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20 Radioactive Dangers We All Face |
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DOE's new 'Environmental Impact Statement for the Continued Operation of the Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Test Site and Off-Site Locations in the State of Nevada', 2009 - 2011
Attention to public and media -
The NNSA has announced public
scoping meetings for four dates between September 10 to 18, 2009 in Las Vegas,
Pahrump, Tonopah, Nevada, and St. George, Utah, for the SWEIS. Idealist
strongly urges that meetings also be held in the same locations where Divine
Strake public hearings were held: in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Boise, Idaho.
Idealist also insists, considering the growing stakeholder concerns and
stalemate over gas drilling in potentially radioactive areas at the Colorado
underground nuclear Rulison Site, that the NNSA
re-issue its Notice of Intent to assess DOE/NNSA
activities at off-site locations outside of the State of Nevada. These
locations should include the underground
nuclear explosion sites located in Mississippi, Alaska, Colorado, and New Mexico.
Table of Contents
The NTS EIS - a bit of history
Why the DOE's NNSA is really doing an EIS
Next step in EIS process - DRAFT EIS
In July 2009, the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration issued its intent to complete an EIS for the Nevada Test Site and Off-Site Locations in Nevada. It will be the first EIS for the Nevada Test Site since Las Vegas in the mid-1990s. Same goes for St. George, Utah. How much those cities have grown since then!
| On Stopping Divine Strakes
On July 24, 2009, the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) made official its intention in the U.S. Federal Register to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Nevada Test Site and Off-Site Locations in the State of Nevada. The EIS will replace the existing EIS from 1996. The NNSA is the same agency that collaborated in 2006 and 2007 with the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) in the 'Divine Strake' experiment. Divine Strake was a proposed Department of Defense-sponsored 700-ton chemical explosives test at Nevada Test Site that, according to budget documents, would have simulated the blast of a low-yield nuclear weapon on a hardened underground bunker. The test was cancelled in February 2007 following a public outcry – culminating in thousands of citizen-emailed comments lodged with the NNSA - over growing fears that Cold War fallout at the Nevada Test Site would be resuspended and drift off-site from the effects of the 700-ton blast. Divine Strake was just one of many tests as part of a DTRA program announced in a 2002 supplement document to the 1996 EIS. In that supplement, no environmental review of DTRA’s activities was ever conducted and the public was never given a chance to review the intricacies of the program, choose and consider alternatives, or participate and comment in a transparent evaluation process. The only information provided to the public was a cursory, very brief mention in the supplement document about these actions. The NNSA in 2002 and years following applied a protocol called “categorical exclusion” to exempt the DTRA program’s blasting activities – except for Divine Strake - from 'additional' NEPA review. The NNSA proceeded with the assumption that these testing activities were bounded by the 1996 EIS, whereas they were not. Per NEPA, 'Categorical exclusion' is a 'category of actions which do not individually or cumulatively have a significant effect on the human environment ... and ... for which, therefore, neither an environmental assessment nor an environmental impact statement is required.' (40 CFR 1508.4) Therefore, the choice by NEPA officials to make eligible these DTRA tests for 'categorical exclusion' was erroneous for the simple reason these activities, conducted on the soils of the most contaminated area on the Earth, were far from having insignificant affects. 'Categorical exclusion' provides the least, the lowest, the most cursory, nontransparent form of review, and, essentially, denies the public of any information and oversight of NNSA actions. It is safe to assume that since 2002 dozens of DTRA surface blasts were allowed by NNSA officials without any public awareness. This testing exposed the downwind population to unknown additional levels of radioactive emissions. When the DTRA announced Divine Strake's cancellation on February 22, 2007, they stated their intention to "develop advanced analysis techniques and conduct confirmatory experiments at a much smaller scale to assist in developing new capabilities to defeat underground facilities." The DTRA's decision in that statement to conduct more surface-tests at the Nevada Test Site is certain; it is 'clear and unequivocal from that press release,' wrote Nevada lawyer Robert Hager in a federal motion on May 