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Digest 17, originally sent Fri Feb 5 02:57:02 1999 :
There are 2 messages in this issue.
Topics in today's digest:
1. NucNews (US) 1/24/99 - Tritium dangers From: Peace though Reason <prop1@xxxxx.xxxx 2. NucNews (Int'l) 2/04/99 - Depleted Uranium/Vets (UK etc) From: Peace though Reason <prop1@xxxxx.xxxx
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Message: 1 Date: Thu, 04 Feb 1999 14:07:53 -0500 From: Peace though Reason <prop1@xxxxx.xxxx Subject: NucNews (US) 1/24/99 - Tritium dangers
3. Tritium stirs concern at Test Site Scientists call element's dangers more worrisome than plutonium's
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/1999/jan/24/508316281.html
By Mary Manning <manning@lasvegassun.com> LAS VEGAS SUN, January 24, 1999
Recent news reports have alerted the public to the discovery of plutonium almost a mile from where underground nuclear weapons were exploded at the Nevada Test Site.
But scientists working to clean up the site are more concerned about another element left from the more than 900 explosions set off 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas: radioactive tritium.
Their concern is how fast and how far tritium has traveled in the ground water and whether it has escaped the site's boundaries.
Tritium is considered the most dangerous of the materials left over from the nuclear blasts because it dissolves easily in ground water and poses a threat to public health for more than 100 years.
The Department of Energy began cleaning up the Cold War's radioactive mess after 1992 when a moratorium was imposed on U.S. nuclear testing. Officials estimate it will take until 2070 to complete the task and remove the threat of widespread contamination.
Above-ground tests that spread plutonium over the land in central Nevada were cleaned up first. The emphasis was switched to ground-water contamination after DOE scientists three years ago discovered plutonium in a water well far from a nuclear-bomb cavity. If plutonium can travel a mile floating in water, then tritium, which dissolves in water, would be a greater threat, scientists say.
Congress gave the DOE's Nevada Operations Office an extra $6 million this year to drill six new wells, for a total of eight, south and west of Pahute Mesa to check for tritium in the ground water. The concern is that if tritium has flowed south and west, it will move into drinking supplies and irrigation water for crops and dairy cows.
The new wells are expected to be completed by the end of the year. Samples will be analyzed and the results made public as analysis is completed, officials involved with the project say.
The scientists also are working to determine the direction the underground water is flowing. That information may not be available until 2003, Gary Russell of the U.S. Geological Survey in Las Vegas said.
Because of the secrecy surrounding the bomb blasts, little information on the content, size or number of weapons was available to outside scientists.
By piecing together information from available public sources, physicist Anthony Hechanova, who works at the Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies at UNLV, determined that at least 260 underground nuclear explosions took place at or under the level of the ground water at the Test Site from 1951 to 1992.
Hechanova also gleaned from 10,000 pages of recently declassified DOE documents that a total of 921 bombs were set off at different levels during the same period, and he verified the number of ground-water blasts.
He compiled his findings in a comprehensive report released last week and made available to the public at UNLV's James Dickinson Library.
"This is the first time it has been compiled into one report accessible to the public," Hechanova said.
Thus far records that give the contents of the nuclear weapons are not available, which is hindering scientists in the cleanup effort and slowing a flow of information that could offer warnings to residents if dangers exist.
Hechanova found that the 921 underground nuclear-weapons experiments were conducted in 878 shafts and tunnels at the Test Site.
"The DOE has not released source term data (information about what was left by the bombs) on the individual nuclear-test explosions at the NTS," Vernon Brechin, a former Stanford University electronics technician, said. He now is a consultant specializing in the effects of underground nuclear explosions.
"Though the DOE has this information, it is still classified, reportedly to prevent the proliferation of nuclear-weapons technology," Brechin said.
Information about the Test Site experiments has trickled out recently in DOE reports issued from the national laboratories at Los Alamos in New Mexico and Livermore in California.
Hechanova, an MIT graduate, came to the Reid Center almost four years ago to work on the project. He has used the available DOE reports as well as those issued to the public from the U.S. Geological Survey to compile the study.
The search for the nuclear elements escaping into the environment is important because the radiation could already be moving through the ground water toward communities such as Beatty and the Amargosa Valley, where crops grow and milk cows graze, Hechanova said. But he said no evidence currently exists of radiation creeping off the Test Site.
