A Nuclear Cleanup Effort Leaves Questions Lingering at Scores of Old Sites

Years Later, the Legacy of the U.S. Arms Buildup Remains Near Homes, Parks and Malls

WSJ's John Emshwiller and Jeremy Singer-Vine detail their yearlong investigation into the fate of hundreds of Cold War-era nuclear manufacturing and research sites.

It was a discovery that helped launch the nuclear age. On the eve of America's entry into World War II, scientists isolated plutonium in a small room in UC Berkeley's Gilman Hall. To make sure the moment wasn't forgotten, Room 307 was designated a National Historic Landmark.

As it turned out, there would be plenty of other reminders. The work left radioactive residue that forced the university to rip out an entire adjacent room in 1957, according to its own documents. A quarter-century later, while professors and students were still using the building, the school found that a dozen other rooms and some hallways were contaminated.

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The school cleaned those up too—only to discover this year small amounts of residue in a study room.

Carolyn Mac Kenzie, the university's radiation safety officer, says any current exposure is "well under" federal safety limits. Still, she says that before the 1980s cleanup, administrators or students there could have breathed in harmful levels. "We will never know," she says.

The contamination at Berkeley is part of the legacy of one of the most important scientific and industrial undertakings in U.S. history. During the buildup to the Cold War, the federal government turned to the private sector to help develop and produce nuclear weapons and other forms of atomic energy. Hundreds of companies and thousands of workers were pressed into service. But while it helped defend a country, this enormous endeavor has left an equally enormous—but rarely publicized—cleanup job of contamination that spans the country.

Residue, left by the routine processing as well as the occasional mishandling of nuclear material, exists in sites in almost three dozen states. Some remains in public parks, some near schools, and some in the walls, floors and ceilings of commercial buildings. Contamination has been detected on hiking trails in residential neighborhoods, in vacant city lots and in groundwater.

The government is considering a cleanup at a Staten Island site where uranium was once stored. ENLARGE
The government is considering a cleanup at a Staten Island site where uranium was once stored. Ross Mantle for The Wall Street Journal

Federal officials say they have taken adequate measures to protect the public health and that the sites don't pose a threat to anyone living or working nearby. While some research has raised concerns, there is no conclusive evidence linking the sites to any public-health problems. In general, studies haven't pinpointed the exact relationship between exposure to low-level radiation and medical issues such as cancer.

But a Wall Street Journal investigation raises other questions about the massive government program established to handle one of the country's longest running and most expensive cleanups. Among the findings:

• Record-keeping has been so spotty that the Energy Department says it doesn't have enough documentation on several dozen sites to decide whether a cleanup is needed or not.

• Despite years of trying to track these sites, the government doesn't have the exact address for dozens of them. It acknowledges it doesn't even know what state one uranium-handling facility was located in.

• More than 20 sites initially declared safe by the government have required additional cleanups, sometimes more than once.

"What we have learned from the nuclear program is that it is a surprise when there are no surprises," says Robert Alvarez, a former senior Energy Department official during the Clinton administration.

In its investigation, the Journal sifted through tens of thousands of pages of government documents and company records; consulted property records, photographs and historical maps; and conducted interviews with hundreds of individuals, including former tenants and owners. Information from the Energy Department as well as a dozen other federal and state agencies was gathered in the search. The results of that research—covering over 500 sites—are in an online database.

Government records show that a large majority of those sites, which included factories, research centers and other facilities, handled radioactive material. Over the decades, an array of federal agencies have reviewed records to determine which sites were potentially dangerous. So far, the government has deemed about 130 sites worrisome enough to warrant a cleanup, and says it has finished work on 90 of them. Total projected cost: $350 billion.

The Energy Department declined requests for interviews but issued a statement to the Journal saying it was "confident" it had identified all of the sites and nearly all of the contaminated areas at those locations. "We continue to evaluate these sites through environmental sampling and records searches to determine whether additional contaminated areas exist," the statement said.

An old storage facility for the Manhattan Project on W. 20th Street, New York, was cleaned up. ENLARGE
An old storage facility for the Manhattan Project on W. 20th Street, New York, was cleaned up. Ross Mantle for The Wall Street Journal

The smaller sites stand in contrast to a handful of giant nuclear facilities that have grabbed national headlines—such as the 586-square-mile complex in Hanford, Wash., which officials estimate will account for $150 billion of the total cleanup tab. But while they are far less contaminated than the Hanfords of the world, the smaller sites are closer to population centers and are harder to track through a series of private operators.

Indeed, according to the Journal's database, more than four million Americans live within a mile of one of the roughly 300 sites the Journal could pinpoint. About one million live within a half mile. Some 260 public schools are also within a half mile of a site, as are 600 public parks. Still, most current owners or occupants contacted by the Journal didn't know about the locations' past.

"Now you've got me scared," said Sal Mazzio with a nervous laugh, upon learning that his Staten Island towing company sits on a former World War II storage site for uranium ore. Federal officials are looking at doing a cleanup there, though they say there is no imminent health risk.

"I should be thrilled that I'm in such excellent health," said JoAnn LaFon upon hearing that her Alexandria, Va., townhouse is on the site of a former factory that worked with uranium and thorium. Ms. LaFon said that to build her complex's 29 townhomes nearly 20 years ago, the developer tore down the factory and cleaned up the site. Still, she wondered if there was any remaining residue. Available records don't show the government felt the site needed a cleanup.

