Idealist - Idaho's triple-whammy contamination from Hanford, NTS and INL fallout

When U.S. nuclear weapons production and testing facilities were sited in the 1940s and 1950s, military planners chose the remotest areas with the least dense populations in the American West. What they did not realize, or perhaps did but did not tell the public, is that the combined effects of toxic emissions and fallout from three regional nuclear weapons facilities - the Nevada Test Site, Hanford Nuclear Reservation, and the Idaho National Laboratory - would severely impact the health of Idaho's population. According to many experts, Idahoans, by measure of dose, bore the greatest brunt of per capita radioactive fallout in the United States.

Over the past several years, anecdotal and fact-based media reports and findings from government health agencies and independent scientists have increased our knowledge of what happened in Idaho and to Idahoans during the Cold War. Although the pieces are only starting to come together, there's much missing from the picture including government apologies, follow-up radiation-health studies and downwinder compensation. Below is a synopsis of that evolving knowledge base:

Idaho National Laboratory, or INL, is an 890 square-mile U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) managed complex located in the Idaho desert. INL had its beginnings in 1949, when the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission established the National Reactor Testing Station. The site's acronym was changed to INEL in 1974, INEEL in 1997 and INL in 2004. Over the span of several decades, INL served as the site for testing prototypes of many nuclear reactor designs and reprocessing spent naval reactor fuel to recover uranium-235 and krypton-85. In the mid-1970s, INL was designated a national environmental research park to study environmental characterization and restoration

of former nuclear weapons production sites. As with its sister labs in the West, INL's toxic emissions spread off-site through routine operations. From the late 1950s to early 1960s, INL knowingly released large amounts of Iodine-131 resulting from an experimental project to refine nuclear materials for the military. Experiments to simulate accidents of nuclear reactors at INL's Nuclear Reactor Testing Station involved controlled releases of radioactivity into the environment. From 1963 to 1968, INL conducted a handful of CERT tests that involved controlled releases of small amounts of radioactive Iodine-131. Some deliberate releases were also designed to understand human exposure. According to the Final Report by the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments in 1995, INL studied the impacts on humans from Iodine releases by apparently using staff volunteers, who were tested for exposure after the experiments. Staff members drank milk from contaminated cows and in one experiment stood downwind from an Iodine-131 release.

Real accidents also occurred at INL. On January 3, 1961, an explosion at the lab's SL-1 reactor killed three operators and sent a cloud of radiation over communities to the south. The three workers who died in the reactor explosion were so contaminated that their body parts were either disposed as radioactive waste or put in heavily lead-lined caskets for burial.

In 1991, INL released a 3-year DOE-funded study that attempted to evaluate historical releases and potential impacts to downwinders. That report found that airborne releases were highest from 1955 to 1965 and downwinders received the highest exposure in the thyroid and skin. The study concluded that doses were 'small' compared to what people get through natural background radiation. A state health panel reviewed INL's report in 1993 and came out with their own recommendation that a more rigorous, independent, and public-inclusive dose reconstruction study should be undertaken. Idaho's Governor requested that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) initiate the dose reconstruction study, which it commenced in 1992, and broke the study into two phases - dose reconstruction and health effects. The INEEL Dose Reconstruction Project was completed in 2002.

The CDC study was supposed to find out how radiation and chemical releases might have affected people living downwind from INL. But when CDC researchers began drawing links to emissions sources outside of Idaho, such as nuclear fallout, they didn't pay much attention. A short-lived investigation into fallout from Nevada should have stumbled upon a link between exposure to Nevada fallout and health problems arising from contaminated milk consumption. Yet the CDC decided to not include INL-collected fallout data since 1957 that showed obvious correlations between spikes and Nevada testing dates. It also ignored the dose estimates to Idahoans from Nevada testing that was provided in a 1997 National Cancer Institute study that concluded Idaho was the worst hit from Iodine-131 fallout. CDC researchers opted to use raw data from only two monitoring stations in Idaho that provided a truly 'fuzzy' picture. Critics claim that the CDC purposely blurred the picture of Nevada fallout. A member of the study's citizens advisory committee noted a few years ago (read: Doctor says CDC ignored effects of fallout in Idaho) that he came to believe the CDC wanted to "downplay the overwhelming impact of the Nevada Test Site on Idaho and the rest of the country." The article continues: "After the panel passed its resolution advocating use of the Test Site doses and specific information gathered at the laboratory, 'the CDC promised to follow through but never did.'"

