Nuclear Weapons Production Facilities Research Articles

Autobiography of Stanley I. Sandler.

I review my career from its academic beginning to my recent retirement. I grew up and studied chemical engineering in New York City. My initial failure to understand thermodynamics the way it had been taught, evidenced by the difficulty I had when starting graduate school, led me years later to write a textbook on the subject that is now in a fifth edition, in addition to other books I have written. My research areas have included molecular simulation, statistical- and quantum mechanical-based methods, and a variety of experimental thermodynamic measurements. In addition, I have been a consultant in traditional chemical engineering areas, as well in nontraditional areas, such as assisting in the design of a heat shield for interplanetary exploration, the destruction of armed chemical weapons, and the cleanup of nuclear weapons production facilities.

Wanted: Long-term storage solutions for nuclear waste

More than a quarter million metric tons of highly radioactive waste sits in storage near nuclear power plants and weapons production facilities worldwide, with over 90,000 metric tons in the US alone. Emitting radiation that can pose serious risks to human health and the environment, the waste, much of it decades old, awaits permanent disposal in geological repositories, but none are operational. With nowhere to go for now, the hazardous materials and their containers continue to age. That unsustainable situation is driving corrosion experts to better understand how steel, glass, and other materials proposed for long-term nuclear waste storage containers might degrade. Read on to learn how these researchers’ findings might help protect people and the environment from waste leakages. “Regardless of whether you are for or against nuclear power, and no matter what you think of nuclear weapons, the radioactive waste is already here, and we have to deal

Anthropogenic radioactive particles in the environment

Radioactive particles have been released from multiple sources since the mid-twentieth century. Famous examples include nuclear fuel particles from Chernobyl, glassy microparticles from Fukushima as well as particles from nuclear weapons production facilities (e.g., Windscale, United Kingdom and the facilities in the former Soviet Union), nuclear weapons accidents at Palomares (Spain) and Thule (Greenland), and atmospheric nuclear explosions. Current challenges in environmental research of radioactive particles include the drying of the cooling pond of Chernobyl NPP, which will cause the weathering of previously preserved fuel particles in the (former) sediment of the pond. Environmental aspects of resuspended particles as well as natural particles and aerosols contaminated with radionuclides (e.g., 131I) are briefly discussed.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE RUSSIAN HEALTH STUDIES PROGRAM AND UPDATED RESEARCH FINDINGS.

Recognized for conducting cutting-edge science in the field of radiation health effects research, the Department of Energy's (DOE) Russian Health Studies Program has continued to generate excitement and enthusiasm throughout its 23-year mission to assess worker and public health risks from radiation exposure resulting from nuclear weapons production activities in the former Soviet Union. The three goals of the Program are to: (1) clarify the relationship between health effects and chronic, low-to-medium dose radiation exposure; (2) estimate the cancer risks from exposure to gamma, neutron, and alpha radiation; and (3) provide information to the national and international organizations that determine radiation protection standards and practices. Research sponsored by DOE's Russian Health Studies Program is conducted under the authority of the Joint Coordinating Committee for Radiation Effects Research (JCCRER), a bi-national committee representing Federal agencies in the United States and the Russian Federation. Signed in 1994, the JCCRER Agreement established the legal basis for the collaborative research between USA and Russian scientists to determine the risks associated with working at or living near Russian former nuclear weapons production sites. The products of the Program are peer-reviewed publications on cancer risk estimates from worker and community exposure to ionizing radiation following the production of nuclear weapons in Russia. The scientific return on investment has been substantial. Through 31 December 2015, JCCRER researchers have published 299 peer-reviewed publications. To date, the research has focused on the Mayak Production Association (Mayak) in Ozersk, Russia, which is the site of the first Soviet nuclear weapons production facility, and people in surrounding communities along the Techa River. There are five current projects in the Russian Health Studies Program: two radiation epidemiology studies; two historical dose reconstruction studies and a worker biorepository. National and international standard-setting organizations use cancer risk estimates computed from epidemiological and historical dose reconstruction studies to validate or revise radiation protection standards. An overview of the most important research results will be presented.