At a group of buildings in the 500 block of W. 20th Street in Manhattan, federal records shows that in the 1940s the Manhattan Project—the research-and-development effort that led to the first atomic bomb—stored some 300,000 pounds of uranium products in what served as warehouses at the time.

A gamma detector. ENLARGE
A gamma detector. Ross Mantle for The Wall Street Journal

In that case, the federal inspectors in 1989 found radioactive contamination up to 38 times federally allowed levels in parts of the structures, according to a 1995 Energy Department report. After hauling off 50 drums of contaminated material recovered from vacuuming, scraping and other work, the government declared the buildings fit for "unrestricted use." The buildings are currently occupied by dozens of offices and art galleries. A woman who described herself as one of the owners but didn't give her name said she didn't know about any past contamination and declined to comment.

Determining actual risks from radiation is far from a precise science; much of it is based on long-term health studies of World War II atomic-bomb survivors in Japan. Current scientific thinking holds that even the smallest amount of additional radiation raises a person's cancer risk slightly, with the danger rising with the dose.

Generally, the relatively low levels of radiation at most old nuclear sites aren't viewed as a short-term danger. Any exposure would occur in the soil, air and groundwater. Richard Muller, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, said government exposure limits are "often set so far into the safety zone nobody should worry" about them.

Scientist Glenn Seaborg discovered plutonium in a UC Berkeley building where residue has lasted for decades. ENLARGE
Scientist Glenn Seaborg discovered plutonium in a UC Berkeley building where residue has lasted for decades. University of California, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Cleanup responsibilities have been divided among an array of federal agencies—including the Energy Department, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health also weighs in on scores of sites under a program to compensate nuclear-weapons plant workers for radiation-linked cancers.

Still, sometimes it has taken citizens to find contamination problems. In 1978, a college geology student in Attleboro, Mass., carrying his own detection equipment discovered radioactive junk at a local landfill. That sparked a federal cleanup that was completed in 2012, three decades after the student's find. A 2011 state health study found elevated levels of a few types of cancers within a mile of the site, but said "the elevations were not statistically significant."

In the 1970s, federal officials decided that a factory in Fort Wayne, Ind., which had machined uranium for the weapons program, didn't need a cleanup. However, in 2004 a buyer of the facility found radiation there during an environmental review. That site is now slated for a government cleanup, though it isn't expected to begin for several years, officials say.

Even after being cleaned, many sites still contain residual radioactive contamination. "Cleanup does not imply that all hazards will be removed from a given site," the Energy Department said in its statement to the Journal. Often, the taint is so slight that it poses no public-health risk, government officials say. But in about 50 completed cleanups, enough contamination remains that the federal government has imposed "institutional controls," restricting how the area or facility can be used. Such restrictions could last "for centuries or, in some cases, millennia," one Energy Department report said.


The former Mound nuclear complex in Miamisburg, Ohio, can't be used for day-care centers, elementary schools or other activities where children would spend too much time. While the government says the contamination levels don't threaten adults in offices or doing other work at what is now a technology-business park, research has shown children to be more at risk from radiation exposure.

Eric Cluxton, president of the nonprofit Mound Development Corp., says he checked with the Energy Department to make sure it was all right to let kids come to this year's annual Thanksgiving "Turkey Trot" 5-mile run being hosted by Mound. The government gave the green light.

The U.S. entered the atomic age in the 1940s, with the Franklin Roosevelt administration moving ahead with developing a nuclear bomb just before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Adding urgency, U.S. officials feared Nazi Germany was already well into its own bomb project.

The Staten Island site now being considered for cleanup was the repository for 1,200 tons of extremely high-grade uranium ore from the Belgian Congo that a European business executive had shipped to the U.S. in 1940 to keep it from the Nazis. Forty years later, federal records show, the Energy Department found residual contamination at the site. Even though the uranium had eventually been purchased for the Manhattan Project, the department decided the site didn't qualify for a federal cleanup because the ore had been owned by private companies while it sat on Staten Island.

The department said it decided to reconsider the site's eligibility at the request of other government agencies. A 2012 federal report calculated that potential radiation exposure in a relatively remote and unused corner of the property, part of which now hosts Mr. Mazzio's towing company, could be up to about 10 times current standards.

Such were the challenges of building the first bomb that Niels Bohr, the Nobel Prize-winning Danish physicist, reportedly once remarked that an entire country would have to turn itself into a factory to build the weapon. After viewing the labors and results of the Manhattan Project, Mr. Bohr concluded America had done just that.

Remnants of that remarkable effort are buried in two clearings in the thickly wooded park lands of southwestern Cook County, Ill. During World War II, the world's first nuclear reactor—which had gone into operation at the University of Chicago—was moved there. Over the ensuing decade, a 19-acre, 35-building complex, including a second reactor, rose around it.

Officials dismantled the place in the 1950s. They dumped parts of the two reactors, helped by some well-placed explosives, into a ditch 100 feet wide by 40 feet deep. The hole was then "filled, leveled and landscaped," said an Energy Department document. This "Site A" is less than a third of a mile from "Plot M," a nearly a half-acre burial plot holding contaminated building debris, equipment and clothing.

Over the years, radioactive tritium turned up in groundwater, including some at a nearby picnic site; officials monitoring the tritium say it doesn't pose a health threat. In 1990, state workers discovered above ground uranium metal, concrete rubble, protruding pipes and elevated radiation levels at Site A. That prompted a federal cleanup. Erosion from bicyclists riding over Plot M is a continuing issue, according to a 2012 Energy Department report.

