Aug. 25, 2010
Come and Get It --- Free Plutonium Sludge to Fertilize Your Organic Garden
Californians Once Lined Up for the Freebie and Years Later Regretted Their Use of the Fertilizer
By Tony Rutherford
Huntingtonnews.net Reporter
Huntington, WV (HNN) - Back in 1999 Joe Harding told the Washington Post, “Everything was so safe, so riskless [at the Paducah enriched uranium gaseous diffusion plant] … We know the truth, I can feel it in my body.” Harding is no longer alive; he’s one of the workers who died of cancer.
At the height of the Cold War in 1952, 1,800 men and women labored in hot, stadium sized buildings turning trainloads of dusty uranium powder into material for bombs, Joby Warrick wrote on August 8, 1999.
However, plant management claimed that workers were safe due to an “insignificant amount of plutonium” processed at the Kentucky site. The workers were not monitored.
From 1953 to 1976, the Post said , 103,000 metric tons of used uranium were sent to Paducah arriving in freight cars as fine black powder. Left from the plutonium –making process, “fission byproducts like technetium-99 and heavy metals known as "transuranics": neptunium and plutonium (which according the then Institute for Energy and Environmental Research is 100,000 times more radioactive per gram than uranium.)
Workers were told respiratory protection was optional, they almost jokingly “salted” their bread in the cafeteria with green uranium dust, and when they got out of bed in the morning their linens would glow green.
Unfortunately, Paducah represents only one of many Atomic Energy Plants where “waste” such as the plutonium was a Cold War secret. The Post at the time of their report could not obtain records of how much plutonium made its way through the plant. As an indication, 12 ounces of plutonium in black powder delivered twice the radiation as 61,000 pounds of uranium. Where did the uranium go? Between 1952 and 1987 , all 61,000 pounds flowed from the plant and into the Ohio River.
According to the Post, 16 factories that were then part of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, recycled scrap metalfromnuclear weapons. A public outcry arose --- it is unknown whether these “recycled” radioactives surfaced in commercial markets as forks, spoons, children’s braces, or vehicle bumpers. But, gold, lead, aluminum and nickel from nuclear weapons were available for reuse.
Of course, this recycling represents a portion of the work done in Huntington, WV through 1962 at the Huntington Pilot Plant on the INCO ground, which was operated by the Department of Energy. Scrap nickel from tainted uranium (with traces of plutonium and other transuranics ) was also recovered just above 29th Street East.
Back in those days, scientists believed that burial of waste put the cancer causing products out of harm’s way. But, the lengthy half lives and a tendency to react with rain water caused new worries at places such as the Maxey Flats site in Fleming, Ky., where waste in cardboard boxes leeched off storage facility property and into the surface water.
With burial sites leaking radioactive materials into creeks and rivers, environmentalists had to go back to the final resting places and either devise ways to keep the chemicals from reaching waters or re-burying the contents under concrete caps.
FREE SLUDGE FOR YOUR GARDEN
Nothing can exceed the egregious lack of foresight of Plutonium sludge discharges that were offered free to the public for use , for instance, in the fertilization of home gardens.
The Christian Science Monitor in June 1998 reported how in 1961 Colorado state trooper William Wilson saw a stainless steel milk truck spewing liquid on a bombing range outside Denver. The driver told Trooper Wilson that he had radioactive wastewater from Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons plant, which, by agreement, he was dumping at the Lowry Bombing Range.
The toxic drop offs do not rest simply on the trooper’s words. Mary Ulmer had a farm nearby for four generations. Curiosity about the trucks got the best of her. She waited for one to stop and begin emptying then she snapped a few frames, the Monitor reporter.
Just like a scene out of X-Files, the huge man in a white shirt driving a truck with no plates rolled up his sleeves and told her, “I want the camera.”
A Denver based engineering firm tested for contaminants in Lowry groundwater. The result: High levels of radiation everywhere over the site.
Another firm commissioned by the EPA and others, found levels of plutonium and associated isotopes 10,000 times higher than naturally occurring.
Conveniently, by about 1993, the EPA decided to put on a pair of verbal flip flops --- now , the plutonium laced waste was suitable for sewage sludge. It could be mixed, diluted or whatever with municipal wastewater. That was a much cheaper means of dealing with unacceptable levels of radioactivity.
Flopping its assessment meant that clean up dropped from billions of dollars to less than $100 million. Obviously, there are contentions that the EPA studies were “flawed” and that the cleanup board had mutants sitting amongst the environmentalists. Due to the “sludge” safety reports, the product was spread on farmlands from Virginia to Oregon.
The Christian Science Monitor reported that H.J. Heinz and Del Monte refused to buy tomatoes, beans, and other fruits and veggies fertilized with sludge.