There is, however, fear that the contamination may be widespread.
In 1991, DOE Test Site Manager Nick Aquilina adopted a policy for ground-water protection while nuclear testing continued, and scientists began to try to track radioactivity moving in the ground water.
"No one is willing to jeopardize the present water supply required for NTS (Nevada Test Site) operations, which includes drinking water," said DOE scientists Gregory Nimz of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Joseph Thompson of Los Alamos National Laboratory in a 1992 report.
"Clearly, ground water is capable of carrying certain dissolved nuclides (radioactive particles) appreciable distances," Nimz and Thompson reported.
In the 1960s, the Atomic Energy Commission, predecessor to the DOE, experimented with ever-larger bombs at the Test Site. To avoid leaking radiation into the atmosphere, some of the nuclear devices were detonated near or below the ground water. By "near," the DOE means within 330 feet of subsurface water.
First, today's scientists need to know the nuclear contents at the heart of those deep holes where the atomic explosions occurred, Hechanova said. Then researchers can begin piecing together information on radiation migration from the caverns through surrounding ground water and rock.
Hechanova is trying to find out how much radioactivity is trapped in the caverns created by the original bomb blasts. "Then we can work our way out," he said.
While DOE scientists at both Livermore and Los Alamos have reported plutonium riding tiny particles in the ground water, called colloids, a mile away from an underground nuclear test, the real health threat to people from ground-water contamination comes from tritium, Hechanova said.
Hechanova and UNLV radiochemistry professor Vernon Hodge examined 78 possible radioactive contaminants in the Test Site's ground water.
"We are trying to define the radioactivity posing the most risk to people," Hechanova said.
The risk from plutonium in the ground water is small because the particles that get into the water don't move very far. It's unlikely they would reach a populated area.
"Part of the problem is the perception that plutonium is very deadly, often called the most dangerous substance known to man," Hechanova said. Risks from plutonium exposure are much less than that of other radioactive materials left from bombs such as tritium, neptunium, americium, thorium and uranium, he said.
The danger from plutonium comes if a speck of it is inhaled or ingested.
Tritium appears to be the leading contender as the contaminant with the best chance of posing a threat to the public. Scientists must find out whether it's in the ground water and which way the water is heading.
However, the Test Site is larger than Rhode Island. Scientists must play a guessing game on where to look.
"The real problem, the real huge question is, where is the tritium plume?" Hechanova asks.
Hechanova estimates that 100 million curies of the total blast residues came from tritium. The Environmental Protection Agency considers drinking a daily dose of more than 20,000 picocuries (one-trillionth of a curie) of tritium dissolved in two quarts of water to be dangerous.
The rest of the radiation in the Test Site's ground water could come from cesium, strontium, iodine, plutonium, carbon, uranium or other remains of a nuclear blast.
The DOE cleanup effort is focusing on water flowing south and west of Pahute Mesa in the northwest corner of the Test Site. The extra wells will be drilled in the potential path of the ground water. Pahute Mesa was loaned to the DOE by the Air Force for nuclear experiments so, technically, contaminated water on the mesa could be considered off-site.
If radiation is found in the new wells, it would show that contaminated water had migrated off the Test Site property and could be heading for residents in Beatty and the Amargosa Valley.
The DOE's own program for monitoring ground water chose to look at lead, carbon-14, tritium, iodine-129, uranium, cesium and plutonium because they were found in measurable quantities in water taken from the bomb cavities or nearby monitoring wells on the site. Scientists also are looking at how the radiation affects human health.
The DOE is not only worried about people living around the Test Site, it also must examine the ground water to prevent workers drilling sampling wells from coming in contact with radioactive water, DOE Project Manager Bob Bangerter said.
Tritium, iodine and carbon-14 dissolve and flow along with the ground water. Cesium, lead and plutonium normally cling to soil particles and move at a slower rate. Uranium can migrate somewhere between the other two groups.
For Hechanova, who was blocked by secrecy, it took three years to find enough information to allow him to report on how much tritium was contained in five blast cavities.
The size of some nuclear blasts and ground-water samples taken from nearby water wells years after the explosions existed in open government files. They gave Hechanova a good estimate of the tritium inside the cavities left by five nuclear experiments: Bilby, Dalhart, Baseball, Cambric and Cheshire.
