What The Power Companies

The nuclear power plants that Richard Nixon used to buy off governments in the Mideast are the same kind of plants that are multiplying in this country at a rate that poses a doomsday threat to the future life of this planet.

The power companies, and their friends in the Federal Government, have tried to minimize the dangers of nuclear fission. But last month the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) slipped out a report that documents 861 "abnormal occurrences" at nuclear power plants in just the past year -- including 12 leaks of deadly radiation into the environment and by the AEC's own reckoning there have been more than 300 major accidents with nuclear reactors since 1945. In one case three workers were killed, and in another, 10 thousand gallons of radioactive water were dumped into the Mississippi River.

What the future may hold is even more chilling. Based on AEC figures, the Union of Concerned Scientists have calculated that if 20% of the radioactive gas in a small (650 million watt) plant were to escape, it could form a cloud that would kill people as far as 100 miles from the reactor. If the winds dispersed the cloud, an area the size of Pennsylvania could be contaminated.

Imagine a half million people fleeing from clouds that could cripple them, blind them or kill them. Where would these refugees go?

Unfortunately, this scenario is not as implausible as it once seemed. Nuclear experts have been forced to admit that nuclear power plants still contain many defects, both in the way they were built and the way they're being operated.

Consider, for instance, Consumer Power's Palisades Nuclear Plant at South Haven, about 150 miles from Ann Arbor. The plant there was shut down last August after the AEC found that it was leaking radiation through its exhaust pipes and through hundreds of tiny pinholes in the steam generating pipes. Earlier it had been discovered that Consumer's was dumping gallons of radioactive waste into Lake Michigan.

The public, as it turned out, had to find out much of this on its own. Consumer's, which is now under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department, ignored the law that requires it to report all leakage incidents and tried to solve the leaks without informing the AEC.

It is a tribute to luck, rather than to the ability of the nuclear experts, that thousands of people were not contaminated by the South Haven plant. The SUN learned, for instance, that Consumer's officials would sometimes shut off the radioactive alarm system because the alarms were being set off "too often." With the alarms off, massive leakage could have gone undetected for weeks.

Consumer's has also had similar problems at its other nuclear plants, and Consumers' problems are typical of those at the other 30 plants scattered across the U.S.

Take the most basic reactor safety-system, the ECCS (Emergency Core Cooling System). Its function is to restore cooling water to the hot nuclear core in case a pipe ruptures and spills all the water that normally cools the reactor. But IF this backup cooling system would also fail, the result would be a "meltdown" - a catastrophic leak.

Right from the beginning the fail-safe nature of the ECCS has been in doubt. In 1965, at a point when larger nuclear reactors were first used, the Aerojet Nuclear Company at the National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho found several mechanical failures in the ECCS. Again in 1970-71, the ECCS failed to pass six-out-of-six tests conducted by Aerojet.

The reactor community was stunned. But the Aerojet report was suppressed by the AEC. Only recently have investigative reporters and consumer groups been able to dig it out.

The possibility of still worse accidents, such as the bursting of the reactor vessel or boiler, is also more real than the AEC has been willing to acknowledge. The recent hearings on emergency cooling safety have shown that some of the AEC data on vessel safety is unreliable.

The AEC thus far has not considered this a possible event and thus has not asked reactor manufacturers to take it into account in their designs. Yet this type of incident would also cause catastrophic meltdown.

Peter Morris, Director of AEC Regulatory Operations, made the AEC position clear in February of 1973. "...Within the AEC it has been the policy that designs should not be required to provide protection against pressure vessel failure. So the question of whether or not such an event was credible did not arise. The reason is very simple - no design was available for a building which could withstand the consequences of pressure vessel failure, so it was decided to accept the risk."

THE SAFETY RECORD SO FAR

The Atomic Energy Commission has a habit of pointing with pride to its safety record. But the actual record has included fuel-rod leaks, control-rod failures, explosions, radioactive gas release, fuel meltdown, and plugged cores.

Plus there have been these highlights:

-In 1961 ,a plant in Idaho experienced a "nuclear excursion" -- a sudden uncontrolled fission reaction and it spread radioactive contamination over the station.

-Northern States Power Company nuclear plant had an accident that dumped 10,000 gallons of radioactive water into the Mississippi River, causing Minneapolis to close its water intake gates.

-In 1961 ,an accident at the SL-1 reactor in Idaho killed three workers.

-At Big Rock Point Nuclear Plant near Charlevoix, Michigan, control rods stuck in position, studs failed or cracked, screws jostled out of place and into machinery, a valve malfunctioned, foreign material lodged in critical moving parts, I and welds cracked at 16 points.

