Cob: Public Comment Sought: Radioactive Soil from Nuclear Plants May be Sold to Homes, Farms

[mfreg at juno.com]

Thought this should be of interest to cobbers who may need to purchase
soil.  The article references the use of this stuff in adobe brick.


----- Original Message -----

>    Environment [25]ENS -- Environment News Service
>
>
>    By Brian Hansen
>
>    WASHINGTON, DC,
>    October 19, 2000 (ENS) - A controversial plan that would allow
> nuclear
>    power plant operators to market their radiologically contaminated
>    soils to construction companies, farmers, golf courses and other
>    commercial entities is moving closer to reality.
>
>    After a 14 month literature search, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
>    Commission (NRC) has selected 56 documents with which to define
>    "realistic reuse scenarios" for the many tons of contaminated soils
>    currently piled up at nation's nuclear power plants.
>
>    According to the NRC, the nuclear power industry's stockpile of low
>    level contaminated soils could be safely used for a number of
private
>    and public endeavors, such as home landscaping projects, athletic
>    fields, and playgrounds.
>
>    The 56 documents selected in the literature search, which were
culled
>    from a collection of some two million scientific articles, academic
>    publications and industry reports, will be used to characterize the
>    impacts that the recycled contaminated soils would have on public
>    health and the environment.
>
>    Specifically, the NRC hopes to use the documents to analyze the
>    "exposure pathways" that will result from each soil reuse scenario.
>    For example, the NRC will use the documents to analyze the exposure
>    pathways in a "suburban scenario," where recycled nuclear power
plant
>    soils are used as backfill around a domestic residence.
>
>    The exposure pathways resulting from any given soil reuse scenario
>    would vary according to the activities of the people living area,
the
>    NRC notes. For example, if people within a suburban reuse scenario
>    engaged in gardening activities, the exposure pathways could include
>    inhalation, ingestion of vegetables or fruits, inadvertent ingestion
>    of soil, and external exposure, the NRC points out.
>
>    In order to evaluate the potential overall impact of reusing the
> power
>    plant soils, the NRC will analyze several scenarios to determine a
>    "critical group." The NRC defines a critical group as a group of
>    individuals reasonably expected to receive the greatest exposure to
>    residual radioactivity for any applicable set of circumstances.
>
>    The dose of radiation received by the average member of the critical
>    group will then be used to determine whether limitations are
required
>    so that soil reuse will be controlled in a way that is protective of
>    public health and the environment, according to the NRC.
>
>    The 56 documents that were culled from more than two million during
>    the literature search will provide valuable information in setting
>    those parameters, the NRC maintains. Some of the document titles
>    selected include:
>
>      * "Hazardous soils to be used in paving mix."
>      * "Large scale adobe brick manufacturing in New Mexico."
>      * "Methodology to estimate the amount and particle size of soil
>        ingested by children: implications for exposure assessment at
>        waste sites."
>      * "Ash: A valuable resource."
>      * "Building with adobe brick."
>      * "Probabilistic prediction of exposures to arsenic contaminated
>        residential soil."
>      * "Technical basis for establishing environmentally acceptable
>        endpoints in contaminated soils."
>      * "We're in the soils business, remember!"
>
>    A key element of the project was to have a team of outside experts
>    review the results of the literature search, the NRC emphasized.
>    According to the NRC, the role of the outside experts was to alert
> the
>    agency to concepts or information overlooked in the literature
> search.
>
>    One of the independent reviewers, Carlo Long Casler, did make such
an
>    alert to the NRC. Casler, who is affiliated with the Arid Lands
>    Information Center at the University of Arizona, asked the NRC to
>    review Russian documents pertaining to the accident at the Chernobyl
>    nuclear power plant in 1986. Casler also suggested that the NRC
>    analyze Japanese documents pertaining to the long term health
effects
>    of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki some
>    55 years ago.
>
>    The NCR, in a report released earlier this summer, concluded that
the
>    environmental and health impacts of those cases were not relevant to
>    the question of reusing radiologically contaminated soil from U.S.
>    nuclear power plants.
>
>    "The unintentional exposure hazard from the high-level radiation
that
>    occurred in the cases Ms. Casler mentioned is significantly
different
>    from the anticipated exposure derived from soils intentionally
>    released from NRC-regulated locations," the NRC stated in its
report.
>
>    That's not good enough for Diane D'Arrigo of Nuclear Information and
>    Resource Service, a watchdog group based in Washington, D.C.
>
>    D'Arrigo, like many environmentalists, takes issue with the NRC's
> plan
>    to release low level radioactive materials from regulatory
standards.
>
>    "The goal should be to isolate radioactive materials and prevent
>    exposures, not to deliberately expose people by allowing radioactive
>    materials into regular daily commerce, D'Arrigo said. "If it's
>    contaminated from nuclear power and the fuel chain, then it should
be
>    treated as a waste and isolated."
>
>    The NRC has already set radiation benchmarks that nuclear power
> plants
>    must meet before they can be decommissioned. Now, the NRC is trying
> to
>    set standards that would allow individual aspects of the plants to
be
>    released from regulatory control prior to a shutdown. In addition to
>    contaminated soils, these standards would apply to metals, concrete
>    and equipment used at nuclear power plants.
>
>    Like many environmentalists, D'Arrigo is not convinced that the
NRC's
>    standards will be protective.
>
>    "When the whole motivation behind it is to allow radioactive
> materials
>    to be released from regulatory control, we can't have a lot of hope
>    that these are really going to be objective or comprehensive or
>    realistic," she said.
>
>    The NRC will take public comments on its report on human interaction
>    with reused soils until November 17. The document can be viewed on
>    line at: [26]http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/NUREGS/SR1725/index.html.
>
>    Comments can be submitted by email to: [27]tjn at nrc.gov, or by fax
to:
>    301-415-5385.
>
>
>   37. http://ens.lycos.com/
>
>
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