- Memo says nuclear reactions may have occurred in pit.
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- The area in the circle is where workers at the Paducah
Gaseous Diffusion Plant reported seeing a "blue glow" in the
1980s and '90s, according to an internal memo written by Ray Carroll, a
health physicist for the U.S. Enrichment Corp., and obtained by The Courier-Journal.
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- By Michael Clevenger - The Courier Journal 10-25-00
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- PADUCAH, Ky. -- A "blue
glow" reported by workers at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant could
indicate nuclear reactions occurred underground in a top-secret burial
pit for atomic-weapons parts, according to an internal memo obtained by
The Courier-Journal.
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- The memo, written Thursday by a health physicist employed
by the plant operator, says "a 'blue glow' that looked like 'blue
fire' above the ground" was first observed in the early 1980s over
the southwest corner of the C-746-F classified burial yard and was reportedly
seen a number of times after that.
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- Ray Carroll, a health physicist for the U.S. Enrichment
Corp., wrote that the "blue glow" could be a type of radiation
resulting from nuclear fission processes, and added, "If the cause
is a fission source, personnel entering the area could potentially receive
a lethal dose of radiation."
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-
- But the U.S. Department of Energy's site manager at Paducah,
Don Seaborg, said yesterday, "We don't have any indication" that
a fission reaction occurred. He said that after receiving the memo last
week, he had not been able to find supporting data, such as elevated radiation
readings on the landfill's surface or worker exposure measurements.
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- "That's the concern, if you have a blue glow, then
that's indicative of a criticality and of course a major safety concern,"
Seaborg said. "My background experience tells me that it was unlikely
something was going on of a criticality (nuclear reaction) nature. I'm
bringing in the right people with the right certifications to verify that."
-
- The plant has been in the news since August 1999 when
three employees filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that contamination
and conditions were much worse than had been disclosed by former operators.
A cleanup effort is underway.
-
- The Energy Department leases production facilities to
the U.S. Enrichment Corp., a publicly traded company, but still owns the
burial pit and other areas where radioactive and hazardous waste was dumped
or stored during a half-century of enriching uranium for weapons and power
plants.
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- According to the memo, the burial yard was covered with
five to nine feet of dirt at an undisclosed time after the first observations
of a "blue glow." But it notes that there was another reported
sighting in 1996, long after the earthen cover was applied. The glow has
only been seen immediately after a heavy rain, when there was a mist or
moisture in the air, the memo said. Carroll wrote that the glow could be
Cerenkov radiation, a phenomenon in which charged radioactive particles
from a fission reaction give off a blue glow in water.
-
- On the chance that a fission reaction is occurring, Carroll
recommended barring employees from within 1,000 feet of the site and installing
a continuous radiation monitor with an audible alarm and "a red warning
light that can easily be read from a distance."
-
- Carroll also recommended taking core samples in the burial
yard to determine if radioactive products of fission are present. "If
these radio-isotopes are present, a much more extensive environmental remediation
of the whole area will be required," he wrote.
-
- But GeorgAnn Lookofsky, a USEC spokeswoman, said yesterday
that Carroll's safety recommendations had not been put into effect, because
in radiation surveys of the area, "we haven't found anything to raise
our concerns."
-
- She said Carroll wrote the memo after a plant employee
raised concerns about the glow.
-
- There could be other explanations for the glow, according
to Kimberlee J. Kearfott, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University
of Michigan.
-
- For the glow to be from a fission reaction, there would
have to be "extremely large sources" and a vast amount of energy
being expended to cause the Cerenkov effect, she said yesterday. She said
the only places she has seen the blue glow are in a university research
reactor under water or in spent fuel rods immersed in water.
-
- She said a more likely scenario is either a chemical
fluorescence or phosphorescence or a glow from tritium -- a radioactive
material that reports say was buried in unknown quantities in the plant's
landfills.
-
- Seaborg, the Energy Department site manager, raised the
possibility that the glow was the result of something going on underground,
possibly from spontaneously burning metals, such as uranium or aluminum.
The reports of a glow, however, do not mention any smoke accompanying the
blue effervescence.
-
- A metals fire also could release radioactivity, but on
a much smaller scale than from a fission reaction, Seaborg said.
-
- John Volpe, manager of the Radiation Control and Toxic
Agents Branch of the Kentucky Cabinet for Health Services, said he does
not have enough information about the incidents to even speculate as to
what may have happened. But Volpe said this is an example of why the Energy
Department should make available information about the landfill's contents.