-In Illinois, the Advanced TRIGA reactor was humming along at 1 .5 million watts when someone flushed a toilet which dropped the main water pressure. This stopped a pump which stopped another pump, triggering a safety device and shutting down the entire reactor. Some of these incidents could have produced a radiation "rainstorm" that would have had effects on the planet for generations.

"There is no large disagreement about the biological harmfulness of radiation. A single "curie" of lethal strontium 90, with a radioactive half-life of about 30 years, will spit out 37 billion high-speed particles per second, and each emitted particle has enough energy to smash about a quarter of a million chemical bonds in human tissue. Both cancer and genetic defects can start with radiation injury to a single cell...Radioactivity is the ultimate pollutant." -Environmental Protection Agency

Despite all this, the whole process involved in generating nuclear power, from the mining of uranium to the "perpetual guardianship" of millions of nuclear waste gallons, is unsafe.

URANIUM MINING AND MILLING

The whole nuclear fuel cycle for nuclear power plants is one that generates radioactive wastes at each step.

The cycle begins in the uranium mine. Here radium and its decay products, such as radon gas, emit radiation.

Radium-induced lung cancer doesn't show up for 10 to 15 years, but when it does there is virtually nothing that can be done. It is a particularly virulent form of lung cancer, resistant to all traditional chemical and x-ray treatments.

Nobody warned the miners in the 1,000 uranium mines across the west during the '40's and '50's and it was only in 1967 that any safety standards were enforced for them. Now, of 6,000 uranium miners, hundreds are already dead and hundreds more will die no matter what is done for them. One AEC report projects an estimated 1200 deaths by 1985. A virtual epidemic of lung cancer has begun among uranium miners.

A particularly glaring example not included in the Environmental Health Department statistics above, was brought to light by journalist Amanda Spake, who received a grant to research the cases of 100 Navajos hired to work the Kerr-McGee uranium mines near Cove, Arizona in 1954.

Twenty-one years later, 18 miners are dead and another 21 are ill, with the familiar initial symptoms of their dead coworkers. Up until now, lung cancers were rare among the Navajos.

About 90 million tons of waste ore, or tailings, are piled up outside uranium mills from Texas to Oregon. Ground to a sandlike consistency to remove the uranium, these tailings contain radium-226, which has a half-life of 80,000 years. (This means that it takes radium-226 80,000 years to lose half of its radioactivity.)

Radium and thorium, like strontium-90, are absorbed by the bones. Radium from tailings decays into radon gas and its byproducts -- the same cause of lung cancer in radium miners. Also, gamma radiation emitted from the tailings can cause leukemia.

Of 26 uranium mills operating in 1963, ten discharged liquid waste into streams. In 1958-59, the Animas River below uranium mills in Durango, Colorado, contained almost 300% of the safe maximum daily intake for radium. Crops raised on farms irrigated by the Animas River had twice as much radium-226 as other crops.

Radium from the tributaries of the Colorado mixed with sediment and moved downstream to Lake Mead. Studies of Lake Mead with its tributaries -- a major drinking-water and irrigation source for seven states -- showed radium concentration in bottom sediments three times the normal level.

By 1966, the U.S. Public Health Service was checking tailing piles. El Paso Natural Gas Company's uranium tailings in Tuba City, Arizona - on Navajo land -- showed radium radiation levels up to 1,000 times the average background readings. Gamma radiation was 12 times background level.

After the uranium ore is milled it goes to a refining plant where it is refined and enriched with additional uranium-235, by gaseous diffusion. The fuel is then converted to a metal, uranium dioxide, and is formed into small pellets which are in turn encased in long metal tubes, or cladding. Large numbers of these tubes are assembled as bundles; the basic fuel elements within the core of the nuclear reactor consists of many bundles combined.

NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS

Although a nuclear reactor does not produce smoke, fly ash or sulfur dioxide, it does produce three types of radioactive pollutants: solid, liquid, and gaseous.

Solid wastes consist of such items as clothing, reactor parts and tools -- which may be highly radioactive - depending on their use. Such wastes are customarily buried in cement drums either in trenches in land or at sea.

One obvious hazard of sea dumping would be containers breaking and releasing their radioactive contents, which might wash upon crowded beaches. Contamination of food chains, concentration of wastes on continental shelves, movement by underwater currents - these are all likely possibilities.

Some liquid wastes, such as cobalt-58 and chromium-52, on the assumption that they are "low-level" are discharged into surrounding water sources. (Keep in mind that the National Academy of Sciences has recommended the lowering by 100% of the permissible radiation levels.)

