New Charges Against B.N.L.

A new whistleblower emerged this week to charge Brookhaven National Laboratory with polluting the environment and being unconcerned about what was happening. His charges came as a new contractor began managing the facility for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Robert Ramirez, a former hydrogeologist at B.N.L., charged at a press conference Monday that B.N.L. has threatened the underground water table by draining 1.5 million gallons of water every day for decades from an atomic accelerator into a basin 200 feet from an area at B.N.L. that contains soil contaminated with radioactive toxins, including cesium-137, strontium-90, and plutonium, considered the most deadly radioactive substance.

Resigned In 1996

The press conference was organized by the East Hampton-based group Standing for Truth About Radiation.

Mr. Ramirez, who worked at B.N.L. from 1988 until he resigned in 1996 out of frustration over its cleanup program, the radioactive toxins may have penetrated the water table and had an impact on adjacent neighborhoods.

He said officials at B.N.L. "overlooked and ignored" the threat of the radioactive substances being flushed into the water table through the years and "squashed" his concerns. "Management was not responsive," said Mr. Ramirez.

William Gunther, who had been manager of the Office of Environmental Restoration at B.N.L. - for which Mr. Ramirez worked - said in an interview Tuesday that Mr. Ramirez's "theory is a valid one but so far we don't see that it has come to be."

Although test wells in the 90-by-90-foot area that contains radioactive substances have shown radionuclides in the groundwater, said Mr. Gunther, "no effect" has been found beyond the area nor any impacts discerned in groundwater in communities near B.N.L. Also, said Mr. Gunther, B.N.L. "addressed the concern" of Mr. Ramirez "through the installation of additional monitoring wells."

New Management

As Mr. Ramirez leveled his charges Monday, a new B.N.L. contractor, Brookhaven Science Associates - a partnership between the State University at Stony Brook and Battelle Memorial Institute of Columbus, Ohio - took over management of the facility.

Dr. John Marburger, B.N.L.'s new director, a physicist and former president of the State University at Stony Brook, conducted what B.N.L. in a press release described as a "labwide van tour."

"Hope And Optimism"

He was accompanied by the two men who will be his top deputies: Peter Paul, chairman of the physics department at Stony Brook, the new B.N.L. deputy director for science the technology, and Thomas Sheridan, a Battelle executive and former adviser to the Department of Energy on radioactive waste, the new deputy director for operations.

Dr. Marburger addressed some of B.N.L.'s 3,000 employees at stops during the tour, said the release, quoting him as declaring: "This is a day of hope and optimism. Today we look forward to the task of integrating Brookhaven's world-class science with a respect for the environment and involvement by our local community."

Last year, D.O.E. Secretary Federico Pena terminated the contract his agency had with Associated Universities Inc. to run B.N.L., charging that the way the facility had been managed was "unacceptable, inexcusable, and flat-out wrong."

Pollution Disclosures

A.U.I., a group of nine universities - including Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Cornell, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - had run B.N.L. since it was set up in 1947 on what had been an Army base on Long Island.

"Brookhaven National Lab has lost the public trust from the citizens of Long Island," said Mr. Pena in announcing the termination of A.U.I. "The combination of confusion and mismanagement that has been going on here for years is going to end."

Mr. Pena's action came after disclosures about pollution caused by B.N.L., including leakage of radioactive tritium into the water table over a 12-year period from the spent fuel pool of one of B.N.L.'s two nuclear reactors, its high flux beam reactor.

"Shelved" A Report

Mr. Ramirez said after leaving B.N.L. he went to the office of U.S. Senator Alfonse D'Amato about his concerns and was referred to the office of New York Attorney General Dennis Vacco. Mr. Vacco's office, complained Mr. Ramirez, put together "a six or seven-page report and shelved it."

Two months ago, he said his wife viewed a Montel Williams television show about B.N.L., "taped it and said, 'You have to see this.' I watched the program, which had all these people from the community with sick children. I recognized a lot of them," said Mr. Ramirez of Mastic Beach. "Some of the kids had died."

"I decided I had to try one more time to get the information out," he recounted. He said he was impressed by the STAR representatives who appeared on the program. "It seemed like a group I could trust."

Radioactive Water

He called the STAR office, met with Dr. Helen Caldicott, its vice president, who felt that "people should know" about his experiences, and agreed to go public.

The 90-by-90-foot area, called the Building 650 Stump Area Outfall by B.N.L. and for the past three years surrounded by an eight-foot-high barbed wire fence and signs warning people to keep out, is highly contaminated with radioactive substances because, Mr. Ramirez said, cleaning of contaminated equipment was done nearby and waste water laced with radioactivity went to the area.

'I decided I had to try one more time to get the information out.'

Robert Ramirez

The 1.5 million gallons of water from the accelerator, called an alternating gradient synchrotron, which B.N.L. has drained daily into a basin close to the hot spot, has been treated with chelating agents, he said. These have been used because they "keep ambient iron in solution" so the iron in the water used in the accelerator would not "foul up its heat exchangers."

"Overlooked, Ignored"

However, in the same way the chelating agents keep iron in solution, they also cause radioactive substances lodged in soil to leach into the aquifer below, he said. Much of the accelerator water flows through the sandy soil and around and under the 90-by-90-foot area.

"It is quite possible that a lot" of the "whole slew of radionuclides" in the area "made it" out of the soil and into the groundwater due to the flushing action of the accelerator water, said Mr. Ramirez.

But for years this was "totally overlooked and ignored" by B.N.L. officials, he said. And when he and two associates raised the issue in 1995, "management didn't want to hear of it." Having gone to work at B.N.L. "to do public service" but finding that the cleanup at B.N.L. was aimed at "generating paper instead of doing good," he resigned.

Underground Leak

Mr. Gunther agreed with Mr. Ramirez about the 90-by-90-foot area, which is at the center of B.N.L.'s 5,300 acres, becoming polluted with radioactive substances because of radionuclides that migrated from the "decontamination pad at Building 650. There was a concrete pad, and equipment that was radioactive was brought to it to be cleaned," starting in the 1950s. The waste water from that process was supposed to go to underground tanks and then to B.N.L.'s sewage treatment plant.

But, said Mr. Gunther, in the late 1960s, it was found that waste water had been leaking from an underground pipe into the 90-by-90-foot area. He agreed, too, that the accelerator water going into "a recharge basin" close by could have carried radionuclides into the groundwater, but insisted that this does not appear to have been the case.

Elevated Levels

However, Mr. Ramirez said that a 1994 reading at a test well at B.N.L.'s southern boundary - next to North Shirley, a community toward which the water in the aquifer below B.N.L. flows - that showed elevated levels of radiation, might be connected to radionuclides from the 90-by-90-foot area.

But Mr. Gunther, who since the management change at B.N.L. has been shifted to become manager of the Office of Environmental Monitoring, and a B.N.L. spokeswoman, Mona Rowe, denied any connection.

Disturbing Situation

Meanwhile, Dr. Marburger said Monday that the contaminated 90-by-90-foot area will most likely be dealt with by having the soil dug up and transported off Long Island. B.N.L. has been aware, he said, that the area is contaminated, and now, he said, it was "my job to clean it up."

"This situation is truly disturbing because the proper investigatory steps were never taken to insure that the public was not in danger," said David Friedson, president of STAR. "The reason that STAR and Mr. Ramirez choose to bring these claims to light on the day that the new contractor officially takes over management of the facility is because we are hoping to see a new attitude at B.N.L."