Towards the end of the dose reconstruction study, funding was cut and the CDC stopped looking at all INL accidents and total releases. Instead, they narrowed their focus to just two INL testing programs that released quantities of Iodine-131. These two sources, per CDC, contributed the 'largest...releases of radioisotopes...at INL.' The final conclusion of the study was that those two INL sources gave the public a total dose that was 'small and not sufficient to cause human health effects.' The CDC admitted, however, that it could not reconstruct all historic releases stemming from the fact that the 'scope of work and resources...did not enable a detailed reconstruction.' Part of the lack of resources may be attributed to the fact that during the study the DOE destroyed over 100 boxes of documents that contained material potentially useful for reconstructing radiation doses. For more information read Feds confirm more INEEL records destroyed and Preserving fallout data called vital for research.

The greater worry nowadays for residents near INL is the legacy of waste storage. Over a 50-year period at INL, plutonium-bearing waste and hazardous materials from on- and off-site generators was dumped into shallow pits and trenches or directly released into the Snake River Plain aquifer, which is Idaho's most important underground water source and the second largest in the U.S. According to the book 'Killing Our Own,' "INL management from 1952 to 1970 deliberately dumped some sixteen billion gallons of liquid wastes into wells that feed directly into the water table below. Radioactive contamination has been found 7.5 miles away, angering local farmers and raising questions about the long-term fate of the huge Snake River Aquifer..." One study by the lab in 1995 pegged the total contamination of transuranic waste at a high estimate of nearly 1 million Curies. Authors Wilshire, Nielson and Hazlett note in their book 'The American West At Risk,' that 'Nobody knows how much plutonium is in the ground at INEEL - or where it is, where it might be headed, how fast it might get there, or where it is likely to turn up hundreds of years from now.'

Part of INL's 'waste holdings' includes the melted core of the Unit 2 reactor from Three Mile Island. INL played a key support role following the 1979 accident in Pennsylvania and received shipments of the core debris and its spent fuel from 1986 to 1990. A 1995 court order forced the removal - completed in 2001 - of that waste from on-site storage pools to an on-site dry storage facility as an interim measure; the order requires that the waste canisters eventually be moved to the nation's waste depository by 2035. Other spent fuel includes that of the Peach Bottom Unit 1 nuclear reactor. Perhaps the most worrisome 'waste holding' is over 50,000 cubic meters of plutonium-contaminated waste totaling a gross of one ton of Plutonium 239-240 . Attempts to remove it from INL - or parts of it - in 1970 and 1995 failed.

Environmentalists worry about the dumped waste particularly because it is sitting on the state's water supply. INL sits on over 890 square miles of the Snake River Plain aquifer and about 470 billion gallons of water flow underneath the facility each year. Environmentalists note that plumes in the aquifer containing tritium, strontium-90, iodine-129, and trichloroethylene are above EPA drinking water levels for contaminants. Although plumes are isolated in a limited area, they are migrating and will pose a risk to the greater aquifer in the future. Other pressing environmental questions pertain to the siting of the waste in a flood-zone, how much of it enters runoff during rainstorms, and how wrong are DOE scientists when they estimated how slow plutonium travels in groundwater.

Other present worries at INL include wildfires and bomb testing. An 8,000-acre wildfire in 2000 threatened the potential meltdown of nuclear waste and other toxic materials at INL. More recent fires, including one that burned nearby INL in July 2007, raised fears of radiation being released from contaminated soils. You can keep tabs on off-site radiation gamma 'values' using INL's monitoring station network here [Graphical display of historical gamma data; Instructions: Select 'PICs' from drop down menu and click 'Submit' The units for the measurement of gamma radiation are micro-Roentgens per hour. Click map to zoom-in.] Other data sources include the Idaho Environmental Monitoring Program and the Eastern Idaho Interagency Fire Center.

And then there's bomb testing. Since 2007, INL has been the host site for an ongoing study of the effects of vehicle-borne explosives on building structures, protective barriers and materials. The ground-zero for these small ANFO (and dynamite/TNT) surface explosions, the INL's National Security Test Range, contains background levels of radiation (especially Cesium-137) higher than levels detected in other parts of the country including other parts of the West. (For more about the testing, read KA-BOOM! This is just a test) The Final Environmental Assessment, for which a public comment period concluded on Jan. 12, 2007, can be found here. Groups opposing the blasts are not happy with the DOE's choice of test location. Here are some selected comments from private citizens found printed in the final environmental report:

INL and CDC health researchers may think that impacts of fallout to Idahoans from out of state are negligible. They're not.