Bilby, a 249-kiloton blast triggered under the surface of the Test Site's northeast section in 1963, was the first underground nuclear experiment that rocked Las Vegas, about 75 miles southeast of the explosion.
Hechanova and former Test Site scientist James O'Donnell combed U.S. Geological Survey and national earthquake records for Bilby's impact. It registered a 5.8 on the Richter scale at the International Data Center in Virginia. "That was a good-sized bomb," Hechanova said.
In 1965, Cambric exploded with a force less than a kiloton -- or less than 1,000 tons of TNT -- but produced extremely high tritium, nine times larger per kiloton than what was expected from such shots in or near the ground water. Hechanova has a number of theories: the nuclear device fizzled, the scientists wanted to create tritium or the results were unexpected.
Once Hechanova figures out the source amounts of tritium in the bomb caverns, he plans to develop a simple monitor available to anyone living near the Test Site's boundary. "Nothing like it exists now for the average person to sample well water," he said.
If he receives a $100,000 grant request, Hechanova hopes to develop a tritium monitor at the Harry Reid Center with assistance from UNLV professors. "It's an early warning system that any farmer could put down his well," he said. _____________________________________________________________
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Message: 2 Date: Thu, 04 Feb 1999 14:16:34 -0500 From: Peace though Reason <prop1@xxxxx.xxxx Subject: NucNews (Int'l) 2/04/99 - Depleted Uranium/Vets (UK etc)
[An inquiry came to me why I included "government propaganda about terrorism" in yesterday's NucNews. My reason was to give people published "facts" about military plans to refute or complain about. Please send your refutations directly to the publications; I'd love to see a copy of them, of course. et]
1. British vets claim proof of Gulf War illness http://www.cbcnews.cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/1999/02/03/gulfwa r990203 Uranium blamed for Gulf War Syndrome http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_270000/270800.stm
See also: Uranium blamed for Gulf War Syndrome Exploding missiles tipped with uranium exposed servicemen to the toxic metal http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_270000/270800.stm "Health Consequences of DU Weapons Used By US and British Forces" http://asterix.phys.unm.edu:8000 (December 2-3, 1998 Conference Documents)
2. Gulf War map a clue to vet ills? Pentagon reveals battlefield sites were exposed to depleted uranium ammunition http://examiner.com/990124/0124vetills.shtml
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1. British vets claim proof of Gulf War illness
http://www.cbcnews.cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/1999/02/03/gulfwa r990203
Canadian Broadcast News, February 3, 1999
LONDON - Sixteen British Gulf War veterans say they have proved a link between so-called Gulf War Illness and the use of shells and missiles containing depleted uranium by Western forces in the 1991 war.
The veterans say the shells, which are safe to handle, become dangerous when they explode because uranium dust swirls in the air and can be inhaled. They sent urine samples to a Canadian laboratory for testing. The lab found traces of depleted uranium in all the samples.
Thousands of troops who served in the Gulf War later claimed a wide range of health problems, including chronic fatigue, bone disease, depression and birth defects in their children.
The armies of many Western nations, including Canada, say there is no such thing as Gulf War Illness. This week's lab finding bolsters the case of those who believe the syndrome does, indeed, exist.
The lab responsible for testing the urine samples says, however, that the results are too preliminary to draw conclusions.
SEE also
Uranium blamed for Gulf War Syndrome Exploding missiles tipped with uranium exposed servicemen to the toxic metal http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_270000/270800.stm
"Health Consequences of DU Weapons Used By US and British Forces" http://asterix.phys.unm.edu:8000 (December 2-3, 1998 Conference Documents)
---------------------------------
2. Gulf War map a clue to vet ills? Pentagon reveals battlefield sites were exposed to depleted uranium ammunition
http://examiner.com/990124/0124vetills.shtml
By Kathleen Sullivan OF THE SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER STAFF
When the top brass from the Pentagon's Gulf War Illnesses Office took their seats to testify before President Clinton's oversight board in Washington last November, Paul Sullivan expected no surprises.
But Sullivan, who heads a group that fights for medical care for sick veterans, was astonished at what he saw.