Exposure and genetics increase risk of beryllium sensitisation and chronic beryllium disease in the nuclear weapons industry

ObjectivesBeryllium sensitisation (BeS) and chronic beryllium disease (CBD) are caused by exposure to beryllium with susceptibility affected by at least one well-studied genetic host factor, a glutamic acid residue at...

The polonium-210 public health assessment: the need for medical toxicology expertise in radiation terrorism events.

In 1989, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) brought together a group of subject matter experts to form the Radiation Studies Branch (RSB). CDC tasked the RSB staff with assessing potential environmental health impacts of radiation released from US Department of Energy nuclear weapons production facilities. Shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, however, the mission of the RSB expanded to include (and to focus on) preparing the nation’s public health community, healthcare providers and citizens for intentional (i.e., terrorism-related) radiological incidents, accidents involving exposures to radiation, and unintentional environmental releases of radioactive materials. In late 2006, an event occurred in the UK for which the RSB was uniquely suited to respond. The radioactive isotope polonium-210 (Po) was deliberately used as a weapon against one person and, perhaps accidentally, released into the environment. Initially, it was unclear how many bystanders might have been unintended victims of the radioactive chemical. Some of those bystanders included American citizens travelling abroad at the time. The health physics and medical staff of the RSB promptly responded to requests for assistance from the US Department of State and the Health Protection Agency (HPA) of the UK to screen American citizens who had possibly come into contact with Po during their travel abroad. RSB staff also provided guidance and advice to individual citizens and to their physicians, to the US Department of Health and Human Services, to the media, and to the public at large about potential risks of adverse health effects from internal contamination. Finally, RSB staff helped coordinate the collection of biological specimens from concerned US citizens and provided interpretation of those results. In the autumn of 2006, residents of and visitors to London were held hostage by something they could not see, hear, smell, or taste: the radioactive isotope, Po. The apparent target of this deadly substance was a single individual—a former KGB agent who was an outspoken critic of the Russian government, Alexander Litvinenko. Indeed, approximately 3 weeks after the isotope had been smuggled into England and poured into his tea, Mr. Litvinenko succumbed to Po poisoning. But although this Russian dissident was the specific target, by the end of November, British officials had identified others who had been contaminated—presumably inadvertently—with this radioactive material. In the interim, other officials were discovering a forensic trail of Po throughout London and its suburbs. The spread of radiological material into the environment (whether by means of explosion or by simple dispersion) is what defines a radiological dispersal device (RDD) event. Inadvertent releases of radiological material may reasonably be classified as RDD “type” events as well. In Goiânia, Brazil (1987), for example, metal scavengers

Contributions of radioecology to the development of some modern concepts of ecotoxicology : From ecological half-life to monitored natural attenuation

Many of the modern concepts used in ecotoxicology have historical roots in earlier thinking from the field of radioecology. An example is the concept of Monitored Natural Attenuation (MNA), which is an approach to the remediation of contaminated waste sites, based on the natural degradation, sequestration or aging of toxic substances ; contaminant inventory reduction proceeds in the absence of engineered treatment or removal activities. Because of potentially reduced costs compared to other alternatives for waste site remediation, MNA has rapidly become a popular topic for research and development. Many years ago however, the field of radioecology recognized that biota and other ecosystem components contaminated with radioactive materials naturally decreased their contaminant burdens over time as the result of physical isotope decay and/or as the contaminants were sequestered or otherwise became unavailable for biological uptake. In the field of radioecology, this process is quantified as the ecological half-life (EHL), which is the time required for a population or other ecosystem component to reduce its contaminant burden by 50 % after first coming into a steady-state with contaminant levels in other parts of its environment. Because of the ease with which they can be quantified in living organisms and environmental media, gamma-emitting radionuclides have proved particularly useful for describing and quantifying EHLs in a variety of habitats. We summarize EHL studies based on more than 30 years of data for declines in 137 Cs levels in habitats at a former nuclear weapons production facility in the southeastern United States. These studies of EHL are then related to the development of MNA programs for non-radioactive contaminants in these same or similar habitats. Of particular importance is the finding that EHL's can vary between habitat types for the same contaminant. Even within the same habitat, EHL's can vary spatially across microhabitats as well as between ecosystem components (e.g. in plants vs. animals) or even between species within a single trophic level/taxonomic group.