On weekends, several dozen people might pass by the sites, said James Phillips, a biologist for the Forest Preserve District of Cook County on a walk to them past stands of oak and maple trees amid the din of cicadas. "It's amazing to think that Einstein, Oppenheimer and Fermi" might have walked in the same woods, he said, referring to three pioneers of the nuclear age. Mr. Phillips said some winter visitors claim that because of heat from radioactive contamination snow doesn't gather at Plot M, but he dismissed that as urban legend.

A stone monument at Site A proclaims the resting place of "The World's First Nuclear Reactor." The stone cube at Plot M carries a more ominous message: "Caution—Do Not Dig. Buried in this area is radioactive material from nuclear research." The message adds: "There is no danger to visitors," though some passing editor chiseled off the word "no." Cook County officials say they are working on a campaign to attract more visitors by better publicizing the sites and their role in history.

The Manhattan Project's urgency and secrecy—carried over during the Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union—"made it possible to give short shrift to complaints other industries would have to face, such as pollution and health issues," says John Applegate, an environmental-law professor at Indiana University who served on an Energy Department cleanup advisory board during the Clinton administration.

In the 1980s, a public outcry began rising over such health and safety issues. One turning point, say current and former government officials, came in the small Ohio town of Fernald, where a big federal complex processed weapons-related uranium. Worker complaints of unsafe plant conditions, coupled with radioactive contamination found in nearby drinking wells, drew national attention.

Joseph Fitzgerald, a former senior Energy Department official, toured Fernald in 1985. "The entire plant was contaminated. There were piles of uranium on the floor," he recalls. Ultimately, Fernald underwent a $4.4 billion cleanup, prompted in part by the ardent interest of then-Sen. John Glenn, who became an outspoken advocate for cleaning up weapons contamination nationally. In a recent interview, the former senator said, he concluded Fernald had been "just the tip of the iceberg."

Today, even nuclear critics say Fernald is among the most successful cleanups to date. Part of the 1,050-acre site is a nature preserve and visitors center. Still, there is also a 65-foot-high mound containing mildly radioactive debris and a plant to remove contamination from groundwater. A flier warns hikers not to handle anything resembling construction debris—in case it is a fragment from the old nuclear complex.

In 1989, the Energy Department agreed to pay more than $70 million to settle a lawsuit by residents near the plant who said the facility had caused emotional distress and diminished property values. The agency didn't admit to any proof of harmful effects, but the settlement did fund long-term medical monitoring by researchers at the University of Cincinnati and a local medical center. Last year, they reported "a higher than average rate" of lupus among people who lived near the former plant and said more investigation was needed.

The end of the Cold War contributed to some reordering of nuclear priorities. In the 1990s, annual spending on nuclear-weapons cleanup for the first time surpassed the nuclear-weapons budget. The department began declassifying documents and making more site-related information available.

A small part of the billions going annually to the overall cleanup went to a program to address the hundreds of privately owned locations that had taken part in the nuclear-weapons drive. It went by the bureaucratic name of Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program, or Fusrap.

Begun in 1974, Fusrap was considered something of a backwater, say many former officials. Through 1997, Fusrap's annual budget never topped $75 million, though it was responsible for cleaning up several dozen sites. Fusrap "never had enough money to do the job," says Graham Mitchell, a former Ohio state environmental regulator involved in nuclear cleanups.


In 1997, Congress took the program away from the Energy Department and gave it to the Army Corps of Engineers. Congress raised the annual Fusrap budget to about $140 million, where it pretty much stayed until each of the last two years, when it was cut to about $100 million. Fusrap has some two dozen pending projects, including at least one that could cost up to $500 million.

Fusrap has had challenges besides funding. When one former Energy Department official learned the Journal was seeking addresses for the hundreds of company locations, he let out a brief laugh. "Huh, good luck." He recounted how department officials during the 1980s and 1990s had engaged in a similar search. Many of the addresses in government records were for a company's headquarters rather than the actual nuclear work sites. (Part of the Journal database cites Fusrap findings.) Some locations had addresses on streets that no longer existed. "We were not able to assess all the sites," he said.

One that went missing was Transcontinental Machine & Tool, which did uranium metal machining, according to a 1951 government document. The Energy Department says it hasn't found a record of the city or even the state where Transcontinental operated. "Although there is some potential for contamination, the location of the site is unknown and therefore the site cannot be surveyed," said a 1990 DOE report. Based on experiences at other uranium-machining shops, the contamination worry was low, the report added. (A 1941 article in an online newspaper archive mentions a Transcontinental Machine & Tool in New York City.)

Some sites have undergone multiple cleanups. For years, the Acid Canyon area in New Mexico served as a dumping spot for the nearby Los Alamos National Laboratory. In the 1960s, federal records show, the government removed plutonium and other contaminants from the canyon and transferred the land to Los Alamos County, which turned it into a public hiking and recreation area.

In the 1970s, the government found more contamination and did another cleanup. In the late 1990s, state officials found yet more contamination. According to news reports at the time, the Energy Department brought in a truck-mounted vacuum and removed several hundred cubic yards of soil. The work was needed, the Energy Department said, because rainstorms sometimes uncover more radiation, but that removing all the contamination would mean stripping vegetation and soil, impacting the ecosystem there. The area is safe for recreation, the department added.