Nearly eight years after the war, the Pentagon unveiled a map of the Gulf War battlefield, giving veterans what they consider the strongest evidence yet that hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been exposed to radioactive and toxic debris.
It showed the sites where Army tanks and Air Force jets fired more than 300 tons of "depleted uranium" ammunition at Iraqi troops during the four-day ground war in 1991.
The map has reignited a debate between veterans and the Pentagon about how many American soldiers may have inhaled or ingested depleted uranium, or absorbed it into their bodies through wounds.
"The map shows that almost every combat unit goes through contaminated areas twice," said Sullivan, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a coalition of veterans groups based in Washington. He said that soldiers traveled on contaminated roads and may have camped on contaminated land for up to two months.
"It doesn't mean soldiers are going to fall ill, but it means they should be aware this took place," Sullivan said. "They should be concerned about medical findings that will come out as a result of new research."
Veterans and the Pentagon are far apart in their estimates of exposure to depleted uranium, a radioactive metal prized by the military for what it calls the ability to blast through armor "like a hot knife through butter."
Under pressure from veterans groups campaigning for medical care, the Pentagon several times has increased its estimate.
In 1993, the Army said 35 soldiers all victims of "friendly fire" came in contact.
In 1995, the Army boosted the number to 50.
In 1997, the Army said 112 soldiers had been exposed: friendly fire survivors, soldiers who prepared contaminated U.S. tanks for shipment home, and soldiers injured at an explosion at Camp Doha in Kuwait.
In 1998, the Pentagon said "thousands" may have been exposed, including soldiers who had climbed on destroyed Iraqi tanks after the war on battlefield tours. And the Pentagon boosted its estimate of friendly fire survivors to 113, up from 50.
400,000 exposed
Last March, the National Gulf War Resource Center said 400,000 soldiers may have come in contact with the hazardous dust and debris, based on extrapolations of troop surveys conducted after the war.
Using the map, the group now estimates that more than 200,000 soldiers may have been exposed.
"It is our understanding that a majority of the 338,000 Army soldiers and 98,000 Marines sent to the gulf went into Iraq and Kuwait," Sullivan said. "For us to conclude that only half of those 436,000 people were exposed to depleted uranium is a conservative estimate."
The map represents the first time the Pentagon has released information on where the ammunition was used, but Sullivan contends the picture is incomplete, and therefore may underestimate the number exposed.
The map doesn't show the 3rd Armored, 82nd Airborne and 101st Airborne divisions, and doesn't list support troops that entered combat zones, he said.
It also fails to show:
The site of the 1991 explosion at the Army ammunition depot at Camp Doha, Kuwait, in which stores of ammunition and tanks loaded with depleted uranium rounds were destroyed.
Where depleted uranium was fired by British troops, the only other soldiers in the gulf to use the ammunition.
Test-firing ranges in Saudi Arabia, where troops fired the ammunition before the war.
Lt. Col. Dian Lawhon, a spokeswoman in the Pentagon's Gulf War Illnesses Office, acknowledged the map is incomplete.
"It's not at all representative of the entire picture by any stretch of the imagination. We recognize that's a problem with this map," she said.
She said the Pentagon does not plan to release a comprehensive version of the map, which was created for the two-day public hearing of President Clinton's oversight board.
Lawhon said thousands of soldiers may have been exposed to depleted uranium in the Gulf War, but few received doses that could be considered harmful.
Claims of minimal risk
Most contaminated dust from a depleted uranium explosion remains inside its target, and the rest lands nearby, she said, concluding that except for soldiers whose tanks were hit by "friendly fire," exposure risk is minimal.
"It wouldn't reach the hundreds of thousands of people who were there during the war," she said.
Lawhon said uranium is part of the natural environment.
"The human body is accustomed to having uranium in it," she said. "We process uranium through our body all the time."
But in a 1995 report to Congress, the Army Environmental Policy Institute said depleted uranium has the potential to generate "significant medical consequences" if it enters the body.
Radiation expert Rosalie Bertell said most trace metals perform a function in the human body, but not uranium.
"We use iron. We use zinc. But uranium is purely a contaminant," said Bertell, president of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health, a nonprofit research center in Canada. "The Pentagon uses the word 'natural' as if everything natural is harmless. Arsenic is natural and it's not harmless."
Bertell also challenged the Pentagon's contention that residue from explosions stays nearby.