Fallout came from the south, in Nevada, but also from just across the western border from Hanford Nuclear Reservation. One of the worst fallout incidents from Hanford was a radiation dispersal experiment that exposed residents in Washington, Oregon and the Gem State to short-lived radionuclides. It was called 'Green Run,' an intentional release of tens of thousands of Curies of radioactive Iodine-131, hundreds of times more than the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, from the T-plant at Hanford. It was Hanford's largest single release of Iodine-131 in its history.

The purpose of the secret experiment, conducted on December 2 - 3, 1949, was to test methods of detecting radiation from Russia's nuclear weapons programs, or specifically the location of Russia's plutonium-producing plants using Air Force monitoring equipment. Conducted during poor weather conditions, the plume from the release stagnated in the local area for several days before a storm front dispersed it toward the north-northeast. Parts of the plume eventually drifted in various other directions for as far as 70 miles. No resident anywhere in the Pacific Northwest was warned.

The experiment ingredients were particularly toxic for two reasons. One, it involved a processing "run" of uranium fuel that was cooled after a much shorter time (16 days) than normal after leaving the reactor, and so its radiation ingredients, primarily Iodine-131, had less time to decay and was 'hotter' than had it been if normally processed. Second, during the experiment, 'scrubber' filters (pollution control devices normally used to remove an estimated 90 percent of the radioiodine from the effluent gas) in Hanford's nuclear stacks were purposely switched off. Hanford scientists took radioactive readings on vegetation, animals, water and in air, and found that radiation in three states was hundreds of times above 'safety' levels. Green Run was a government secret until the 1980s when reports were made public in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Washington State's surface waters were the most radioactively polluted in the nation during the 1960s, containing dangerous levels of beta-emitting radionuclides. View the total beta activity in U.S. surface waters: August 1963, September 1963, October 1963, November 1963, December 1963, January 1964, February 1964, March 1964, April 1964, May 1964, June 1964, July 1964; more on our maps page

If you can imagine several thousand Green Runs, then you have an idea of what happened with atomic fallout from Nevada.

Atomic Energy Commission officials in Nevada waited until the winds at the Nevada Test Site blew away from the urban centers of Los Angeles and Las Vegas to points north and east before conducting their atomic blasts. Although Idaho was hundreds of miles away from the test site, meteorological effects dealt Idaho a worse hand than its southern neighbors, Nevada and Utah. The fallout from open-air Nevada atomic blasts in the 1950s and 1960s traveled via high-altitude winds into less-arid areas in Idaho where the fallout came down with raindrops at levels that surpassed those in Nevada and Utah.

A 1997 National Cancer Institute (NCI) report found that 4 of the 5 worst-hit counties in the U.S., which received the largest per capita doses of the fallout isotope Iodine-131 from Nevada above-ground weapons tests, were in Idaho. In the top 5 were Custer County at number 2, Gem at number 3, Blaine at number 4 and Lemhi at number 5. Iodine-131 comprised, however, just 2% of the spectrum of over 125 radioactive isotopes produced from an atomic bomb detonation. Rich Miller, who has compiled data and various atlases on fallout, also found that Idaho's Gem County (north of Boise) was the 'hottest' in the nation for 30 isotopes - including cesium-137 and strontium-90, both with about 30-year half-lives.

Iodine-131 is the only fallout component that has been studied with regard to health-effects. It was studied by the NCI, which concluded in its 1997 study that the risk for thyroid cancer 'increases' with I-131 exposure. The reason why is because as Iodine-131, which is very water-soluble, fell out on fields, and while traveling the grass-cow-milk food chain it became more concentrated. When the milk was consumed, the isotope tended to concentrate further in one organ - the thyroid gland. As such, many Idahoans who drank fresh milk in youth - especially those who got milk directly from local farms - during the Cold War years likely suffered from thyroid cancer. Idahoans weren't given warning, such as choosing shelved milk, which was somewhat safer than fresh farm milk because the Iodine-131, which has a half-life of just 8 days, had time to decay.

In the summer of 2004, the topic of Nevada fallout was a big one in Idaho when it was learned that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) was considering expanding the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA), which provides 'compassion payments' to downwinders and 'atomic' workers. The NAS is a government-created scientific society that through its four 'Academies,' non-profit arms of scientists, reports on various subjects of science for the government. It was charged with evaluating RECA, which in its current form excludes all of Idaho even though the Gem State received the highest Iodine-131 fallout in the nation.