11, 2007. The DTRA's legal representatives in the Department of Justice later denied in federal court any plans for any federal action (these smaller tests), however the DTRA has never mentioned it would never conduct these or other surface-explosive tests. However, these (and other) smaller-scale 'confirmatory' tests have never been defined in terms of yield, timing or environmental impacts. Idealist feels that it is imperative that citizens formerly concerned with Divine Strake consider the facts that (a) further Divine Strake-like testing has been announced - and 'decided' - and (b) there is still no environmental document – no scientific analysis - to assess the impacts of further surface-testing at the Nevada Test Site on the environment or peoples downwind of the test site. We implore concerned persons to make use of this unique opportunity during this EIS process to advise the NNSA to focus their efforts in the new EIS to evaluate the environmental health effects of small and large surface-scale tests like Divine Strake. Although the EIS is not the correct venue for stopping these additional tests, it is the EIS process that should, and must, subject these testing activities to greater scrutiny, transparency and analysis. Legal action or grassroots protest, as in the past with Divine Strake, may be required if the EIS process fails to ultimately address the environmental significance of additional surface testing. At Idealist, we fully admonish the NNSA for that agency's abuse of loopholes in NEPA that allowed officials to exempt (categorically exclude) past DTRA surface-testing at the NTS from all levels of public scrutiny and transparent environmental review. These abuses of categorical exclusion, if unchecked, may lead to a growing trend of treating greater classes of NTS actions with reduced environmental review and poorer transparency. The NNSA should not have allowed these tests without subjecting them to greater environmental review, whether in the form of an Environmental Assessment, an Impact Statement, or a Supplement to the 1996 EIS. The NNSA's abuse of the Categorical Exclusion protocol violated both the spirit, if not the letter, of NEPA and the public's trust. More reading:
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What is an EIS? What is it for? Why does it affect Las Vegas, or St. George, or me!?
Please take the time to learn about the critical issues that should concern you as a past and present downwinder from, and taxpayer to, the Nevada Test Site. Some of them include:
Big Explosives Experimental Facility (BEEF)
Community Environmental Monitoring Program (CEMP)
Public
Scoping Meetings and Commenting on the Site-Wide Environmental Impact Statement
Radiation Facts
...more topics on our Nevada page. Also feel free to read our comments submitted on the 2008 Draft Supplement Analysis.
Environmental impact statements are required for federal actions that may cause significant impacts on health and the environment. They are mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, which requires federal agencies to consider the environmental consequences of their decisions and provides the public an opportunity to comment on contemplated actions.
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires that every 5 years the DOE determine what to do about the Nevada Test Site Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The most recent one is from 1996. That five-year process results in what is called a Supplement Analysis, which attempts to determine whether a new EIS is needed, a Supplement to the existing EIS is needed, or nothing additional is needed.
What does an EIS entail? According to a Washington Post story in 1996, 'NEPA dictates that agencies begin by soliciting public comment on the scale of the inquiry -- called a "scoping period" -- followed by sundry hearings and workshops, an implementation plan, a draft environmental impact statement, a comment period on the draft, and then a final statement incorporating the comments and setting out revised options and recommendations.'
Peruse the NEPA Citizens' guide here to learn more about your rights regarding the National Environmental Policy Act.
The NTS EIS - a bit of history
The most recent EIS for the Nevada Test Site and Off-Site Areas was completed in the year 1996. [You can access the 1996 NTS EIS here on Idealist. That EIS, remarkably, is nowhere to be found online on the DOE or NTS's websites.] Five years after that, the DOE completed a Supplement Analysis that resulted in the do-'nothing' option. That was 2002. Roughly five-years after that, in 2008, the DOE again completed a Supplement Analysis and, like 2002, made the case in the draft version circulated to the public - and open to public comment - that the DOE should again do the 'do nothing' option. Since the Spring of 2008, Idealist has argued that doing nothing, when so much has changed since 1996, would be unacceptable.