Middlesex, N.J., a hamlet of about 14,000 people, 30 miles from New York City, is also facing its third round of cleanup. In the late 1940s, the Atomic Energy Commission dispersed contaminated material from a nearby nuclear-weapons facility over 5 acres of a municipal landfill there, according to federal records.

In 1960, citizens practicing civil-defense drills with Geiger counters discovered radiation readings up to 50 times natural background levels. After a cleanup, the government cleared the property for public use. Part of it became home to the Middlesex Presbyterian Church. In the mid-1970s, federal officials found more contamination about 400 feet from the church and did another cleanup. Neal Presa, current pastor at the church, said federal officials have assured him there isn't any danger to his flock.

In 2001, the borough of Middlesex, looking to develop part of the site into a recreation area, discovered yet more contamination, this time at an end of the property away from the church but near a residential street. Twelve years later, the Army Corps of Engineers is looking at doing another cleanup at this new spot. It says there isn't any imminent risk to the public.

Ronald Dobies, mayor of Middlesex for most of the years since 1980, sat in his small office recently and recounted the town's nuclear history while pointing at boxes and files containing atomic-related papers. City Hall is a stone's throw from the landfill, which is largely overgrown with shrubs and weeds and fenced in—though a gate at the end of the site near the latest contamination discovery stood askew on a recent visit.

In 1983, Mr. Dobies told a federal nuclear advisory panel "it is difficult to express the fears of our citizens in a short presentation." Today, the mayor is less worried about possible health threats. Still, he said, "I am a little surprised that they didn't get all the radiation out" in the past.

The weapons-related work at UC Berkeley's Gilman Hall created contamination headaches from early on, according to documents obtained under a public-records act request. A 1957 university report recounts that contamination in room 309, next to room 307 where plutonium was discovered, was so bad the "ceilings, walls, floor and lab benches were cut into small pieces and sealed in fiberboard drums" by workers wearing "full protective clothing, including respirators." More than 600 cubic feet of material was disposed of as "radioactive waste."

Later surveys found more contamination; "in a total of 12 rooms throughout all floors of the building and in hallways," according to a 1983 report. Another report said the building had 40 areas of contamination.

The university covered the contamination by various means, including with tiles. The result "reduced the dose rate to below detection limits," said the 1983 university report, adding that officials believed occupants hadn't been harmed by prior exposures. A 1991 report added: "It is not feasible to remove all the contamination unless all equipment and furnishings are removed and the building gutted."

"They did a good job of sealing this stuff in," says Ms. Mac Kenzie, the radiation safety officer. If there ever was a serious radiation problem at Gilman, the period of "real hazard" would have been between World War II and about 1980, she says.

Still, issues arise. While putting a new roof on Gilman this year, officials discovered some contamination in a third-floor study room. They temporarily evicted three nuclear-chemistry grad students and closed off part of the room before reopening the rest. Though the potential doses were small, says Ms. Mac Kenzie, "you just don't expose people unnecessarily."

—Neil Parmar and Charity Scott contributed to this article.

Write to John R. Emshwiller at john.emshwiller@wsj.com and Jeremy Singer-Vine at jeremy.singer-vine@wsj.com

William Wahl
William Wahl subscriber

It appears that the enthusiasm to clean this up from the responses here depends a great deal to how close the contamination is located to the person responding.

Jack Touart
Jack Touart subscriber

This posting is getting as old as some of the sites.

Tommy Bright
Tommy Bright subscriber

Also missing from official government accounting: One B-36 bomber. 385 built, 379 scrapped, 5 on display in museums. Where's the 385th? Can't find it.

Flies on wings forty feet wider than a 747, higher in the sky than your typical jet fighter, weighs half a million pounds, built specifically to carry nukes across whole oceans.

I guess we should be afraid, be very afraid. Yeah, that's the ticket.


As a graduate student from 1978-1979 in the UCBerkeley Chemical Engineering program, I spent quite a few classroom hours in Gilman Hall. But the people who should be most concerned are the faculty and staff who spent their entire work days in the building.

Logi Cal
Logi Cal subscriberaccountSuspended

British Nuclear Fuels have log specialised in remediation of old nuclear sites and rendering them safe. They can even cut up the metal structures and separate the radioactive elements out. So this story is a beat-up, based on long outdated technology. The photos are as old as the story.

David Castle
David Castle subscriber

Doesn't appear they noticed Fernald, a bit northwest of Cincinnati.

Peter Riccardella
Peter Riccardella subscriber

Did anyone in this comment chain watch the recent CNN movie "Pandora's Promise"? I've worked on the mechanical side of the nuclear industry my entire career, but am certainly not an expert in nuclear physics or radiation health physics. I was extremely surprised by testimony in the film that the total number of deaths attributable to the Chernobyl accident, including cleanup workers and inhabitants, after 25 years, is only 56. Tthis estimate was evidently developed and validated by the World Health Organization. That certainly must violate the "Linear No Threshold" rule. Also, following is a link to another WSJ article, "The Panic Over Fukushima" by a Berkeley professor of nuclear physics that seems to support a similar conclusion: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10000872396390444772404577589270444059332


Fix this comment section to keep it from automatically erasing my excellent comments. Tnx

David A. Bell
David A. Bell

I sit here reading this article and all the comments, lest I pretend to know anything about Nuclear Science, of which I know nothing, and the first image that pops into my head Is all those coal companies and workers jumping for joy shouting...."YES, they are going to implode and we win by default!"

