GROUND ZERO JUST GOT CLOSER
December/January 1999
By Marguerite Lamb
Will your home be the nation's next nuclear test site? It well could be, say critics of a Department of Energy (DOE) plan to recycle radioactive metals into the commercial marketplace.
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At the center of a controversy that has enraged environmental, labor and consumer groups nationwide are three mammoth buildings - part of DOE's Oak Ridge, Tennessee, nuclear complex where from the 1950s to 1985 uranium was enriched for weapons and power plants. Faced with dismantling these Cold War relics, DOE in 1997 awarded a $238 million contract to British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL), charging the foreign company with decontaminating and recycling materials housed inside the buildings.
BNFL is expected to retrieve from Oak Ridge an estimated 100,000 tons of metal. And since its post-decontamination use will be neither tracked nor restricted, bits of it could show up just about anywhere. "It's possible this metal could wind up in your baby's carriage, the jewelry that you wear, the zipper in your pants, your grandmother's hip replacement, all of your cookware and utensils," says Wenonah Hauter of the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen. "You may receive multiple doses... without your knowledge or consent"
Richard Meehan, team leader in DOE's Facility and Materials Reuse Division, calls the above scenarios "very unlikely," insisting that the age and condition of the metal will almost certainly relegate it to such "bulk application" as concrete rebar or structural steel. But he admits he can't rule out more specialized uses.
Much of the metal in question is surface-contaminated steel, which will be cleaned to federal standards using al gri t-blasting method. But surface contami nation is only part of the story. Raising real concern is the planned recycling of as much as 6,000 tons of "volumetrical ly" contaminated nickel. "Volumetric contamination is like sugar in a cake," notes Hauter. "It's incorporated through and through."
