Radiation contaminates Livermore   By Christine Morrissey

Playing in Big Trees Park in Livermore could expose 4-year-old Melanie Herbert to radiation

The rolling hills, luscious grape vines and peaceful, bubbling community paints an old-fashioned portrait of the Livermore Valley.

Beneath the surface, however, the Livermore Valley paints a different picture. For at least three decades, the area has been contaminated by numerous radioactive accidents, spills, and leaks. These hazards are not the work of a drunk truck driver or lazy garbage man. These hazards are the work of one of the nation's leading scientific research institutions, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Located on East Avenue and Vasco Road, LLNL's main site has exposed local residents to radioactive substances in water, dirt, wine, and air. Tritium (radioactive hydrogen) and plutonium are just two of the many substances that have been released into the community.

Overall, the Bay Area has been the dumping ground of about 1 million curies (measurement of radioactive material) from the nuclear weapons in the Lab since it opened in 1952, according to initial estimates. One million curies are the rough equivalent of the amount of radiation dumped by the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

LLNL has earned itself a place on the Superfund list as one of the most contaminated locations in America. Pleasanton and Tracy have similar radioactive problems.

"Contamination travels further from the Lab every year and the contamination circle is increasing," says Andreas Toupadakis, a former employee of LLNL and Los Alamos National Laboratory. "Cold murderers would be the least to call them. They know they are slowly killing people and they go back with no interest for the people, just saving their immoral jobs."

Toupadakis became a victim of a "bait and switch" operation at the Lab. He was hired on to do environmental work however he was transferred into weapons maintenance in the "Stockpile Stewardship" Program. He quit in February.

Bert Heffner, manager of Environmental Community Relations at LLNL, says, "In the history of the Laboratory, no regulatory agency has ever found us to cause harm to our neighbors or the community. We have always cooperated fully with all appropriate authorities, informing the public of any resulting activities and results."

Since 1983, the Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (CARE), a Livermore-based organization, has been the LLNL watchdog and been working towards the goal of ending nuclear weapons proliferation. In the process, CARE has been the whistleblower to several contamination problems in the area.

Livermore

Livermore has faced a multitude of contamination issues dating back three decades. In the '60s and '70s, the Lab handed out plutonium-contaminated sludge to Livermore residents as compost for their lawns and gardens. There is no public record to indicate where the sludge resides now and what dangers it poses to humans.

"An unknown number of residents got an unknown amount of plutonium-contaminated sludge. Further, it is likely that concentrations of plutonium in the sludge was not uniform, therefore some residents got higher concentrations than others," says Marylia Kelley, executive director of CARE.

Remnants of this accident may turned up in 1994. In Livermore's Big Trees Park, less than a mile from the Lab, plutonium was found in the top two inches of dirt. The park is located next to an elementary school. A Big Trees soil sample contained up to 1,000 times the plutonium that would normally be expected, according to CARE's last study. The Lab admits that it is the source of contamination. Two other plutonium "hot spots" were discovered in Sycamore Grove and Sunflower Park soon after.

"Radioactive materials are radioactive for thousands of years," says Sally Light, CARE's nuclear program analyst.

In 1987, when LLNL received its Superfund status, another problem unfolded. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were found in a one-half mile groundwater plume released from the Lab. The groundwater was heading towards Livermore's municipal drinking water wells, containing Freon 113, chromium, and tritium. It was later determined that the amount of VOCs in the water was above drinking water standards established under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

A full clean-up plan is delayed because of spending cuts by the Department of Energy (DOE). The Department of Energy has only partially started clean up the groundwater. If the groundwater was not cleaned up and reached the municipal wells, the risk of cancer in Livermore would be one cancer for every 1,000 people, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Thus Livermore should expect at least 50 cancers since there are over 50,000 residents in Livermore.

Livermore rainfall contained 147,000 curies of tritium per liter of water, which is seven times the state and federal drinking water standards, according to a 1993 LLNL report.

The tritium levels in Livermore wine was nearly four times higher compared to other California wines, according to an LLNL environmental report. Also, honey and milk produced locally contained slightly elevated levels of tritium compared to milk and honey in other areas.

In another eye-opening study, the California State Health Department reported in 1995 that children born in Livermore have a six times greater chance of getting malignant melanoma, a type of skin cancer that can be can deadly. This study also revealed that Livermore children have a greater chance of getting brain cancer.

Dr. John Gofman, former Associate Director at LLNL, estimates that the airborne release of tritium from the Lab has caused 120 cancers and 60 cancer deaths in Livermore. Tritium has also been linked to birth defects, lower sperm counts, and suppressed immune systems in many studies.

"Some of the LLNL environmental monitoring documents have shown elevated levels of plutonium in soil samples near Las Positas. Perhaps some of the plutonium-contaminated sludge became airborne-it was stored outdoors at the sewage treatment plant," Kelley explains.

Other communities affected

In 1998, the California Department of Health Services came across three potentially contaminated radioactive sites in the Pleasanton-Dublin area—Camp Parks, Commerce Circle, and the City of San Francisco-owned "Bernal Avenue Property."

The Bernal area posed the greatest problem. For more than thirty years, a "laundry" in downtown Pleasanton (on Ray and First Street) washed the nuclear clothing from the LLNL, the GE Vallecitos nuclear plant, and others. After the waste from the laundry was diluted, it was transported to the Sunol Avenue sewage treatment plant. The waste then settled into sludge and eventually ended up in areas of Bernal property, a 510-acre parcel of land hugging Highway 680 near the Pleasanton fairgrounds. The laundry was shut down in 1994. However, radioactive waste lives on for thousands of years.

In March, Pleasanton residents narrowly defeated Measure I, a bond measure to build homes and office buildings on the property.

However, in a plan unveiled last week, San Francisco wants to develop homes, offices, and possibly a high school, which will not require the approval of Pleasanton voters. The new plan could be decided upon as soon as October 31.

Heffner says that "[it is] not an LLNL issue," even though nuclear waste from LLNL resides on the property.

South Pleasanton, parts of Sunol, and southwest Livermore are also affected. In 1977, General Electric supposedly shut down its main reactor at Vallecitos Nuclear Center. The facility was closed due to its location near the active Verona Fault. As time passed, residential developments sprang up around the "retired" nuclear center.

However in 1998, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved the shipment of ten nuclear fuel rods to the "closed" Vallecitos site. Later, it was discovered that 50 shipments were made since 1977, 11 of which came in the last five years. The public was not notified of any of these shipments. The last shipment came in November 1999. CARE has many concerns over the Vallecitos activities. With the fault below the site, security is a major issue. Furthermore, a fence and alarm system are the only protections for the 54 nuclear fuel rods on site.

Nestled in the Altamont Hills between Livermore and Tracy, LLNL's Site 300 is a high-explosives testing facility. Since 1955, the 11-square-mile, Superfund site has polluted the soil and groundwater with a deadly blend of tritium, Uranium, and explosives.

The nuclear cleanup of Site 300 is stumbling. The groundwater cleanup will not be in full swing until 2008, according to the DOE. The full cleanup is not scheduled to be completed until 2030 with a $150 million price tag attached.

Meanwhile, according to Heffner, Tracy Hills developers have received approval by the city to build residential homes adjacent to Site 300. "A residential exposure risk exists from groundwater contamination offsite. Excess cancer risk at this location was determined to be seven people in one hundred," CARE says.

"The housing industry wants all this to be kept low profile," Toupadakis states. "They become friends with the lab."

But Heffner contends, "We hold ourselves very responsible for ensuring the public is protected from harm due to our operations."

Copyright © 2000 by Las Positas College Express

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