Cleanup Worker Exposures to Hazardous Chemicals at a Former Nuclear Weapons Plant: Piloting of an Exposure Surveillance System

Cleanup of former U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear weapons production facilities involves potential exposures to various hazardous chemicals. We have collaboratively developed and piloted an exposure database and surveillance system for cleanup worker hazardous chemical exposure data with a cleanup contractor at the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site (RFETS). A unique system feature is the incorporation of a 34-category work task-coding scheme. This report presents an overview of the data captured by this system during development and piloting from March 1995 through August 1998. All air samples collected were entered into the system. Of the 859 breathing zone samples collected, 103 unique employees and 39 unique compounds were represented. Breathing zone exposure levels were usually low (86% of breathing zone samples were below analytical limits of detection). The use of respirators and other exposure controls was high (87 and 88%, respectively). Occasional high-level excursions did occur. Detailed quantitative summaries are provided for the six most monitored compounds: asbestos, beryllium, carbon tetrachloride, chromium, lead, and methylene chloride. Task and job title data were successfully collected for most samples, and showed specific cleanup activities by pipe fitters to be the most commonly represented in the database. Importantly, these results demonstrate the feasibility of the implementation of integrated exposure database and surveillance systems by practicing industrial hygienists employed in industry as well as the preventive potential and research uses of such systems. This exposure database and surveillance system?the central features of which are applicable in any industrial work setting?has enabled one of the first systematic quantitative characterizations of DOE cleanup worker exposures to hazardous chemicals.

Development of an exposure database and surveillance system for use by practicing OSH professionals.

This report summarizes the development of an occupational exposure database and surveillance system for use by health and safety professionals at Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site (RFETS), a former nuclear weapons production facility. The site itself is currently in the cleanup stage with work expected to continue into 2006. The system was developed with the intent of helping health and safety personnel not only to manage and analyze exposure monitoring data, but also to identify exposure determinants during the highly variable cleanup work. Utilizing a series of focused meetings with health and safety personnel from two of the major contractors at RFETS, core data elements were established. These data elements were selected based on their utility for analysis and identification of exposure determinants. A task-based coding scheme was employed to better define the highly variable work. The coding scheme consisted of a two-tiered hierarchical list with a total of 34 possible combinations of work type and task. The data elements were incorporated into a Microsoft Access database with built-in data entry features to both promote consistency and limit entry choices to enable stratified analyses. In designing the system, emphasis was placed on the ability of end users to perform complex analyses and multiparameter queries to identify trends in their exposure data. A very flexible and user-friendly report generator was built into the system. This report generator allowed users to perform multiparameter queries using an intuitive system with very little training. In addition, a number of automated graphical analyses were built into the system, including exposure levels by any combination of building, date, employee, job classification, type of contaminant, work type or task, exposure levels over time, exposure levels relative to the permissible exposure limit (PELS), and distributions of exposure levels. Both of these interfaces, allow the user to "drill down" or gradually narrow query criteria to identify specific exposure determinants. A number of other industrial hygiene processes were automated by the use of this database. Exposure calculations were coded into the system to allow automatic calculation of time-weighted averages and sample volumes. In addition, a table containing all the PELs and other relevant occupational exposure limits was built into the system to allow automatic comparisons with the current standards. Finally, the process of generating reports for employee notification was automated. The implementation of this system demonstrates that an integrated database system can save time for a practicing hygienist as well as provide useful and more importantly, timely information to guide primary prevention efforts.

Cleanup worker exposures to hazardous chemicals at a former nuclear weapons plant: piloting of an exposure surveillance system.

