Stichting Laka

Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
Deadly crop in the tank farm (1986)

Auteur	Arjun Makhijani, R.Alvarez
Datum	juli 1986
Classificatie	3.01.4.10/13 (VS - AFVAL)
Voorkant

PREFACE

Although much attention over the past decade has been focused on accidental 
large-scale releases of radioactivity from commercial nuclear reactors, a similar 
potential exists at federal nuclear facilities. In recent years, the risks and 
consequences of major radiation accidents as well as the health and environmental 
effects from the routine operations of the facilities owned by the U.S. Department 
of Energy (DOE) have also become the subject of increasing concern. One principal 
reason is that the various DOE installations have now been operating for two to four 
decades, and the evidence of adverse health effects from exposure to radioactivity is 
now accumulating at an alarming rate. This applies to various exposed populations 
such as workers at DOE facilities, the veterans of atomic tests and the people who 
lived in the path of the fallout from these tests.
There also exists the potential for serious damage from large releases or radioactivity 
resulting from operating accidents or from events outside the control or DOE, such as 
earthquakes. Very large quantities of radionuclides in liquid form arc present at 
some DOE facilities. In particular, the facilities at the Savannah River Plant in 
South Carolina and at Hanford in Washington state, contain very large quantities 
or radionuclides in liquid form, which are particularly dangerous because of their 
mobility. Large quantities or toxic non-radioactive wastes also exist at these sites. 
The terrible actuality of a massive accident involving nuclear high-level radioactive 
wastes has already been experienced in the Ural mountain region or the Soviet
Union where U.S. intelligence sources and exiled Soviet scientists suggest an 
explosion in 1957 severely contaminated several hundred square miles and resulted 
in a major loss of life. A potential for similar explosive accidents or loss of 
containment from earthquakes also exists at the Savannah River Plant site.
The tragic accidental release of methyl isocyanate at a Union Carbide plant in 
Bhopal, India which killed more than 2,500 people and injured tens of thousands 
with long term effects underlines the need to pay much more attention to events 
which may have a small probability of occurring but which are disastrous if they 
do occur. Initiated in 1981, this study is an independent evaluation or the 
management or the high-level radioactive wastes in the Tank Farm at the Savannah 
River Plant (SRP). These wastes come primarily from the manufacture of plutonium 
for nuclear warheads. Plutonium is produced in nuclear material production reactors 
and extracted at SRP's two reprocessing plants.
Our study is based upon that part or the official record which has been made public 
(some or it through Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the Environmental 
Policy Institute in 1981). In all over 14,000 summaries or reported accidents, worker 
exposures, spills, equipment failures and non-routine maintenance at the SRP Tank 
Farm were made available to us for analysis.

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