A final determination - after the DOE considered comments made to the Draft SA - was SUPPOSED to have been made, per the DOE's timeline, on September 30, 2008. (It turns out that if the DOE decided that it will be initiating a new EIS, then a final Supplement Analysis isn't needed, or apparently any announcement to that effect!) After months of not hearing anything through early 2009, we noticed in early March (2009) information posted on the site of the Nevada Test Site Citizen Advisory Board (NTS CAB) that the DOE has capitulated to citizen and State (of Nevada) pressures to complete a new site-wide EIS. That information appeared in the minutes of the January 22, 2009 meeting of the NTS CAB (Citizen Advisory Board). During the meeting, Frank Marcinsowki, DOE's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Regulatory Compliance, informed the Board of the following [as paraphrased in the minutes]: 'DOE has committed to conduct a new site-wide Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and will begin the process in FY 2009 with a Notice of Intent and scoping meetings to identify the breadth of the study.' [The 2009 FY runs from Oct. 2008 to Oct. 2009]
In mid-June 2009, EIS status charts on the General Counsel page of the DOE website included mention of the new site-wide EIS for the NTS. The monthly Environmental Impact Statement and Environmental Assessment Status Chart (see link) indicated that an EIS was determined by the DOE on March 16, 2009, and that a NOI ('Notice of Intent') would be filed in July 2009; another chart indicates that the draft EIS will be ready by about June 2010. The EIS document manager is Linda Cohen of the NSO (Nevada Site Office) of the DOE/NNSA. (Link to General Counsel page of DOE here). F-f-f-finally, on July 24, 2009, the DOE's NNSA issued the Notice of Intent in the U.S. Federal Register.
Why the DOE's NNSA is really doing an EIS
The DOE capitulated to pressures from citizens to initiate a new EIS - to replace the existing one they completed back in the year 1996 - and also from legal threats coming from the State of Nevada, which has battled with the DOE over low-level and mixed low-level nuclear waste storage at the NTS since the 1990s. (The DOE's decision was also affected by its own internal, classified analysis of the potential impacts of a destructive act that is intentional - as opposed to unintentional events like tornadoes - at the Nevada Test Site.) The State resurrected that battle last year when State officials learned that the DOE in cahoots with the EPA was planning on shipping 25,000 gallons of Plutonium Uranium Recovery by Extraction (PUREX) waste from the DOE's Savannah River Site (SRS).
The State argued that the proposed PUREX shipments were ‘new waste streams’ and not allowed under current State permits or agreements. Furthermore, they claimed that the most recent EIS for the Nevada Test Site, from 1996, doesn't take into consideration the impacts to groundwater, or transport, of this, and potentially other future, waste streams for disposal. The PUREX waste would be disposed on the Nevada Test Site (NTS) - not Yucca - where low-level radioactive waste has been dumped (in subsistence craters) for decades. Read more about transportation accidents involving NTS waste. A new release from the SRS in late December mentioned that the last of the PUREX waste was trucked to NTS (during the end of Dec. 2009)
The '740 acres' issue: On a related issue, an insane idea was put into motion in 2009 whereby 740 acres of the NTS would become permanently relinquished from its custodian, the Department of Interior (and therefore taken from public ownership), for a NTS permanent low-level nuclear waste dump.
Why is this a problem? The NTS sits on public land that was withdrawn from public use (for livestock grazing, mineral exploration, etc...) for the specific purpose of 'weapons testing.' The land wasn't withdrawn for perpetual use and especially not for a permanent nuclear waste storage site of 740 acres, or more, near Las Vegas. If the DOE got its way, then the title to those 740 acres would be given to the DOE. That wasn't the way it was supposed to be. The title is supposed to be held by BLM, who should allow the public to use the land. The DOE shouldn't get the title because they foreclosed on their promise to return the land back when they were done 'weapons testing' and clean it up properly. What next? Will the title to the rest of the Nevada Test Site, and then some buffer zones, be free-and-clear DOE land? Will the DOE be the largest landholder in Nevada?
With less than an iota of public notice and zero media-attention, the land transfer took place in late 2009 (according to the board meeting minutes of NTS CAB in November 2009).
This new dump is part of a slippery slope to an ever-expanding use of the test site for all types of storage of very dangerous wastes, the transport of those wastes, and illegal transfers of public land and land titles to the DOE without public involvement. 'Mixed' simply means low-level radioactive waste contaminated with hazardous chemicals. You know: acidic wastewaters and slurries, cyanide wastewater, sludges, metal-contaminated soils, asbestos, pyrophotic fines, explosives, propellants, elemental mercury and lead, some beryllium, a few thousand batteries with lead acid, and cadmium too!
It is clear that the test site cannot even now contain the plumes of Cold-War era legacy tritium and plutonium-contaminated water that wasn't supposed to - but currently has begun to - exit its borders. It is also clear that long-lived radioactive 'fallout' from past nuclear weapons tests leaves the test site during high winds (although the NNSA won't admit that). What does the NNSA think the test site can NOT handle...? Is it the invincible sandbox fortress of some child's fantasies...or a fragile desert ecosystem that has been horribly disfigured and cannot take more abuse?