Words like nuclear and radiation are words that grab the average American and only equate to danger, unhealthy, and death. We get the dangers of Hirioshima,, 3 Mile Island, and that area in Niagara Falls NY and its recurring issues again. Those kind of stories only heighten fears of nuclear and radiation, and former inspectors, nuclear scientists, and all the referenced reading material, which is never written in laymen terms without a dictionary nearby. Illiterate, uneducated, ill informed as I might be called, that is my view.

John Melikoff
John Melikoff

There is nothing we can do about the past except hopefully know better what to do in the future.

Richard Le Sesne
Richard Le Sesne subscriber

As an educated nuclear engineer, I'm not sure now which will give longer to this country and hurt more people......radiation from old contaminated sites or the ACA (known in many circles as the American Con Act or Obamacare). LoL......I better might go swallow some Polonium 210....it may be a less painful death!

Chris Marrou
Chris Marrou subscriber

All government programs begin by spending huge amounts to achieve very little, and end by spending infinite money to achieve nothing. Witness NASA's collapse from Moon-reachable to low Earth orbit to no boosters at all today. Likewise, the DOE spends huge amounts ($350 billion- really?) cleaning up sites that are not a present danger simply because it can measure the radiation and scare the pants off people, who honestly seem to react to radiation the way primitive tribesmen used to react to photographs.

Consider the contamination of Gilman Hall at Berkeley the article mentioned several times. The person with the most exposure for the longest time was Glenn Seaborg, discoverer of Plutonium. He died at age 86 of a stroke, not cancer, yet the panic over Gilman Hall continues to this day.

Patricia Ameno
Patricia Ameno subscriber


Seriously, and with all due respect, what I was speaking of was a Cold War Nuclear Fuels Processing Facility that ran from 1957-1984 which set up shop in an abandoned steel mill that had dirt floors, glass windows (some broken), 124 stacks, located in the corporate confines of a town with residential homes within 100 feet, abutting a major roadway and a major waterway which is a source of drinking water and located in a valley with inversion. This facility was also allowed by the AEC to run any and all of their 124 stacks 100 times over the legal MPC's for at least a year. That's a 10,000% increase and the sum concentrations of 124 stacks is mind boggling. There were several 'events' at this facility and the normal plume that came off the plant from the stacks was 500ft wide. There was also incineration of material that went on there. Would you say it would have been safe to grow up as a child within 100ft of that facility?

Would there have been a need for concern for the woman who was pregnant?

Would really appreciate an honest answer especially as the plant is no longer there. Thank You!

Patricia Ameno
Patricia Ameno subscriber

Rather be ignorant than one who misrepresents the truth

Breck Henderson
Breck Henderson subscriber

Patricia -- Can't seem to respond directly to your posts. I'm a retired reactor inspector and public affair officer from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Uranium is not a radiation hazard unless it has fissioned, when the elements it splits up into present the hazard. Uranium is in the soil, sand and a component of granite -- a natural occurring source of radiation. U-235 is not more hazardous than U-238, from a radiation perspective. Natural uranium, which is mostly U-238 with less than 1% U-235, decays by beta particle emission, which means it is a weak source of radiation. PU-239 is rare in nature, but trace amounts have been found. It is even less of a radiation problem because it's an "alpha particle" emitter. With both of these, you'd basically have to inhale a large amount of PU dust or U dust so that it would lodge in your lungs for a long period of time. There have been many, many incidents where lab workers have done exactly that, and they have suffered no ill effects. About two dozen WWII workers have been living with PU in their systems for 60 + years. The science on this is very clear, you can go to Wikipedia and read it for yourself, so if you want to sell some land contaminated by PU and U-235 very cheaply, I would be an eager buyer.

Michael Bain
Michael Bain subscriber

I’m a little surprised the WSJ would cover a story like this, given the publication’s pro-business and anti-social/environmental justice tone. That said, the publication should be commended for taking up the investigation.

This does make one wonder what the unintended consequences of some of today’s technical innovations like hydraulic fracturing, GMO, robotics, 3-D Printing, and the sure-to-come geoengineering will be.

If the WSJ really wants to perform a public service, they sould catalog all the articles and hoopla surrounding these innovations and conduct a fair and balanced investigation of the pros and cons 15, 25, and 50 years hence.

Michael Bain
Glorieta, New Mexico

Adam Kubizna
Adam Kubizna profilePrivateuser

Apollo, PA... I live about an hour away from it and they are currently cleaning up the waste site. As soon as you drive into the little town you smell rotten eggs. It permeates your car... I invite everyone to go and smell the joyous experience.

Breck Henderson
Breck Henderson subscriber

Generally, one can rely on WSJ for accurate journalism, but this one could be better. Here's the problem: As was pointed out in a recent NYTimes article, the dangers of radiation are severely overblown. I have no doubt that the descriptions of contamination at the various sites are accurate, but they don't cite specific numbers so there is no way for me to tell if it's really a problem. (As a former NRC reactor inspector, I have some training in these things -- note, I do not speak here on behalf of the NRC.)


Actually there is quite a lot of evidence, most of it from studying the people exposed to radiation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that says people can endure quite a large dose of radiation without increasing lifetime health risks.

The authors mentioned this, but failed to draw the correct conclusions: "Determining actual risks from radiation is far from a precise science; much of it is based on long-term health studies of World War II atomic-bomb survivors in Japan. Current scientific thinking holds that even the smallest amount of additional radiation raises a person's cancer risk slightly, with the danger rising with the dose.


