Nuclear Pros And Cons
The lines have been drawn in the battle over Brookhaven National Laboratory.
The newly formed Island Citizens Action Network, with the international activist Dr. Helen Caldicott in the lead, is pushing to shut down the lab's two nuclear reactors, and for accelerated cleanup of the Superfund site there.
Lab scientists have begun their own campaign, to convince the public that radioactive releases from the lab into the air, groundwater, and the Peconic River estuary system pose "small" risk to surrounding communities when measured against Federal standards, and to demonstrate that the lab provides thousands of jobs and is of benefit to society through its medical, industrial, and defense research.
Dueling Forums
Dueling forums held this month to coax the public over to one side or the other were held by lab officials on Nov. 9 at Southampton College and by ICAN on Sunday at Guild Hall in East Hampton. The forums sparked debate about the level of radioactivity and the cancer rate in eastern Suffolk - and whether there is any link between them.
The lab is owned by the United States Department of Energy, has about 3,300 employees, and is managed by an association of universities that send scientists and students to do research there.
The 5,265-acre site has been a national facility for nearly a half-century. It is in the Long Island pine barrens, over a primary aquifer, and is about 30 miles west of the Southampton Town line.
Two Reactors
The largest of its two nuclear reactors is a 60-megawatt high-flux beam reactor, which was built in 1965 for research. It has been running at half capacity since about the time of the Chernobyl meltdown in the former Soviet Union.
The other reactor is a three-megawatt one built in 1959. It produces radioactive isotopes mostly for cancer treatment and research. A third 20-megawatt reactor was decommissioned in 1968.
About 700,000 gallons of liquid waste is released every day from the sewage plant at the lab. It percolates into the groundwater, then flows underground toward the Peconic system.
The flow is monitored at two places on lab property and in four other spots up to a half-mile away. It contains tritium from the larger reactor's cooling system. The discharge also picks up cesium-137 and strontium-90 left in the conduits from years past, lab officials said.
Other Wastes
Other radioactive wastes include up to 10,000 cubic feet a year of exposed metal scraps, beakers, coveralls, and more, and three-tenths of a pound of plutonium, a byproduct of uranium fission in the larger reactor. The wastes all are shipped to Federal storage areas on the Savannah River or in Idaho, said Mona Rowe, the head of B.N.L.'s public relations.
The grounds of the lab were declared a Federal Superfund site in 1989 due to chemical and radioactive contamination of groundwater and soil. One lab administrator said it was hoped the designation would mean the lab would have help in cleaning up "some of the issues our past practices developed."
$1 Billion Suit
Recently, residents of surrounding neighborhoods brought suit against the lab for $1 billion, demanding that it pay to extend public water to houses in the path of the underground plume of contamination, specifically in Manorville, as well as to pay for hook-ups where wells were contaminated.
"There is no safe level of radiation. . . . You are playing Russian roulette," Dr. Caldicott, a founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, told the audience at Guild Hall Sunday.
She said that tritium has a 12.3-year half-life and that it takes 20 half-lives, or 246 years, for it to become non-toxic. She said it could take from five to 20 years to develop cancer from radiation exposure and that survivors of the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki started showing urinary tract cancer 45 years after they were irradiated.
Strontium-90
Among lab scientists in the audience, Gary Schroeder, a health physicist, was the most vocal of the group, which attempted to debunk the assertion by Dr. Jay Gould, an epidemiologist who lives in East Hampton, and others on Sunday's panel that contamination from the lab has caused a higher cancer rate in nearby communities than the national average. Lab scientists were outnumbered by opponents of nuclear power, however.
Mr. Schroeder argued that the amounts of strontium-90 found in drinking water wells in neighborhoods around the lab, described by Dr. Gould as three picocuries of strontium-90 per liter, were insignificant.
"The results were less than three picocuries. That means nothing was found," Mr. Schroeder said.
Two weeks before, Jean Howard, an oncologist who is head of the lab's medical department, told the Southampton College audience that genetic predisposition, lifestyle, and economic status play a more significant role in the development of breast cancer than exposure, and that "there is no increase in cancer risk when exposures [to radioactivity] are below 10,000 millirems."
By comparison, a chest X-ray gives a 50-millirem dose, a mammogram gives a 100-millirem dose, and a person who stood on the perimeter of the lab for a year would receive just one millirem, said Dr. Howard.