Do you want new hazardous and nuclear waste impacting Nevadan underground water supplies for future generations? Do you want trucks hauling this stuff on your roads!!? (Read more about transportation accidents involving nuclear waste.)
From March 2009 DOE Environmental Management Bi-Monthly Conference:
'In terms of LLW disposal issues, Ms. Gelles reported that EM has continued to work with its stakeholders and regulators in the State of Nevada to resolve the long standing issue as to whether the Nevada Test Site (NTS) can be used for disposal operations. After extensive consultation with the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, EM is pursuing the relinquishment of 700 acres in Area 5 of the NTS that house the program’s MLLW disposal unit. Ms. Gelles explained that relinquishment is an administrative process wherein a government entity notifies the Bureau of Land Management when a public land that had previously been withdrawn for federal use has served its original purpose and is eligible for consideration for public use. Following notification, the Bureau determines whether the land can be made available for future public use. In the case of NTS Area 5, EM anticipates that the Bureau will likely find that the land is not suitable for public use due to the nature of the activities that have taken place there [IT IS TOO CONTAMINATED FOR PUBLIC USE, SO WHY NOT MAKE IT INTO A MINI YUCCA AND CONTAMINATE IT MORE!], and will transfer stewardship to the General Services Administration (GSA). In theory, once GSA makes the relinquished land available to federal agencies, DOE will ask to use the Area 5 land as a disposal facility. The goal [TO WORK OVER THE PUBLIC] is to distinguish Area 5 as not suitable for public use, instead of public land withdrawn for DOE use. EM has notified the State of Nevada as to its intent and will continue to discuss any concerns.'
Nevadans should insist that the DOE fully clean up - if they CAN - the test site and give it back for BLM and Western Shoshone use.
Here is our comment we sent on 9/15/2009 regarding the permit for the Area 5 facility:
To the attention of Mr. Ken Small,
I am opposed to the idea of constructing, and the granting of a RCRA Part B permit for, a new mixed low-level radioactive waste disposal cell at the NTS Area 5. Scores of citizens residing in central Nevada have already experienced dangerously high whole-body radiological doses from U.S. nuclear weapons testing fallout from the Nevada Test Site. The transportation routes traveled by semi trucks from waste generators across the U.S. to this proposed cell will mostly converge on central Nevada's routes, which wind through main streets and near children-filled schools and day care centers. These trucks emit radiation in the form of gamma and neutron rays - allowed by DOT standards - that leak from the caskets to the world outside the truck's walls. What is the total, cumulative person-rems that will be attributed to the population exposure from trucking waste to this new disposal cell when it is finally filled (more than 15 feet high and a football field in area)? Using the National Research Council's rule of thumb (an average of 800 cancer deaths are expected per 1 million person-rem of exposure), how many non-fatal cancers and fatal cancers will this new disposal cell be responsible for?
I am also opposed to DOE Environmental Management's scheme for the relinquishment of the 700 acres underlying the proposed disposal cell and 're-withdrawing' the land away from the public's caretaker of these lands, the BLM. I am opposed to this plot to forever deny the public the right to have those 700 acres back for its own use. The NTS is no longer being used for the original intent of the existing Public Orders for land withdrawal and never is it mentioned in any of the Public Orders for permanent waste disposal facilities. Never did the public approve anything other than 'weapons testing.' Contamination of these lands has made large tracts of the NTS 'not suitable for public use' but that doesn't and shouldn't give EM an excuse to remove the public's access to that land forever. Contamination of these lands from weapons testing warrants the clean-up and return of these lands to the BLM. If they can't be cleaned up because it isn't feasible, for whatever reason, then they at least shouldn't be more contaminated with radioactive waste and reassigned permanently for non-public use.
Sincerely,
Andrew Kishner(Note that the late John Gofman believed the Fatal Cancer Yield rate was not 800 extra cancer deaths per 1 million person-rem, but 3.25 times that number, or 2,600 extra cancer deaths per 1 million person-rem.)