Cleanup of former U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) nuclear weapons production facilities involves potential exposures to various hazardous chemicals. We have collaboratively developed and piloted an exposure database and surveillance system for cleanup worker hazardous chemical exposure data with a cleanup contractor at the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site (RFETS). A unique system feature is the incorporation of a 34-category work task-coding scheme. This report presents an overview of the data captured by this system during development and piloting from March 1995 through August 1998. All air samples collected were entered into the system. Of the 859 breathing zone samples collected, 103 unique employees and 39 unique compounds were represented. Breathing zone exposure levels were usually low (86% of breathing zone samples were below analytical limits of detection). The use of respirators and other exposure controls was high (87 and 88%, respectively). Occasional high-level excursions did occur. Detailed quantitative summaries are provided for the six most monitored compounds: asbestos, beryllium, carbon tetrachloride, chromium, lead, and methylene chloride. Task and job title data were successfully collected for most samples, and showed specific cleanup activities by pipe fitters to be the most commonly represented in the database. Importantly, these results demonstrate the feasibility of the implementation of integrated exposure database and surveillance systems by practicing industrial hygienists employed in industry as well as the preventive potential and research uses of such systems. This exposure database and surveillance system--the central features of which are applicable in any industrial work setting--has enabled one of the first systematic quantitative characterizations of DOE cleanup worker exposures to hazardous chemicals.

Medical Monitoring at a Large Former Nuclear Weapons Production Facility: Use of a Computer-based Hazard Assessment Tool and Application of Lymphocyte Proliferation Test for Beryllium

Medical Monitoring at a Large Former Nuclear Weapons Production Facility: Use of a Computer-based Hazard Assessment Tool and Application of Lymphocyte Proliferation Test for Beryllium

A Risk Assessment for Consumers of Mourning Doves

Recreational and subsistence hunters and anglers consume a wide range of species, including birds, mammals, fish and shellfish, some of which represent significant exposure pathways for environmental toxic agents. This study focuses on the Department of Energy's (DOE'S) Savannah River Site (SRS), a former nuclear weapons production facility in South Carolina. The potential risk of contaminant intake from consuming mourning doves (Zenaida macroura), the most popular United States game bird, was examined under various risk scenarios. For all of these scenarios we used the mean tissue concentration of six metals (lead, mercury, cadmium, selenium, chromium, manganese) and radiocesium, in doves collected on and near SRS. We also estimated risk to a child consuming doves that had the maximum contaminant level. We used the cancer slope factor for radiocesium, the Environmental Protection Agencies UptakeBiokinetic model for lead, and published reference doses for the other metals. As a result of our risk assessments we recommend management of water levels in contaminated reservoirs so that lake bed sediments are not exposed to use by gamebirds and other terrestrial wildlife. Particularly, measures should be taken to insure that the hunting public does not have access to such a site. Our data also indicate that doves on popular hunting areas are exposed to excess lead, suggesting that banning lead shot for doves, as has been done for waterfowl, is desirable.

A risk assessment for consumers of mourning doves.

Recreational and subsistence hunters and anglers consume a wide range of species, including birds, mammals, fish and shellfish, some of which represent significant exposure pathways for environmental toxic agents. This study focuses on the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Savannah River Site (SRS), a former nuclear weapons production facility in South Carolina. The potential risk of contaminant intake from consuming mourning doves (Zenaida macroura), the most popular United States game bird, was examined under various risk scenarios. For all of these scenarios we used the mean tissue concentration of six metals (lead, mercury, cadmium, selenium, chromium, manganese) and radiocesium, in doves collected on and near SRS. We also estimated risk to a child consuming doves that had the maximum contaminant level. We used the cancer slope factor for radiocesium, the Environmental Protection Agencies Uptake/Biokinetic model for lead, and published reference doses for the other metals. As a result of our risk assessments we recommend management of water levels in contaminated reservoirs so that lake bed sediments are not exposed to use by gamebirds and other terrestrial wildlife. Particularly, measures should be taken to insure that the hunting public does not have access to such a site. Our data also indicate that doves on popular hunting areas are exposed to excess lead, suggesting that banning lead shot for doves, as has been done for waterfowl, is desirable.