She said breast cancer was spreading, but that the numbers were up mostly due to early detection. The national rate for 1980 was 85.2 per 100,000 and in 1992 it was 110.6 per 100,000, she pointed out.
Statistics An Issue
The leaders of ICAN contend that any risk to humans and wildlife is unacceptable, and point to Dr. Gould's statistics that show a jump in the cancer rate from 1-in-8 across Long Island to 1-in-6 around the lab. Their conclusion is that the reactors at the lab should be shut down immediately.
Dr. Gould was on the dais at Guild Hall and also asked questions from the audience at the earlier South amp ton forum. At the college, he demanded that lab administrators explain why death from breast cancer has increased 40 percent in Suffolk since 1950 while it has increased nationwide by just 1 percent.
Clearly annoyed, W. Robert Casey, who heads the Safety and Environmental Protection Division of the lab, said he and Dr. Gould had gone head-to-head over these and other figures before, and he called them deliberately misleading.
College Panel
"What [Dr. Gould] is asking you to do is disregard every other risk factor. . . . It just doesn't add up," said Dr. Casey.
The Nov. 9 panel was hosted by the college's World Affairs Council, which rejected ICAN's demands for room on the stage that afternoon. The college later offered the lab's opponents a forum of its own, but the offer was declined.
Bill Smith, the head of Fish Unlimited, said afterward that his group had considered picketing outside the college auditorium but instead decided to focus on the Guild Hall forum.
In addition to Dr. Howard and Dr. Casey, M. Sue Davis, the associate director for reactor safety and security, spoke for the lab.
Want No Risk
Lorna Salzman, who had been a write-in candidate of the Peconic Green Party in the just-concluded Congressional race, principally on the issue of Brookhaven, challenged the lab experts' claims that there was no harm from periodic releases of nuclear-contaminated water into the air and Peconic River.
"Didn't you really mean to say that there's been no observable harm?" she asked.
"We must be cautious about exposure even to very low doses. . . . We must assume there is some risk," said Dr. Casey. However, he added, "In my judgment, there has been no harm."
Cancer Victim
Dr. Howard rejected a report on cancer rates in the Soviet Union after the Chernobyl meltdown, which suggested the immune systems of children and seniors had been particularly harmed. The Chernobyl reactor may have been "leaking large amounts of radiation long before the accident," and the data on exposure "may have been underestimated," she said.
At Guild Hall, John Wolfe of East Yaphank stood from the audience to say he has cancer and lives just on the other side of the Long Island Expressway from the lab. He said an analysis of his hair showed 3 parts per million of strontium-90.
"How did I get this?" he asked. There was no answer.
Benefits Reiterated
Lab scientists said at both forums that benefits from the lab's research are great. Discoveries in physics there have led to four Nobel prizes, and new technologies have been developed for molecular biology and environmental science. Other advances include treatments for Parkinson's disease and cancer, new noninvasive diagnostic techniques, and better sponges for cleaning up oil spills. All were outlined on Nov. 9 by Dr. Davis.
"People fear the technology because the history is not good. . . . The record is pretty poor," said Roger Snyder of the Long Island SHAD Alliance.
"What you are really asking is whether this nation wants to give up being in the forefront. Will Long Island continue to support a national program? Does it benefit Long Island?" responded Dr. Davis.
Completely Contaminated?
Mr. Smith, whose organization was instrumental in killing a proposed increase in the lab's sewage discharge, said the tritium levels in the Peconic Bay estuary system were 100 times higher than in the Hudson River, and that radioactivity there is suspected of causing brown tide.
"The bottom line is that if it weren't for [the reactors] there would be no detectable levels. . . . You have completely contaminated the East End," Mr. Smith charged. The lab representatives again argued that the levels were too low to cause concern.
He and William J. Weida, an economics professor from Colorado State and a former Pentagon consultant on the conversion of nuclear weapons, contended the Peconic estuary system was the region's best economic resource because of its place in tourism, commercial fishing, transportation, and other activities.
They charged that signs of tritium, cesium, and strontium in the water, shellfish, and finfish, though within the Federal standards, posed a serious economic and health risk.
Dr. Weida has prepared a 19-page report on nonnuclear projects that Brookhaven National Laboratory could undertake if its reactors were to be shut down. Among them are developing better methods of environmental cleanup, alternative energy sources, low-cost housing construction, and recycling. All, he said, would be of economic benefit to the Island.