Steam, vented through the stacks of nuclear power plants, contains Krypton-85 (which adds seriously to the exposure burden of radioactivity); Tritium (combines with water and accumulates in the food chain all the way up to man); Iodine-131 (has been found concentrated in cattle thyroids in Nevada and other western states - severely damages the thyroid and can cause harmful biological changes -- including cancer); lodine-129 (has a halflife of 17 million years and is accumulating in the áreas around nuclear plants).

What does all this mean for people? According to Dr. E. J. Sternglass of the University of Pennsylvania, leukemia and other cancers of the lymphatic and blood forming systems rose 70% between 1957 and 1967 in Beaver County Pennsylvania. Beaver County is the home of the Duquesne Light Company's nuclear power plant, which began operation in 1957. In the county, cancer in all forms rose to a peak of 30% above levels before the operation of the plant. In comparison, the state's cancer rate rose 9% during the same period.

REPROCESSING PLANTS

The biggest problem lies in disposing of the actual fission products of the nuclear power plant. After having undergone controlled fission in the core, the fuel elements are extremely radioactive. They are removed and shipped in specially cooled and shielded containers to a fuel reprocessing plant.

And accidents in transportation have occurred. Trucks bearing radioactive materials have been involved in accidents, and in once instance, a train carrying radioactive materials derailed in Wingate, North Carolina. Containers bearing wastes have broken open while in transit. 

The AEC reported that during 1968, there were 36 losses of radioactive material. In only 5 cases was the material recovered.

When the fuel elements reached the reprocessing plant, they are chopped up and separated from the unreacted fuel, which may be used again.

In addition, nuclear reprocessing plants have waste discharges themselves. Take, for instance, Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc. (NFS) of Wes tValIey, N.Y. Located on a 3,300 acre state-owned site, about 30 miles from Buffalo, New York, NFS dumps its waste into the nearest stream - Buttermilk Creek.

In 1968, scientists from Cornell University went "under the fence" and got samples from the holding ponds and the creek which showed 36,000 to 100,000 times the maximum permissible radioactivity.

The New York State Bureau of Nuclear Engineering has detected a concentration of radionuclides, such as Strontium-90 and Cesium-127 in fish and wildlife around the facility.

There are 389 dairy herds within ten miles of NFS. About 240 square miles of nearby land is used as a source of public water supply. One public supply is within 5 miles, six more are within 10 miles.

The New York State Public Health Department's Radioactivity Bulletin lists water radiation levels near NFS at ten times the AEC limit.

And even if it wanted to, New York State or any other state, cannot set stricter radiation disposal limits than the AEC set federal limits. In a dispute between Minnesota and the Northern States Power Co., which owns a nuclear power plant in Monticello, Minnesota, the Supreme Court ruled, in April 1972, that states can't set stiffer limits than the federal government. A dozen other states had filed friend-of-the-court briefs, supporting the state of Minnesota's stand.

HIGH-LEVEL WASTE DISPOSAL

Strontium-90 and Cesium-137 are two deadly fission products. They both have half-lives of around 30 years, but some experts feel that they should be isolated from the human environment for 1,000 years.

The operation of a modern 1,000 megawatt nuclear power plant for a year, generates enough of these substances to equal 1,000 Hiroshima atom bombs.

By 1980, it is estimated that one trillion "curries" of Strontium-90 will be in storage. One gallon of this substance containing a mere 500 curries is enough to threaten the health of several million people.

Another fission product is plutonium, the most cancer-causing element known (it has a half-life of 240,000 years). This means that it must be isolated from the human environment for that period - at least! Disposal, when one talks about nuclear waste disposal, is simply a euphemism for perpetual guardianship.

This guardianship must be foolproof - and it isn't. Already there have been serious incidents at disposal plants.

The biggest disposal area in the world is at Hanford, Washington. It encloses a stretch of the Columbia River and a tract of country covering 650 square miles.

The radioactive liquid wastes are kept in tanks constructed of carbon steel resting in a steel saucer to catch any leakage. They are enclosed in reinforced concrete and the whole construction is buried in the ground, with only the vents showing. Each tank has a million gallon capacity.

The liquid boils from its own radioactivity so there must be a continuously maintained cooling system in each tank. In addition, the vapors generated in the tanks have to be condensed and scrubbed; otherwise, radioactive gas would escape from the vents.

More than half a million gallons have leaked from the storage tanks at Hanford, with the more recent leaks being the larger ones -- 70,000 gallons three years ago and 115,000 gallons last July.