SEWAGE TREATMENT
As for the ground water and other contaminants, the “stuff” from Lowry was dumped into Metro Wastewater . The EPA maintained that millions of gallons of Lowry (plutonium) laced toxic water could run through sewer pipes before high readings of hazardous materials would be detected.
One lab technician at the Denver Wastewater plan opted for early retirement when they began to accept Lowry waste. Marilyn Ferrari, the technician, told the Monitor, management had “pressured” technicians to “make readings look right… if numbers came in high, they would say, retest.”
LIVERMORE’S PLUTONIUM PARK
Numerous nuclear and military sites existed around San Francisco Bay. No one can explain how particles of plutonium ended up in Big Trees Park, adjacent to a school --- and half a mile from the weapons lab. From Vallejo’s defunct submarine port to a lab at the Farallon Islands, small amounts of radiation have been found on tree leaves, discovered in the soil under roadways, dug up in forgotten dumps and measured in rainfall near some of those nuclear and military sites, according to a November 1997 article in the San Francisco Examiner. http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Tritium-Plutonium-Leftovers25nov97.htm
Supposedly, the levels of plutonium 239 are “too low to hurt anyone or require cleanup or extra monitoring;” nevertheless the mother of a five year old signed a petition asking for testing and posting of contamination signs. She does not want to forbid her son from playing in the park or upset him with the reason why.
Back in 1968 Janis Turner and her husband rejoiced at the opportunity to receive “free sludge” from Livermore Water Reclamation Plant (LWRP) for a garden that for 35 years had fed family, friends, and others with organic produce. Fifteen years after the first distribution, plutonium levels tested high in sludge drying beds.
Sludge giveaways stopped in 1976. But, plutonium continued to be dumped into Livermore’s sewer system. By 1987, the area became designated a superfund clean-up site. However, what was the risk of illness from eating, plowing or shoveling the radioactive soil? The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) assessed potential doses and concluded the Pu-contaminated sewage sludge “determined to be no apparent public health hazard.” ATSDR stressed its differentiation between DOSAGE and RISK, hinting that , well, the devil is in what’s not said. See: http://www.trivalleycares.org/Pu_Sludge_Case_Study.pdf
And, although a “follow up” study was requested, the federal government declined to provide an appropriation.
AND THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Interestingly, a young “rookie” inspector in Huntington once told me how he investigated some sludge or other underground soil at or near the site where the Huntington uranium atomic weapons plant was located. After he was in the pit, some workers inquired, “Do you know what you’re standing in?”
He didn’t continue the story.
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Come and Get It --- Free Plutonium Sludge to Fertilize Your Organic Garden
Californians Once Lined Up for the Freebie and Years Later Regretted Their Use of the Fertilizer
By Tony Rutherford
Huntingtonnews.net Reporter
Huntington, WV (HNN) - Back in 1999 Joe Harding told the Washington Post, “Everything was so safe, so riskless [at the Paducah enriched uranium gaseous diffusion plant] … We know the truth, I can feel it in my body.” Harding is no longer alive; he’s one of the workers who died of cancer.
At the height of the Cold War in 1952, 1,800 men and women labored in hot, stadium sized buildings turning trainloads of dusty uranium powder into material for bombs, Joby Warrick wrote on August 8, 1999.
However, plant management claimed that workers were safe due to an “insignificant amount of plutonium” processed at the Kentucky site. The workers were not monitored.
From 1953 to 1976, the Post said , 103,000 metric tons of used uranium were sent to Paducah arriving in freight cars as fine black powder. Left from the plutonium –making process, “fission byproducts like technetium-99 and heavy metals known as "transuranics": neptunium and plutonium (which according the then Institute for Energy and Environmental Research is 100,000 times more radioactive per gram than uranium.)
Workers were told respiratory protection was optional, they almost jokingly “salted” their bread in the cafeteria with green uranium dust, and when they got out of bed in the morning their linens would glow green.
Unfortunately, Paducah represents only one of many Atomic Energy Plants where “waste” such as the plutonium was a Cold War secret. The Post at the time of their report could not obtain records of how much plutonium made its way through the plant. As an indication, 12 ounces of plutonium in black powder delivered twice the radiation as 61,000 pounds of uranium. Where did the uranium go? Between 1952 and 1987 , all 61,000 pounds flowed from the plant and into the Ohio River.
According to the Post, 16 factories that were then part of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, recycled scrap metalfromnuclear weapons. A public outcry arose --- it is unknown whether these “recycled” radioactives surfaced in commercial markets as forks, spoons, children’s braces, or vehicle bumpers. But, gold, lead, aluminum and nickel from nuclear weapons were available for reuse.
Of course, this recycling represents a portion of the work done in Huntington, WV through 1962 at the Huntington Pilot Plant on the INCO ground, which was operated by the Department of Energy. Scrap nickel from tainted uranium (with traces of plutonium and other transuranics ) was also recovered just above 29th Street East.
