The barrel, hauled up by fishermen trawling off the New Jersey coast, came from an area where radioactive waste material had been dumped for safe disposal.
Before long, rumors swept New Jersey that the barrel was radioactive—and that the fishermen had been dangerously exposed. At that point, agents of the Atomic Energy Commission turned up to examine it and check back on detailed reports of dumpings. The findings: the barrel had been filled with a white compound substance; it was not radioactive and never had been. “We spent a lot of money doing it,” said an AEC official last week. “But we run down every lead.” The case of the fishermen’s barrel is an item in a deepening AEC problem. In the U.S. are 6,000 Government and private institutions using radioactive isotopes.
The end product of their activity is radioactive waste that cannot be flushed or tossed away. There is low-level radioactivity, for instance, in the carcasses of laboratory mice injected with isotopes—and in the hypodermic needle that injected them, and in the laundry water that washed the laboratory coat of the technician. In 1955 the total amount of land-buried waste in the AEC’s main burial grounds came to 316,000 cu. ft.; by last year that figure was up to 1,125,000 cu. ft.
Dumped at Sea. The lethal liquid waste from the atomic bomb factories is stored in 34-ft. steel and concrete underground tanks on Government reservations at Richland, Wash., Aiken, S.C., and Idaho Falls. Idaho. Fenced and carefully guarded, it will stay there indefinitely. But much of the atomic waste produced today is, by AEC standards, lowlevel, and with proper precautions can be moved to dumping areas by truck or railroad car. To do the dumping, twelve private firms are now licensed by AEC.
Originally most of the waste was dumped at sea. The materials were packed into 55-gal. drums marked with AEC’s radioactivity insigne, a white cloud with four lightning bolts shooting out of it. The drums were lined with 2 to 10 in. of cement, sealed with more cement, and carried by ship to offshore dumping grounds set up by AEC. Two such grounds are off the Atlantic coast, two more are off the coast of California. All four are in water 6,000 ft. deep. Since 1946. about 21,000 drums have been tipped into the Pacific and another 23,000 into the Atlantic. Even if a drum were to leak, AEC insists, the radiation inside would be diluted by sea water and hardly a herring would be harmed.
But the packing necessary for safe sea disposal makes it expensive: to dispose of radioactive waste at sea costs $10 to $20 per cu. ft. In comparison, disposal firms can bury low-level waste on land for 70¢ a cu. ft. in atomic graveyards maintained by AEC at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Idaho Falls. Here drums are deposited in 15-ft. holes and covered with concrete and earth. The disposal fields cost the U.S. $6,000,000 a year to maintain, and AEC expects to establish from five to ten more.
Clean Record. Inevitably, a few accidents have occurred. Last year in Long Beach, Calif., a barrel of low-level waste blew up and scattered its contents over almost a mile because of improper handling by the disposal company, which lost its AEC license. In Antioch. Calif., two years ago, another low-level barrel leaked slightly into the San Joaquin River, from which Antioch draws its drinking water; after much testing and explaining by AEC, townspeople were persuaded that the water was still safe.
Other incidents have led to protests and legal actions against AEC. In 1959. Massachusetts residents, through town meetings and petitions to Washington, persuaded AEC to discontinue ocean dumpings off Cape Cod. The Long Island town of Islip last month rescinded the permit of a company that planned to erect a fenced and windowless waste-storage building in the town’s new industrial park. And New Britain. Conn., for almost five years has been waging a court fight to block construction of a storage yard.
Many of the arguments against waste storage and disposal are ridiculous; in 15 years, not a single death or serious injury has been suffered as a result of AEC’s program. But public uneasiness continues to increase, and to combat it AEC, beginning this week in Atlanta, is sponsoring a series of four regional conferences to explain its disposal practices.
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