
> NRC's plan to release low level radioactive materials from regulatory
> standards.
>
> "The goal should be to isolate radioactive materials and
> prevent exposures, not to deliberately expose people by allowing
> radioactive materials into regular daily commerce, D'Arrigo said. "If
> it's contaminated from nuclear power and the fuel chain, then it
> should be treated as a waste and isolated."
>
>
> Joseph M. Farley Unit #1 is situated 16.5 miles from
> Dothan, Alabama (Photo courtesy Photo courtesy Nuclear Regulatory
> Commission) The NRC has already set radiation benchmarks that nuclear
> power plants must meet before they can be decommissioned. Now, the
> NRC is trying to set standards that would allow individual aspects of
> the plants to be released from regulatory control prior to a
> shutdown. In addition to contaminated soils, these standards would
> apply to metals, concrete and equipment used at nuclear power plants.
>
> Like many environmentalists, D'Arrigo is not convinced that
> the NRC's standards will be protective.
>
> "When the whole motivation behind it is to allow
> radioactive materials to be released from regulatory control, we
> can't have a lot of hope that these are really going to be objective
> or comprehensive or realistic," she said.
>
> The NRC will take public comments on its report on human
> interaction with reused soils until November 17. The document can be
> viewed on line at: http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/NUREGS/SR1725/index.html.
>
> Comments can be submitted by email to: tjn@..., or by
> fax to: 301-415-5385.
>
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> 2000. All Rights Reserved.