The Roy Process
Radioactive Waste Neutralization
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The Roy Process |
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Wednesday, April 8, 1992 The
Arizona Republic B9 45,000 U.S. sites face varying radiation risks The Washington Post WASHINGTON - More than 45,000 locations nationwide, including factories and hospitals, are potentially contaminated by radioactivity, according to the first government effort to chart the full national extent of the hazard. The eight-month study, commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency, did not attempt to quantify the health risks at any specific location, or the degree to which radiation may have reached groundwater and croplands. The authors concluded only that emissions from the material "ranges from levels approaching natural background to highly radioactive liquids and solids." Most of the material cited in the study derives from uranium-mill tailings or refuse from nuclear-weapons plants and other facilities operated by the Departments of Energy or Defense. Not all of the sites identified are definitely contaminated, and many of the 45,361 locations in the study, by a private consulting firm, are not likely to be dangerous, officials said. But previously unreported sites of potential contamination include the Agriculture Research Center in Beltsville, Md., where government scientists used radioactive materials to simulate the effects of atomic-weapons fallout on crops in the 1 950s or 1960s. Nuclear-weapons accidents in New Mexico, New Jersey and Utah also were reported for the first time, according to an independent expert. High levels of exposure to some types of radioactivity have been determined to cause certain kinds of cancer. "In many cases, the sites covered did have radioactive materials that had little, if any, potential for .contamination," Michael Shapiro, the EPA's deputy assistant administrator for air and radiation, said in an interview. "Probably a small percentage is significantly contaminated." But environmental activists and congressional staff members who have seen the EPA draft report said that that although it does not reveal any substantial unknown danger to public health and safety, it underlines the need for the EPA to set cleanup standards for contaminated sites and issue regulations to enforce them.
Friday, June 14, 1991 The Arizona Republic A5 Cave for nuclear wastes might collapse, U.S. told WASHINGTON - A deep underground salt chamber set for the first U.S. tests of permanent radioactive waste disposal probably will collapse years before the tests can be completed, mining experts told Congress on Thursday. The conclusion, disclosed as the Department of Energy pushes to clear the final legal obstacles to testing its $800 million nuclear-waste disposal project in the New Mexico desert, raised the specter of additional costs in a project already years behind schedule. It also raised the possibility of further delay in cleaning up polluted nuclear-weapons sites. Experts said the ceiling of the chamber where the Energy Department hopes to store nuclear waste this summer probably will begin collapsing within three years.
A4 The Arizona Republic Thursday. July 19, 1990 NATIONAL Nuclear-waste dump 'bound to fail' WASHINGTON - The government's plan for an underground nuclear-waste dump is "bound to fail" because it demands a level of safety that science can't guarantee, the National Research council said Wednesday. U.S. policy requires the Department of Energy to build a nuclear-waste depository that will be safe for 10,000 years. That is a scientific impossibility, the study said. It said federal experts arc not being given the flexibility to find ways to cope with unexpected geological features or to incorporate new scientific knowledge in the dump. The council is part of the National Academy of Sciences, a private group that advises the government.
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