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- "We have asked them to take samples and basically
they said they would not," Volpe said.
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- Robert Daniel, director of the Kentucky Division of Waste
Management, the state regulatory agency overseeing the Paducah cleanup,
said the report of a blue glow "is news to me." Daniel said he
will ask his staff to review the matter but added that the Energy Department
in the past has gone to court to successfully prohibit the state from regulating
disposal of nuclear material inside the plant's fence.
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- According to Bechtel Jacobs, the Energy Department's
environmental cleanup contractor at the Paducah plant, the landfill was
used from 1965 to '87 for burial of classified weapons components contaminated
with radioactive isotopes. Many of the weapons were sent from the Pantex
atomic bomb plant in Texas.
-
- Energy Department records show that the Paducah plant
received several hundred tons of weapons parts to be dismantled so that
precious metals could be recovered.
-
- Apparently by mistake, 20 radioactive atomic bomb neutron
generators containing tritium also were shipped to the plant in the 1960s.
Very likely other unrecognized shipments of radioactive materials were
in the weaponry the Paducah plant was asked to dismantle, because the shipments
were not scanned, Energy Department records show.
-
- Tom Clements, executive director of the Nuclear Control
Institute, a Washington, D.C., nuclear non-proliferation group, said if
a fission reaction is confirmed, "it is most troubling." Clements
said if such a reaction had occurred, "a remediation plan needs to
be developed immediately."
-
- Earlier this month, the Energy Department released a
series of maps it had prepared a year ago but never made public that showed
that radioactive contamination had leaked into the environment around the
plant at distances greater than a mile.
-
- ==================================
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- Comments
From Jim Phelps -
-
- This is a prime example of an underground criticality
accident at a gas diffusion plant. Gas diffusion processes can have
slow cooking criticalities in the process from deposits plus UF-6. In
dismantlement slow cookers can happen if water leaks into systems.
In losses to the atmopshere the enriched uranium can run into drain pipes,
which are not safe geometries, cause these concrete joints leak and there
are always voids around these pipes in the ground.
-
- Criticalities can happen in around gas diffusion plants.
In criticalities the enegy release can excite the air molecules and make
for radiation excited blue glows, that are unmistakable signs of a nuclear
accident. These accidents will also releases very dangerous gas of xenon
and krypton isotopes that can become internalized Sr-90 or Cs-137.
-
- Criticalities in the ground or with water involved also
make hydrogen, which tends to rise out of the burial grounds and can ignite
and produce a column of fire effect. At the Y-12's plant classified burial
ground, which has enriched material burried, a column of fire effect was
observed in the 80's by guards on patrol on Chestnut Ridge Road. Usually,
all the air ionization and toxic emission effects will affect things like
pine trees near these nuclear emission active areas and cause them to die
as indicators of emissions. Y-12 highly suppressed their column of fire
even. Hydrogen can burn with a blue glow, and its generated with radiation
and neutron effects on water. Nuke reactors have to use platinum catalysts
to recombine the hydrogen generation in primarly loops of lite water reactors.
-
- If your standing near one of these blue glows--------you'll
die in weeks-----at greater ranges you'll become mysteriously sick-----parly
via inhaling nuclear gases that internalize and part from direct irradiation.
-
- Gas Diffusion plants often left their criticality systems
turned off in the 80's, and workers never were warned if these criticalities
happened.
-
-
- FYI - Second professional opionion -
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- Subj: 'Blue glow' reported at Paducah plant Date: 10/25/00
From: Jacksha1 To: Magnu96196
-
- Sounds like a criticality accident to me. I was in charge
of Nuclear Criticality safety at the Navy's Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory
for twenty years, and that's what criticality accidents look like.
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- _____
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- Comment
From Scott Portzline sportzline@home.com
10-25-00
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- Jeff,
-
- Some uranium enrichment facilities which have carelessly
or illegally buried wastes can have dangerous criticality accidents like
the one in Japan last year. The danger comes from ground water acting as
a moderator especially after a rainfall. I spoke with a DOE safety inspector
last week for the infamous Oak Ridge Y-12 plant who told me that he is
worried about criticality accidents there because of the radioactive waste
buried throughout the site. The government is quietly attempting to clean
up these site. As you posted the other day, the DOE had underestimated
by a factor of 10 the amount of plutonium and other wastes buried at these
sites. These plants have a history of falsification. The DOE inspector
told me that he is pressured at times not to find any violations which
would slow down production.
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