It is not accurate to say that "current scientific thinking" holds that even the smallest amount of radiation raises cancer risks. This is the Linear No-Threshold Model, which anti-nuclear activists have forced on nuclear regulatory bodies (including the NRC) politically. Since we all get 360 mrem or more of radiation annually, there has got to be a threshold for exposure below which there is no adverse health affect.

IMHO, the truth here is that, yes, there is small amounts of contamination at these sites, but no, we don't need to spend $350 billion to clean them up to zero. It's not worth the expense.

David Thomson
David Thomson subscriber

As I recall, Fernald had several kilos of weapons-grade uranium in their MUF (Material Unaccounted For) file. That is, it was lost to the accounting process and no one knew where it went.

Thomas Stuart
Thomas Stuart subscriber

Thanks for your response.

And if memory serves, accidents involving PU 239 implosion weapons present the very inhalation hazards you mention. When we burned a weapon on the runway at Sidi Slimane Morocco a bit more than half a century ago as the result of a SAC B-52 mishap, my understanding is that a lot of local folks subsequently expired over time. My guess is that inhaled smoke from the fire was the prime conveyer of these deadly particles. Needless to say our SAC elements were persona non grata in Morocco thereafter, but I think we WERE able to retain a key Navy comms station at Naval Air Station, Port Layauty for quite awhile thereafter, much to the benefit of fleet operating forces in EastLant and the Med.

Thomas Stuart
Thomas Stuart subscriber

How many grams of weapon grade PU 239 constitutes a body burden? If memory serves it isn't much.

SAM HALL subscriber

You will find that coal is radioactive, but not enough to be of concern unless you are a reporter.

Marc Boswell
Marc Boswell subscriber

I don't think that ingesting Po 210 is a "less painful death".

Definitely not.....

Patricia Ameno
Patricia Ameno subscriber

To Thomas Stuart:

My disagreement comes from Breck's benign description and evasion of my original question which asked about U-235 enrichments of 93% to 97.5% and to Pu-239 and daughter products such as Am-241. I think it is careless to descibe these elements as benign. They are dangerous if inhaled, ingested...do you agree?

Patricia Ameno
Patricia Ameno subscriber

Breck---I understand now... you worked for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission(NRC). The NRC and their predecessor, The Atomic Energy Commission(AEC) have been nothing more than an adjunct to the industry...the Grand Masters of Illusion and a Renegade agency that has violated their own laws.

Your warm and fuzzy statements that this material is all safe is terribly misleading and not based on facts. For example, in an article in Scientific American it states and I will copy and paste here:


John W. Poston, Sr. is head of the nuclear engineering department at Texas A&M University and is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society. He offers the following explanation.

Conventional wisdom tells us that plutonium (Pu) does not exist in nature. Plutonium and other so-called transuranic elements are considered by most to be man-made elements. Thus, they assume that when plutonium is found in the environment, human technology has put it there.

This element has usually been considered synthetic because it is produced most efficiently in nuclear reactors. But in the strictest sense, the answer to the question is yes, plutonium does occur naturally. Plutonium appears at very low concentrations in nature, on the order of one part in 1011 in pitchblende, the ore of uranium (U).

The element plutonium was discovered by Nobel Laureate Glenn T. Seaborg and his colleagues in February 1941. It was the second transuranic element to be discovered; neptunium (Np) was identified in 1940. The 60-inch cyclotron at University of California at Berkeley produced the first isotope of plutonium, Pu-238. It was made by bombarding a U-238 target with deuterons, producing Np-238. This material had a brief radioactive half-life--the time required for half of the atoms in a sample to decay or transform--of 2.12 days. The radionuclide Np-238 decayed (by emitting beta-radiation) to Pu-238, which has a half-life of 87.7 years.

The isotope Pu-239 was produced on March 28, 1941 by bombarding a U-238 target with neutrons to produce U-239 (half-life of 23.5 minutes). This radionuclide decayed by beta emission to Np-239 (half-life of 2.12 days), which subsequently decayed by beta emission to Pu-239 (which has a very long half-life of 24,600 years).


Breck, I specifically said, U-235 enriched to between 93%-97.5% and Pu-239...now then, do you now want to state and put your credibility on the line regarding these 2 isotopes and enrichments as being naturally occurring???? ONCE AGAIN....JUST THE FACTS PLEASE!!!!!

Marc Boswell
Marc Boswell subscriber

Mr. Bain,

Trying to defend the indefensible is a fool's exercise.

Boxer the horse salutes you!


Marc Boswell
Marc Boswell subscriber

Mr. Bain fails to understand that the profit motive has done more to assuage the plight of the poor than any government program.

Mr. Bain fails to understand that any government program is funded by taxing the profitable.

Actually, Mr. Bain fails to understand. Everything.


Marc Boswell
Marc Boswell subscriber

The problem with liberals is that in their search for "justice" they find no value in accountability.


JEFFREY DUGAS subscriber

"...he publication’s pro-business and anti-social/environmental justice tone."

Are you sure that it's not just that your "tone" is over-biased in a certain direction?

A little introspection might be in order.