Fine mist of radioactivity
She said the metal "aerosolizes" when it explodes, creating a fine mist of radioactive particles that can be picked up by the wind and travel for miles. Soldiers and tanks kicking up dust as they move through an area can resuspend particles that had fallen to the ground, she said.
In its report, the Army said as much as 70 percent of a depleted uranium penetrator the ammunition's solid metal core can be aerosolized when it strikes a tank.
Bertell said the particles are easily inhaled and ingested.
Since the Pentagon failed to conduct medical screenings of soldiers exposed after the war, as required by Army regulations, no one knows the doses they received.
The Pentagon map showed the sites where Americans fired the ammunition at Iraqi tanks, armored personnel carriers and bunkers.
It illustrates where 150 Air Force attack jets shot depleted uranium ammunition at Iraqi armor and artillery positions, the paths U.S. troops took as they plowed through the potentially contaminated parts of the desert in pursuit of enemy targets, and where the Pentagon said 1,955 Abrams tanks fired "significant quantities" of the ammunition.
"The first thing that went through my mind was: This shows widespread contamination," said Sullivan, who served as a cavalry scout in the 1991 war. "The second was: How long have they had this map and not told us about it?"
First use of depleted uranium
Americans used depleted uranium ammunition in combat for the first time during the Gulf War, but U.S. soldiers were not warned that inhaling, ingesting or absorbing it could cause cancer, or respiratory, kidney and skin disorders.
"The Pentagon has had this information since 1991," Sullivan said. "It could have been used much earlier by veterans who are sick and the doctors who are looking into their illnesses."
Asked to comment on the debate, former U.S. Sen. Warren Rudman, who is from New Hampshire and chairs the presidential oversight board, said the dispute will take more study to resolve.
"I have no idea if the number was three or 300,000," Rudman said. "We haven't gotten to the point where we've made that determination."
Clinton created the seven-member board in 1997 to scrutinize the Pentagon's investigation into the causes of Gulf War illnesses after hearing a chorus of congressional critics of the military's efforts.
The oversight board also is looking into chemical and biological hazards. Since the war ended, more than 90,000 veterans one out of seven who served have reported an array of puzzling symptoms and debilitating ailments to doctors at Pentagon and VA clinics.
Pentagon claims challenged
At the November hearing, oversight board member and retired Rear Adm. Alan Steinman challenged the conclusion of a 1998 Pentagon report that said depleted uranium exposures were not the cause of undiagnosed Gulf War illnesses.
"While this may yet prove to be true, I think that conclusion was premature, and worse than that I think making that type of strong statement damaged your credibility," he told Bernard Rostker, head of the Pentagon's Gulf War Illnesses Office.
To the surprise of veterans who had bitterly criticized the Pentagon's report, Rostker agreed.
"In retrospect, it probably was ill-advised to have made such a strong statement and we stand corrected," Rostker said.
The Pentagon has downplayed the health risks of combat exposure to depleted uranium, contradicting the findings of reports prepared before the war.
A study by an Army contractor in 1990 said soldiers entering the battlefield after the ammunition had been fired probably would face the greatest health hazards.
"It is not our intention to overstate this issue given other combat risks, nor to imply that the health of soldiers will definitely be compromised," the report said.
"We are simply highlighting the potential for levels of exposure to military personnel during combat that would be unacceptable during peacetime conditions."
In its 1995 report, the Army said scientists disagreed about whether the metal's chemical toxicity or its radioactivity posed the greater health hazard.
Like lead, depleted uranium is a heavy metal.
Cheap and plentiful
As a waste product of enriching uranium for use in nuclear power plants and weapons, the metal is cheap and plentiful.
Its half-life is 4.5 billion years, meaning that half of the radioactive substance disintegrates in that period.
In recent years, doctors in Iraq have expressed concern that depleted uranium contamination in southern Iraq may be contributing to an alarming increase in cancer cases, especially among children, and congenital birth defects.
The Pentagon said the map was designed to show that dust and debris created by depleted uranium explosions posed "little exposure hazard" to civilians in Iraq and Kuwait, since most ammunition was fired in sparsely populated areas.
The map also shows 22 sites where the Army tested Kuwaiti soil and concluded that "there is no measurable depleted uranium contamination of concern yet found in Kuwait."