Radioactive dumping

America dumped radioactive trash on the ocean floor

Nuclear Waste Sits on Ocean Floor U.S. Has Few Answers on How to Handle Atomic Waste It Dumped in the Sea

By JOHN R. EMSHWILLER and DIONNE SEARCEY WSJ Dec. 31, 2013

Nuclear News

2 January, 2014

More than four decades after the U.S. halted a controversial ocean dumping program, the country is facing a mostly forgotten Cold War legacy in its waters: tens of thousands of steel drums of atomic waste.

From 1946 to 1970, federal records show, 55-gallon drums and other containers of nuclear waste were pitched into the Atlantic and Pacific at dozens of sites off California, Massachusetts and a handful of other states. Much of the trash came from government-related work, ranging from mildly contaminated lab coats to waste from the country’s effort to build nuclear weapons.

Federal officials have long maintained that, despite some leakage from containers, there isn’t evidence of damage to the wider ocean environment or threats to public health through contamination of seafood. But a Wall Street Journal review of decades of federal and other records found unanswered questions about a dumping program once labeled “seriously substandard” by a senior Environmental Protection Agency official:

• How many dump sites are there? Over the years, federal estimates have ranged from 29 to more than 60.

• How much of various types of radioisotopes are in the waste containers? While some isotopes are short-lived, others remain radioactive for hundreds or thousands of years.

• Has evidence of radioactive contamination in fish been adequately pursued? A 1983 California law calling for fish testing and annual reports on a major dump site off San Francisco produced just one state report, in 1991, even though that study found fish contamination and recommended follow-up research.

• Where are all the containers—whose numbers top 110,000, by one federal count—on the sea floor, even at known dump sites? For instance, an estimated 47,000 containers lie at the site near San Francisco. Though there were three designated dump areas for the containers, “many were not dropped on target,” according to a 2010 report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which called the waste site a “potentially significant resource threat.”

Much of the site—about 50 miles west of San Francisco, near the Farallon Islands—is within a national marine sanctuary that the federal government describes as “a globally significant” ecosystem “that supports abundant wildlife and valuable fisheries.” Only about 15% of an estimated 540 square miles of sea floor containing the barrels, at depths from 300 to over 6,000 feet, has been evaluated, the NOAA report said………http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304773104579268563658319196

Wall St. Journal: Plutonium levels 1,000 times normal on seafloor 50 miles from San Francisco

• Expert Appalled: Major nuclear dump offshore is a threat to health
• Around 50,000 containers of radioactive waste in globally significant ecosystem

ENENews,

2 January, 2013

Wall St. Journal, Dec. 31, 2013:

[There's] a major [nuclear] dump site [...] about 50 miles west of San Francisco [in] “a globally significant” ecosystem “that supports abundant wildlife and valuable fisheries."

[A]n estimated 47,000 containers lie at the site near San Francisco

2010 report from [NOAA] [...] called the waste site a “potentially significant resource threat.”

The ’91 Study

[S]tudy found fish contamination and recommended follow-up research

A spokeswoman for the California Department of Public Health said [...] researchers “didn’t find anything in the first survey.”

“I would beg to differ,” Thomas Suchanek, the principal investigator and lead author of the 1991 study, said recently

[P]lutonium in underwater sediment at the dump site was up to about 1,000 times normal background levels

The study found americium, a radioactive decay product of plutonium, in some fish samples from the site as well as a comparison area about 60 miles away

Regularly eating such contaminated fish, about a pound a week, could expose a person to up to 18.5 millirems [...] A chest X-ray typically gives about 2 to 10 millirems

More ‘Studying’

A 2001 federal study of part of the Farallon dump site [off San Francisco] found indications of leakage from barrels

Estimates of the radioactivity amounts in the containers “could be off as much as a factor of 10 [...] little is known of the fate of radioisotopes added to the sea.”

[FDA] said that in 1990 it found traces of plutonium in fish samples from the site but at levels well within safety standards

W. Jackson Davis, a now-retired professor of biological and environmental sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz [...] [said] evidence showed environmental damage and health threats were already arising at the dump sites

In a recent interview, Mr. Davis recalled that the more he learned about the subject, “the more appalled I became.”

EPA and FDA would continue radiation sampling of commercial seafood purchased in cities, such as San Francisco and Boston, near dump sites

Interesting timing for this article to be published by the Journal. 

See: Scientist: Leading edge of Fukushima plume is now showing up on West Coast -- Fish Market Owner: My customers have a lot of concerns about the nuclear contamination, they're very smart and educated... I didn’t expect this much concern (AUDIO)