David Thomson
David Thomson subscriber



Richard Le Sesne
Richard Le Sesne subscriber

All studies of radiation's effects on the body are mostly based on statistics. The more exposure, the more the chance of a complication due to an interaction of the radioactive particle with your body's organic matter. The type of radiation and its energy levels are also a factor. From an external exposure point of view, the radiation dangers in most of these sites, I agree are overblown. However, the ingestion exposures, in particular dusty and dessert sites, is another story.

The real danger is not external temporary exposure. Most exposures would be less than background.

The real danger, like with asbestos, is ingestion into the body or long term adhesion to the skin. Ingestion of even a minute amount of radioactive material that can't even penetrate your skin like alpha radiation, is deadly. Just ask the victims of KGB Polonium 210 micro balls injected underneath the skin by KGB assassins.

If you look at these sites as if they contained asbestos fiber dust, you'd be more accurately gauging their danger to the public and their health.

What surprised me of this article was that so many sites are not listed. I found one site with my equipment in Chapel Hill, NC that nobody had even heard about a few years ago. It's never been widely reported or appeared in any databases, but it was full of low level medical radiology waste with a good bit of Polonium and Beryllium dust. Now it's a conference center, so just like asbestos pouring concrete over it made it safe, not because of radioactivity reduction, but because of ingestion avoidance to the public.

Patricia Ameno
Patricia Ameno subscriber


You stated that, "It s not accurate to that 'current scientific thinking' holds that even the smallest amount of radiation raises cancer risks. This is the Linear No-Threshold Model, which anti-nuclear activists have forced on nuclear regulatory bodies (including the NRC) politically"

That statement is totally incorrect. The Linear No-Threshold Model came out of the ultra conservative National Academy.of the Sciences in their Beir VII report.

Once again Breck, you are misrepresenting the truth.

Thomas Stuart
Thomas Stuart subscriber

Three passages of interest:




Before deciding whether the risk justifies the cost of clean up, one may be forgiven for wondering about the difference in risk between a single exposure to a low level source and prolonged exposure to that same source. Has enough time passed for the results of prolonged exposure of living tissue to low level radiation to have become established and quantified beyond all reasonable doubt? If not, then it may not yet be possible to say whether or not there is “a threshold for exposure below which there is no adverse health affect.“

Should we err on the side of caution given our present state of ignorance? That it seems to me is the question we should strive to answer.

David Thomson
David Thomson subscriber

It depends on the entry path: ingestion, injection, or inhalation. In either ingestion or injection, it is a typical heavy metal and is excreted by the body in due time with little radiological damage.

The inhalation pathway is the most dangerous, and requires that the metal be in particles less than about 5 microns, as larger particles are coughed out. Refer to the cited paper for more details.


U-235 is an alpha emitter as is U-238. Almost all U-238 and U-235 is found in equilibrium with their beta emitting progeny Th-231 and Th-234 due to their relatively short 1/2 lives (25 hours and 24 days). All aplha emitters present primarily an inhalation hazard and your lungs are quite similar to paper in their alpha stopping power.

Eric Caulkins
Eric Caulkins profilePrivateuser

Patricia you realize Am-241 is used in smoke detectors? It also is an alpha emitter, so a piece of paper will stop the radiation, again for it to be a health hazard it has to be ingested in large quantities. Also as Breck has pointed out Pu-239 is also an alpha emitter and U-235 is a beta emitter (~1 meter of air can stop most beta particles).


U-235 decays by Alpha emission not beta. Given that its' Th-231 progeny which does decay via beta has a ~25 hour 1/2 life most U-235 encountered will also have an equivalent activity of Th-231 if it is more than 1 day old.

On an activity level basis, U-235 is as equally hazardous as any other form of Uranium of the same activity since on an internal dosimetric basis they are chemically the same. However, U-235 on a concentration basis is bit of a different kettle of fish as its specific activity renders it about 7 times as hazardous on a per unit mass basis. Pu-239 on the on the other hand is 186,000 times more hazardous on a per unit mass standpoint from its specific activity levels. The true internal hazards are actually somewhat more nuanced as this really gets into the dark arts of internal dosimetry where the DAC/ALI for Pu-239 rates it several thousand times more hazardous on an activity unit basis dependent upon its' chemical solubility class.

Breck Henderson
Breck Henderson subscriber

Okay Patricia, I said Pu exists naturally in only trace amounts. "Trace" means very small. Useful quantities of Pu are all man made. But the fact remains that Pu is not a radiation hazard. The science is very clear on this -- it decays by emitting "alpha" radiation. Alpha will not penetrate a piece of paper or your skin, so the only way it can affect a person is if it is ingested in some way. Since it's a heavy metal, the usual means of ingestion is when Pu is machined and the dust and fine particles are ingested through the mouth or nose. And it takes a lot of it to raise the potential for damage. Thus amounts of Pu in the soil in the range of PPM or PPB are not a health issue.

U-235 decays via beta particle. Again, this is not energetic enough to cause harm unless ingested in significant amounts. U-235 also exists in nature in small amounts, but is concentrated for use in weapons. Getting excited about the enrichment level of U-235 makes no sense unless you are worried about proliferation. You won't find a batch of Uranium enriched to above 90% lying around in a warehouse -- this is what the Iranians have been working diligently for years to produce, and all that we have is locked up tight. Basically, an atom of U-235 is an atom of U-235, whether it's lying around by itself mixed with U-238, or in a nuclear weapon where it is lying around with mostly other U-235 atoms.

This is basic physics, Patricia, which every scientist knows or knows how to look up quickly and easily. You are apparently working hard at remaining outraged by a situation that doesn't merit it.