Grassroots groups and politicians placed pressure on the NAS when they learned that its panel was hearing testimony from downwinders in other states but not Idaho. After receiving over 500 messages from afflicted Idahoans, the NAS announced they would hold a public meeting in Boise on Nov. 6, 2004 to hear oral testimony. Over 75 people testified at the event at Boise State's Taco Bell Arena. Prior, community meetings were held around the state sponsored by organizations such as Snake River Alliance, the state's nuclear watchdog group.

After compiling evidence on cancer rates and assessing the levels of radioactivity that fell in various areas, the NAS, in a report released in April 2005, concluded that the U.S. population's dose of Iodine-131 covered a wider geographic distribution than was understood in 1990 when RECA was enacted and only a few counties were selected for inclusion. The NAS didn't however recommend specifically adding Idaho into RECA. They recommended scrapping the current geographical-based scheme for compensation and replace it with a scientific-based one. Read what they did recommend about RECA, why it is faulty, and what Idaho's Congressional delegation is doing about it on our RECA page.

The information used by the NAS for its study was National Cancer Institute (NCI) data originally collected by the Atomic Energy Commission in the 1950s and 1960s for Idaho. The dataset came from about 100 monitoring stations nationwide and Idaho's fallout dose was determined using data from only three of them operating in the area at the time - in Boise, Idaho Falls, and Missoula, Montana. Because of this meager data set, there is much uncertainty with regard to doses received especially in the hardest hit states of Idaho, Colorado and Montana - the uncertainties are so wide that one cannot support the conclusion that any one location received vastly different exposures than another although the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Iodine-131 report and dose maps made these distinctions. The NCI's maps and report are the result of taking regional deposition rates, averaging it on a county level and calculating dose by factors such as age at time of exposure and diet. The error in the NCI's estimations of dose per county can vary by a factor of 10 for locations that contain 'hotspots' of fallout radiation or 'no-spots' of virtually no fallout as well as locations that were distant from any of the 100 sampling stations. Not only are the average per-county estimates misleading, but the underlying data derived from gummed film paper that was supposed to catch contaminated dust or droplets and monitor the fallout isn't highly accurate and further renders NCI estimates as unreliable (more on our gummed film page). Several experts suggest that the NCI data should be confirmed (or redone) with data from core sampling (of trees or watersheds) in various suspected-hot zones. By sampling ponds and undisturbed areas, one can analyze the soil contents for radioisotopes and, similar to Carbon dating, many of the fallout-components are still detectable and would vastly add to our understanding of the true fallout deposition received by areas all over the country, and world. A recently completed graduate study into fallout levels of Southern Utah's soils found that deposition levels of Cesium-137 may have been higher than estimated. Expanding these kind of sampling studies nationwide should be initiated.

Although there is growing awareness of the public-health price that Idahoans paid during the Cold War, the relationship between Idaho and nuclear pollution hasn't been divorced. Three neighboring nuclear weapons facilities - Hanford, Nevada Test Site, and INL - are still in operation, not cleaned up and continue contributing doses to the public. Those present exposures include radioactive noble gases released from normal operations (weapons-related and other activities) and also from ongoing impacts to areas downwind and 'downwater' from the effects of non-nuclear explosions, wind, water and fire on residual, lingering radioactivity at those sites. Also, a number of attempts to build new nuclear plants in Idaho, facilities to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, import foreign nuclear waste and more have met with resistance from watchdog groups and residents who want an end to the legacy of nuclear pollution in Idaho.

Idealist's public document archives: 1. 2.

U.S. NUCLEAR tests: 128 A + 899 U in NV,
1 A in NM, 10 U (in NM, CO, AK, MS, central NV),
100+ A, U in Pacific, 3 A in S. Atlantic
(A=aboveground; U=Underground)

'The greatest irony of our atmospheric nuclear testing program is that
the only victims of U.S. nuclear arms since World War II have been our own people.'
- Forgotten Guinea Pigs Report, 1980

In 1986, the U.S. Dept. of Energy used the cover of the Chernobyl fallout cloud over the United States to release huge amounts of radiation into the air from a failed underground Nevada nuclear test. It was called Mighty Oak.

Did global fallout cause massive mutations that may explain disorders like autism?

learn more on our global fallout page

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