Hepa Filters

The high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter has become an indispensable item in the maintenance of biological safety and is also used as a means of preserving cultures from contamination originating in the surrounding air. HEPA filters originated with military requirements for protection against chemical, biological, and radiological warfare agents and to avoid emissions from nuclear weapons production facilities. Everything about these filters was classified “secret” during WWII and for a number of years after the end of the war. When they were declassified and commercial production commenced, many new uses were found in medicine, microelectronics manufacturing, and pharmaceutical production. A thorough understanding of these filters proved to be so important that they stimulated research and development activities that established the science of air filtration on a firm theoretical basis and promoted rapid advances in materials of construction and production methods. The history of their origin and development is an interesting story in itself and helps our understanding of their capabilities and limitations.

Unresolved Problems of Radioactive Waste: Motivation for a New Paradigm

The management of radio-active waste has become an increasingly intractable problem. US programs for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste, for disposal of transuranic waste, for clean-up of former nuclear weapons production facilities and even for disposal of low-level waste are far behind schedule and mired in public controversy. The US public has acquired a deepseated fear of nuclear technology and its wastes, and mistrusts the institutions for managing these wastes. People's fear, mistrust and opposition are intensified when the proposed location for the wastes is nearby or is perceived to be a health or environmental hazard (see photo on page 49).

Monitoring the dispersal of contaminants by wildlife at nuclear weapons production and waste storage facilities

Professor of wildlife biology in the department of biological sciences, California State University. Dr K. Shawn Smallwood is a systems ecologist and may be contacted at 109 Luz Place, Davis, CA 95616, USA. Dr Jan Beyea is a physical scientist with Consulting in the Public Interest, 53 Clinton Street, Lambertville, NJ 08530, USA. The US Government produced and acquired approximately 111 t of plutonium in support of its nuclear weapons programme. Verified reports of the loss of nuclear material into the environment, including loss by animals, has raised questions regarding the monitoring programmes in place on the nuclear facilities. Given these concerns regarding the fate of stored nuclear waste, the authors conducted a review of the wildlife monitoring programme used at nuclear weapons and storage facilities by (1) reviewing the key facets of the monitoring used at the facilities, (2) evaluating published and unpublished data from the facilities and (3) incorporating data from personal site visits. The study concentrated on the Department of Energy's Hanford Reservation in rural south–central Washington and the Rocky Flats Plant in central Colorado. Based on the review, it is concluded that an improved and rigorous environmental surveillance and monitoring programme is needed at both locations. The site surveys identified frequent instances of intrusion into burial sites by animals, most of which had gone unreported by Hanford and Rocky Flats personnel. It was apparent that a significant source of potential contamination was not being adequately monitored at the nuclear waste sites. It is recommended that the development of a systematic, well-planned programme of monitoring animal intrusion on burial sites be considered, coupled with improved training for responsible personnel.