Thomas Stuart
Thomas Stuart subscriber

On what EXACT basis are you disagreeing with Breck? Are you of the opinion that U-238 and PU-239 are inherently dangerous, that they are NOT low level emitters?

Please be patient, but so far I do not understand why you disagree with Breck. Perhaps it might be helpful for you to explain those points about which you two do NOT disagree.

Breck Henderson
Breck Henderson subscriber

I'm sorry Patricia, you are far too ignorant to argue with.

Michael Bain
Michael Bain subscriber

So you say Mr. Boswell, so you say...

Michael Bain
Michael Bain subscriber

Dear Mr. Boswell:

Let me straighten you out, Sir, on what you think you know about me.

Mr. Bain certainly does not understand everything, but does understand the connection between profits and taxes, as he was a small business owner for over 25 years. During that time he willingly paid his taxes and made payroll, many times before paying himself.

Mr. Bain did this without a K-Street lobbyist, an army of accountants continually searching or tax loop holes, nor screaming and squealing about the tax rate, as he understood that paying taxes enabled him to have the built and social structure to conduct business.

Mr. Bain, being a fiscal conservative and social liberal, feels that people should be taxed fairly and then pay those taxes without whining, and that those helped by those taxes should be means-tested. This would include individuals on social relief and corporations such as Exxon, Monsanto, and all the other individuals and corporations feasting at the government subsidy trough.

Mr. Bain also feels strongly enough about this to defend himself in the street over these beliefs, Mr. Boswell.

Patricia Ameno
Patricia Ameno subscriber

I guess then I might be unfairly classified as a 'liberal', even though my focus is on health & safety and it is the health & safety of the most vulnerable, such as, the unborn child or the elderly or the infirmed. Searching for "justice" has become broken down to the chilling effect of 'just - ice' due to the continued insulation of the companies and the industry itself. It's as if the mentality is: 'Nothing can go wrong...everything is perfectly safe...this is the most dangerous element known to man, but it will not hurt you...don't confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up' MOST 'liberals' and 'conservatives' too would get 'justice' only if there was or would ever be ACCOUNTABILITY...THAT is what's been missing...no one has been 'accountabile'...from the governmental regulators, past and present to the companies in the nuclear industry, who's mindset is: cost-based analysis...the bottom dollar.

So where's the 'accountability'?

Michael Bain
Michael Bain subscriber

Mr. Boswell:

The problem with conservatives is that in their search for "profits" they find no value in accountability or anything else.


Whatever your feelings about LNT may be, they are just that - your feelings. LNT is currently the law of the land and the cornerstone of the ALARA concept. It is what constitutes reasonable that is always open for debate as well as what constitutes net benefit. Reasonable men can come to different conclusions.

Regardless, as to whether I agree with you on LNT is meaningless and all enacted government regulations are at their core political decisions. Atmospheric nuclear testing of the 50's -60's contributed only 1 mrem in annual individual dose - just to every human on the planet. LNT or not, few Health Physicists would find the resumption of it 'reasonable' while we see the potential for net benefit in nuclear power over other more polluting sources of energy affecting our perceptions of relative risk. Few individuals realize the hidden nuclear components that lurk in conventional energy production and were coal ash not to enjoy as special exemption, it would likely need to be disposed of as a TENORM waste that exceeds the clean up criteria at many of the above referenced facilities. Clean up is something of a misnomer in and of itself - we can't clean up anything - only move it to a more remote area where the pathways of exposure are extremely limited.

It is only by being alive that we are at risk of death

Breck Henderson
Breck Henderson subscriber

Patricia -- You have a very tiny bit of information, which you don't seem to know what to do with, other than to attempt to malign me. Yes, I'm sure the linear no-threshold model came from NAS as you say, but that doesn't make it the last word on the subject. It was a political compromise arrived at many years ago and meant to appease anti-nuclear activist groups by erring on the side of caution. Radiation Health Physicists, the scientists who study the effects of radiation on people, don't subscribe to LNT, although they are not as clear about this in pubic as I would like to see them. My knowledge comes from many years of experience in the field. You might dig just a little deeper and read the Wikipedia entry on LNT here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no_threshold_model#Controversy

LNT is a highly conservative way to operate, which is fine until it runs up against practical considerations -- such as a reactor meltdown in which many people receive very small doses of radiation. Then the government is in the position of acknowledging that there is a small increase in radiation dose, possibly beyond their standards based on LNT, but also trying to calm the fear of people who don't know what to do. Of course the anti-nuclear zealots make much of the situation because it advances their cause when people are afraid. I'll go with the position of the Health Physics Society on the subject.

Breck Henderson
Breck Henderson subscriber

Thomas -- Your question is a good one. There is definitely a difference between exposure to low levels of radiation over a long time and acute exposure to high levels. I believe the answer is obvious, however. Human beings have evolved in an environment of low level radiation, perhaps an order of magnitude greater than what we see today, depending on exactly where our ancestors lived. Our immune systems can handle the damage. We also have many decades of experience with nuclear plant workers, who get more than the average Joe. The experts on these matters are radiation health physicists. You can explore their website at: http://hps.org/hpspublications/positions.html I've sent you to their "Positions" page where they provide a clear, detailed answer to your question. The short version is, they don't believe science supports the "linear no-threshold model." Which is to say, there is a threshold, and it's fairly large, below which you don't have to worry.

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