Back in those days, scientists believed that burial of waste put the cancer causing products out of harm’s way. But, the lengthy half lives and a tendency to react with rain water caused new worries at places such as the Maxey Flats site in Fleming, Ky., where waste in cardboard boxes leeched off storage facility property and into the surface water.
With burial sites leaking radioactive materials into creeks and rivers, environmentalists had to go back to the final resting places and either devise ways to keep the chemicals from reaching waters or re-burying the contents under concrete caps.
FREE SLUDGE FOR YOUR GARDEN
Nothing can exceed the egregious lack of foresight of Plutonium sludge discharges that were offered free to the public for use , for instance, in the fertilization of home gardens.
The Christian Science Monitor in June 1998 reported how in 1961 Colorado state trooper William Wilson saw a stainless steel milk truck spewing liquid on a bombing range outside Denver. The driver told Trooper Wilson that he had radioactive wastewater from Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons plant, which, by agreement, he was dumping at the Lowry Bombing Range.
The toxic drop offs do not rest simply on the trooper’s words. Mary Ulmer had a farm nearby for four generations. Curiosity about the trucks got the best of her. She waited for one to stop and begin emptying then she snapped a few frames, the Monitor reporter.
Just like a scene out of X-Files, the huge man in a white shirt driving a truck with no plates rolled up his sleeves and told her, “I want the camera.”
A Denver based engineering firm tested for contaminants in Lowry groundwater. The result: High levels of radiation everywhere over the site.
Another firm commissioned by the EPA and others, found levels of plutonium and associated isotopes 10,000 times higher than naturally occurring.
Conveniently, by about 1993, the EPA decided to put on a pair of verbal flip flops --- now , the plutonium laced waste was suitable for sewage sludge. It could be mixed, diluted or whatever with municipal wastewater. That was a much cheaper means of dealing with unacceptable levels of radioactivity.
Flopping its assessment meant that clean up dropped from billions of dollars to less than $100 million. Obviously, there are contentions that the EPA studies were “flawed” and that the cleanup board had mutants sitting amongst the environmentalists. Due to the “sludge” safety reports, the product was spread on farmlands from Virginia to Oregon.
The Christian Science Monitor reported that H.J. Heinz and Del Monte refused to buy tomatoes, beans, and other fruits and veggies fertilized with sludge.
SEWAGE TREATMENT
As for the ground water and other contaminants, the “stuff” from Lowry was dumped into Metro Wastewater . The EPA maintained that millions of gallons of Lowry (plutonium) laced toxic water could run through sewer pipes before high readings of hazardous materials would be detected.
One lab technician at the Denver Wastewater plan opted for early retirement when they began to accept Lowry waste. Marilyn Ferrari, the technician, told the Monitor, management had “pressured” technicians to “make readings look right… if numbers came in high, they would say, retest.”
LIVERMORE’S PLUTONIUM PARK
Numerous nuclear and military sites existed around San Francisco Bay. No one can explain how particles of plutonium ended up in Big Trees Park, adjacent to a school --- and half a mile from the weapons lab. From Vallejo’s defunct submarine port to a lab at the Farallon Islands, small amounts of radiation have been found on tree leaves, discovered in the soil under roadways, dug up in forgotten dumps and measured in rainfall near some of those nuclear and military sites, according to a November 1997 article in the San Francisco Examiner. http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/Tritium-Plutonium-Leftovers25nov97.htm
Supposedly, the levels of plutonium 239 are “too low to hurt anyone or require cleanup or extra monitoring;” nevertheless the mother of a five year old signed a petition asking for testing and posting of contamination signs. She does not want to forbid her son from playing in the park or upset him with the reason why.
Back in 1968 Janis Turner and her husband rejoiced at the opportunity to receive “free sludge” from Livermore Water Reclamation Plant (LWRP) for a garden that for 35 years had fed family, friends, and others with organic produce. Fifteen years after the first distribution, plutonium levels tested high in sludge drying beds.
Sludge giveaways stopped in 1976. But, plutonium continued to be dumped into Livermore’s sewer system. By 1987, the area became designated a superfund clean-up site. However, what was the risk of illness from eating, plowing or shoveling the radioactive soil? The Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) assessed potential doses and concluded the Pu-contaminated sewage sludge “determined to be no apparent public health hazard.” ATSDR stressed its differentiation between DOSAGE and RISK, hinting that , well, the devil is in what’s not said. See: http://www.trivalleycares.org/Pu_Sludge_Case_Study.pdf
And, although a “follow up” study was requested, the federal government declined to provide an appropriation.
AND THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME
Interestingly, a young “rookie” inspector in Huntington once told me how he investigated some sludge or other underground soil at or near the site where the Huntington uranium atomic weapons plant was located. After he was in the pit, some workers inquired, “Do you know what you’re standing in?”
He didn’t continue the story.
Share This Story:
Make HNN Your Homepage (IE Users Only)