Draft EIS. It will take the DOE about one year to complete the draft EIS. The preceding step was the scoping comment period for the SWEIS that ended on October 16, 2009. Scoping meetings were held in mid-September 2009. Per the DOE: '... scoping meetings will provide the public with an opportunity to present comments, ask questions, and discuss issues with NNSA officials regarding the [EIS]....After the close of the public scoping period, DOE/NNSA will begin developing the draft [EIS]'
What is scoping? In reality, scoping is really the process of defining scope, or the focus, of the SWEIS (aka EIS). It would be prohibitive for the NNSA to analyze and study every single environmental impact for the NTS.
Read the NNSA's media advisory about the scoping process, which provides opportunities for citizens to comments via public meetings, written submissions, fax, e-mail or via a toll free number.
Read the submitted scoping comments from the State of Nevada, WSLF (Western States Legal Foundation), Tri-Valley CARES and Nevada Desert Experience (105 persons sent e-letters to the DOE in support of NDE's campaign)
A very rough timeline of the NEPA process to expect for the NTS EIS in 2009-2011 is as follows (scale is in months):
Key dates: 7.24.09 NOI; Scoping comments deadline: 10.16.2009; Scoping meetings: 9.10-18.2009; Scoping comment deadline 10.16.2009;
DOE/NNSA's very informative SWEIS page with zero-guidance on how to find 1996 NTS SWEIS online..because they took all of their online copies offline! And ginormous-sized 'posters' that must have been uploaded by mistake - who would want to have a 20 megabyte-sized file for a 2' x 2' poster about waste disposal? One of the posters titled 'Radiation Facts' has revised upwards the estimate of background radiation received by the average American to a whopping 620 milliRems! That is nearly double the official government estimate of 360 milliRems that was actually upwardly revised in 1987 from the previous estimate of 170 milliRem! In that poster, the DOE appears to suggest that we ought to get 300 milliRems of medical X-rays annually! John Gofman once calculated that each increase of 100 millirems would increase cancer mortality by 16%. So, the DOE's unilateral unwarranted increase in our expected radiation 'allowance' will cause the U.S. cancer mortality rate to increase by 48%. Doubling radiation exposure (i.e., x-rays, off-site effluents) will double the chance of cancer, genetic deformities, and other radiation-induced illnesses in a population. More pre-mature deaths! There is no safe dose and we should be lowering, not increasing, our dose!!!
Read our comments submitted on the 2008 Draft Supplement Analysis. The comment period for that document concluded in late May 2008.
Our analyses: (on the Draft SA): Read our full analyses 'Speak now or hold your peace for the next five years' and 'Going Subcritical - A nuclear test is a nuclear test is a nuclear test'. You can view our slideshow discussion about the 2008 Nevada Test Site Draft Supplement Analysis here.
Read our article about the DOE's removal of online NEPA documents: DOE Saying It's Protecting Us is a Hard Pill to Swallow
For journalists: when the Draft SA came out in April 2008, why weren't the cities of Boise and Salt Lake City included on the public meeting tour? (Meetings in St. George, Las Vegas and Pahrump were held the week of May 5th; more info here).
Other links:
Read the 1996 Nevada Test Site EIS (1996 Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Nevada Test Site and Off-Site Locations in the State of Nevada) here, also you can access it in 5 other ways
Download the 2008 Draft Supplement Analysis (and read it) here or here
The 2002 Supplement Analysis (SA) for the Final EIS for the Nevada Test Site and Off-Site Locations in the State of Nevada (July 2002) here
The Record of Decision for the 1996 Nevada Test Site EIS can be found here
State of NV's comments on 1996 Nevada Test Site EIS here
NEPA Compliance Guide here
DOE's NEPA webpage here
Environmental and radiation monitoring around the Nevada Test Site was gutted by the DOE in 1998. Read our letter to the Utah Rad Board discussing the issue: here. Also, read the 1998 anonymous letter from 'Retired scientists, monitors, and individuals from DOE and EPA': here
Re: the State of Nevada land withdrawal dispute with DOE: Bob Loux to Steve Mellington requesting that DOE prepare a new site-wide EIS for the Nevada Test Site: here; 2007 Letter from NV Attorney General to DOE on use of NTS as a disposal site for PUREX
Note: Bob Golden, mentioned in a May 8 (The) Spectrum article, was National Environmental Policy Act Compliance Officer at the DOE/NNSA/NSO when the 1996 EIS was finalized.
Idealist's public document archives: 1. 
2.
'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.
learn more on our global fallout page
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