The Nuclear Fleecing of America

The author is former director of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and former chairman of the General Advisory Committee to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. One of the major news channels has a feature called “The Fleecing of America.” It brings to the public9s attention wasteful spending on items costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, but seldom those in the billion-dollar range. One such fleecing is presently being contemplated by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). All U.S. nuclear weapons production facilities are presently closed down, and if the various START agreements are adhered to, those facilities will probably never be required except for one critical capability. All modern nuclear weapons use uranium, plutonium, and tritium. Uranium and plutonium have very long half-lives, and there is a large surplus of these materials. Tritium, however, has a relatively short half-life of about 12.6 years, so about 5 percent of the amount on hand must be replaced each year to maintain the current inventory. Because of the large retirement of nuclear weapons by the United States in compliance with early SALT agreements and national policy, tritium from retired weapons has been used to make up that lost through natural decay. However, in about 10 to 15 years, depending on future START negotiations, the United States will need a guaranteed supply of tritium to maintain its stockpile at whatever level is agreed on. In anticipation of this future need to produce tritium, DOE is pursuing two technologies. One uses a nuclear reactor that could also produce electricity whose sale would recover not only the capital cost of the reactor but also its annual operational cost. Unfortunately, the present Administration has a definite bias against nuclear power, so an alternative method is also being pursued even though it is agreed that it will cost twice as much as a reactor and use as much electricity as a reactor would produce. This technology uses an accelerator to produce high-energy protons that in turn produce neutrons that interact with either lithium or helium three to yield tritium. The main argument for the accelerator is that it produces no conventional nuclear wastes. Proponents readily admit that it will produce radioactive materials, but with a relatively short half-life compared with that of wastes from spent nuclear fuel. The fact that the accelerator will require the equivalent of a nuclear power plant to supply its electricity is ignored. Proponents also neglect to mention that about 22 percent of all electrical energy generated in the United States comes from nuclear power plants, so that 22 percent of the power used by the accelerator will generate conventional nuclear wastes, in addition to those the accelerator produces. There is an alternative to either the reactor or the accelerator, which is simply to buy the required tritium from Canada or Russia. Canada presently cannot supply tritium for defense purposes, but its government might be convinced that by supplying tritium and thus preventing the construction of new production facilities they would contribute to nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation and gain revenue from a material for which they have little use. Russia has a surplus of tritium from the START stockpile reductions and produces tritium in some of its power reactors. Our first reaction to the idea of buying tritium from Canada or Russia is that we cannot rely on a foreign nation for a component that is vital to our nuclear deterrent. But a decision to build a reactor or an accelerator is not required for at least 3 years, and actual production is not needed for 6 to 10 years. If we contracted with Canada or Russia to supply only the tritium required to replace 1 year9s decay, the decision date could also be delayed 1 year. If the supplier reneged, we would be in the same relative position as before the agreement. In the meantime, modest funding to continue design of the appropriate reactor or accelerator system could proceed. The advantage of such a proposal is that if we ever need our own production system, enough time will have been spent in its design to ensure the very best technology, and we will have deferred a very large capital expenditure. If we purchase tritium from Russia, we will also improve our relations with them and help alleviate their need for hard currency. We have made arrangements to buy enriched uranium from their stockpile, so the precedent for buying nuclear materials from Russia already exists. Contracting to buy our tritium needs would avoid a $2-billion (or more) fleecing of America and could even contribute to world stability.

Organic Analysis at the Hanford Nuclear Site

Of all the nuclear weapons production facilities in the United States, the Hanford site currently accounts for the largest volume percentage of defense-related high-level waste (HLW). After approximately 40 years of nuclear weapons production, Hanford must now deal with the legacy of nearly 1100 waste sites, including liquid-release areas (e.g., trenches and cribs), burial grounds, and liquid and solidified wastes in tanks. In this report, we present a brief history of the chemical processes at the Hanford site; describe the storage of wastes in underground tanks; and review problems associated with sampling, sample preparation, and analysis of organic constituents in tank waste. 28 refs., 2 figs., 1 tab.