The tanks themselves are 20 to 30 years old, and a report from their civilian contractors in conjunction with the Illinois Institute of Technology states that, "the self-boiling tank structures are being stressed well beyond accepted design limits."

They also postulate the life span of the tanks at 30 to 40 years at the outside.

The 115,000 gallon leak, nearly one third of the 29-year-old tank's contents -- was not detected for several days, and released plutonium, strontium-90 and cesiurn directly into the ground.

POISON DUCK

Despite the AEC's assurances to the contrary, there has been contamination of the Columbia River, partially resulting from Hanford's practice of dumping diluted waste directly into the water. A 1969 study showed that eating half a pound of duck from the Hanford reservation would result in an exposure three times the present federal limit.

People who swim, sunbathe or water-ski on the Columbia could obtain a dose of 53 milligrams - 10 times the dose the AEC says it will put into effect as a standard for nuclear power plant workers sometime later this year.

Other waste leaks have occurred at a similar facility at Savannah River, South Carolina, where the storage tanks are located on the same level as the water table. At least one of the seven reported leaks caused radioactive waste to actually enter the water table.

Once the waste was lost in the water table, it was impossible to trace and no one knows exactly where it is or what to do about it.

At the National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS) near Idaho Falls, Idaho, plutonium was buried in ordinary steel drums. despite warnings that they would leak. In 1970, the Federal Water Quality Administration released a study which showed that radioactive wastes from NRTS have indeed entered the ground water.

The NRTS is located on the Snake River plain, in southeastern Idaho, which is underlain by the Snake River aquifer, one of the world's most productive ground water reservoirs. The reservoir feeds into the Columbia River system (part of which runs through the Hanford Reservation) and contamination poses a serious threat to water supplies for much of the Pacific Northwest.

The scope of the nuclear waste problem is staggering. At the Hanford Reservation alone, more radioactive pollutants are stored than would be released during an entire nuclear war.

Already, future generations have been given a nuclear garbage legacy which must be carefully guarded and kept out of the human environment for thousands of years. At present, we have technology which will last for decades of containment only - and even that is imperfect as evidenced by the already severe mismanagement of nuclear wastes and their pollution of the environment.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

Despite the documentable dangers and unanswered risks to world safety described in this article, the $40 billion a year nuclear power industry continues to push its product as hard as it can, aided and abetted by the industry's cohorts in the Federal Government. This year three-quarters of the Federal budget for energy source development will go to underwrite nuclear power plants, expected to grow from the present 30 to over 900 stations by the year 2000. Other energy sources that are safe and cheap are being all but ignored.

The power corporations, the media in which they advertise, and the Federal Government are conspiring to minimize the dangers inherent in their nuclear game plan, in order to contain the public outrage they know will develop if this information gets widespread attention. This year Nixon has even proposed a bill which would effectively eliminate the public hearings that were formerly required before any plant construction could begin.

Citizens groups are now trying to get Congress to enact a moratorium on nuclear power plants. But ultimately, only a far-reaching transformation of the American social system, which takes power away from self-serving industries and their cohorts in government, can solve the problems of this planet-endangering recklessness, all in the name of blindly increased profits.

For further information on what you can do to pressure Congress and your local power company you can contact: Friends of the Earth, 529 Commercial St., San Francisco, CA 94111; National Intervenors, 153 E. Street SE, Washington DC; The Task Force Against Nuclear Pollution, 305 High Street. Moorstown, NJ 08057; or the Citizens' Committee for the Protection of the Environment. 71 Pine Ave, Ossining, NY 10562.

The information in this article was taken from: "The Clear and Present Danger, a Public Report on Nuclear Power Plants", available from Environmental Alert, 1543 N. Martel, Los Angeles, CA 90046; "Catch 24,000" by Roger Rapoport, Ramparts magazine; and "The Nuclear Power Issue", by Daniel F. Ford, Jan. 1974, from the Union of Concerned Scientists, PO Box 289, MIT Branch Station, Cambridge, Mass. 02139.

The bulk of this article was taken from Liberation News Service. 

IMAGE CAPTION page 1:

Leukemia and other blood cancers rose 70% between 1957 and 1967 in Beaver County, Penn., the home of a nuclear power plant which began operation in 1957. Yet despite this and other documentation of the high danger of nuclear power technology, construction of more plants by the $40 billion a year nuclear industry continues unabated, and with strong Government support. 

IMAGE CAPTION page 3:

Consumer Power's Nuclear Plant at South Haven, about 150 miles from Ann Arbor, has beens hut down since last August after leaking poisonous radiation through its exhaust pipes and into Lake Michigan. Consumer's problems are typical of those at the other 30 plants scattered across the U.S.