On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site by Michele S. Gerber

TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Book Reviews 631 Leslie focuses and many others as well. In general, the more one highlights the development of high technology devices, the more obvious it appears that military R&D produced weapons-related rather than civilian goods. On another level, where basic science is concerned, it is hard to believe that important physical laws went undiscovered because of military distortion of scientific disciplines. Leslie admits that “no one can assert with any confidence exactly where a science and engineering driven by other assumptions and priorities would have taken us” (p. 256). This is a weak conclusion for a study which is the most detailed exposition to date of the distortionist critique. Leslie’s cases lend themselves to a more plausible interpretation. Postwar scientific support from the military distorted academic research chiefly by making it much larger than it otherwise would have been. Some of Leslie’s examples illustrate this point well. The Stanford aeronautical engineering program was on the verge of being shuttered until it developed a close working relationship with Lockheed Aircraft and rose to the top of its field. Had that research been in nonacademic settings—a distinct possibility—there might have been no aeronautical research at Stanford. More generally, when military support for aca­ demic research was scaled back after the 1970 Mansfield Amendment, it was not replaced by “science and engineering driven by other assump­ tions”; it was not replaced at all. What Leslie’s book in fact shows is how the military’s desire to develop critical technologies and utilize them in advanced weapons systems forced the development of challenging and fruitful scientific fields. Military necessitywas the mother ofinvention—and ofexciting science. One need not be an apologist for the military to appreciate this. One can also recognize how having a vested interest in the arms race warped the political and sometimes the scientific judgments of academic scientists. Coming to grips with the Cold War impact on American science thus remains a compelling topic. For anyone interested in this subject, Leslie’s eight case histories will long stand as indispensable contributions. But they by no means typified American science or American universities. Rather, the relationships he describes epitomized the workings of the military-industrial-academic complex at its greatest effectiveness. Roger L. Geiger Dr. Geiger is professor of higher education at Pennsylvania State University and editor of History ofHigherEducation Annul. His most recent book is Research and Relevant Knowledge: American Research Universities since World War II (New York, 1993). On the Home Front: The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site. By Michele S. Gerber. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Pp. x+312; illustrations, glossary, notes, index. $35.00. On theHomeFront is Michele Gerber’s examination ofthe health hazards and environmental degradation that arose from the industrial-scale 632 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE production of plutonium for nuclear weapons at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), later Department of Energy (DOE), facility at Hanford, Washington. Covering the period from World War II to 1966, Gerber catalogues radiation releases to the atmosphere and the Colum­ bia River and the radionuclides and other toxic substances that con­ taminated Hanford soils. She bases her work on recently declassified records and is one of the few historians to study a nuclear weapons production facility. In an introduction, eight chapters, and epilogue, Gerber discusses wartime construction of this government-owned, contractor-operated facility; its postwar expansion; health and environmental problems springing from plutonium production; and growing knowledge about the health effects of radiation. Her chapters on airborne, river-borne, and groundwater contaminants form the heart of her work and add to our appreciation of the costs of waging the Cold War. In them, consistent with her purpose, she only delves sufficiently deeply into the technologies of production reactors and of reactor fuel reprocessing to enable readers to grasp their health hazards and environmental impact. Gerber opens her conclusions by noting “that the Hanford experi­ ence underscores a need to examine issues of secrecy and openness” (p. 214). Hanford should form a fruitful case study of problems that controlling nuclear technology poses to our democratic society. At Hanford, the government and its contractors had to protect...

Environmental, Safety and Health Issues at U.S. Nuclear Weapons Production Facilities, 1946–1988

Public Revelations Serious environmental, safety and health problems at Department of Energy-supervised nuclear weapons production and processing facilities were revealed to the mass public in the October, 1988, joint hearings of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee and the House Government Operations Subcommittee on Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources and by subsequent admissions by the U.S. Department of Energy. The problems had been accumulating during the thirty-five to forty years of operations of the facilities.' At the Savannah River Plant in Aiken, South Carolina, operated by E. I. Dupont de Nemours and Company until 1988, 30 incidents of greatest significance involving management and structural problems occurred between 1957-85 in the production of tritium and plutonium. Three reactors are temporarily shutdown because of management and fire safety problems or because of cracks found in the cooling systems.2 The Department of Energy estimates late 1990 as the earliest start-up date for the first of the three reactors. In Femald, Ohio at the Feed Materials Production Center operated by National Lead of Ohio from 1951-86 and subsequently by Westinghouse Materials Company of Ohio, tons of uranium and other radioactive wastes were found stored in leaky pits and cracked holding tanks contaminating surface and ground water. Management and safety problems exposed workers to excessive amounts of radiation, and filters in vent stacks remained unrepaired for years, permitting unknown amounts of uranium dust