ARTICLE - "Sandia's Stewardship Scorcher "

By Blake Likins
Tribune reporter

"Danger" signs on the chain-link fence around a deceptively placid-looking 2.6 acres at Sandia National Laboratories warn of invisible hazards beneath the sandy soil.
Buried in Technical Area 3's Mixed Waste Landfill, about six miles from Downtown, is 30 years' accumulation of "mixed waste" -- the radioactive and poisonous
trash generated by the lab's activities during and after the Cold War.
Details on the nature of some of that waste are also buried -- in secrecy because the
contents contain information sensitive to national security.
The 100,000 cubic feet of hazardous throw-outs include 271,000
gallons of coolant from a nuclear reactor -- enough to fill about 15 in-ground residential swimming pools-- along with radioactive metals, toxic metals, solvents and pieces of equipment contaminated by tests on nuclear weapons components. The vacant ground that caps the disposal site has become a collision course for opinions on the degree of danger its contents represent to the public and what method is best for dealing with them. Even the scientific analysis that has been done has not helped those involved in the conflict to reach consensus. Rather than settling the dispute, the data have fueled more arguments. The authorities who control the site, Sandia Labs and the Department of Energy, want the New Mexico Environment Department to approve their proposal to cap the landfill with more soil and monitor it indefinitely for migration of the waste into the soil and water. "Most of the stuff in the landfill is innocuous," said John Gould, environmental program manager for the Department of Energy's Kirtland area office. But opponents argue the landfill needs to be opened and cleaned now to permanently guard against future contamination risks to the city's groundwater and environment. Sandia is responsible for 200 waste sites on Kirtland Air Force Base. All are being cleaned up except the Mixed-Waste Landfill. Gould says excavating and removing the waste from the landfill would be too expensive and would expose workers to unnecessary radiation hazard. Sandia estimates the cost of clean-up at $30 million. Gould says the labs' plan is to cap the landfill with a 3-foot cover of earth, monitor it and let time naturally bring radioactivity down to safe levels -- a strategy known as long-term stewardship. Critics of the plan say this isn't stewardship, but burdening future generations with the mess. They say that if the uranium, plutonium and tritium in the dump remains untouched, it could pose a threat to public health far into the future. "This is our homeland," said Lauro Silva, a member of the Sandia Labs Citizens Advisory Board and South Valley resident. "We believe we have a responsibility to take care of the land."

Dig it up, or leave it lie?

Long-term stewardship of hazardous waste sites, which is becoming a trend across the country, is the passive opposite of the conventional, active approach of excavating dumps and removing contaminated soil. But Sandia officials say stewardship makes sense at its Mixed Waste Landfill. "It's important for people to know that in 40 or 50 years people will make decisions, and at that point decide what to do with (the Mixed Waste Landfill)," said Sandia Labs' Dick Fate, the project manager for the long-term stewardship effort for the landfill. Opponents of the stewardship approach say it's not feasible for the DOE to monitor the site for an indefinite amount of time. They say any number of things could go wrong, including development, flooding or earthquakes. The critics believe there is no reason to wait and see what Mother Nature does. "According to Sandia's own records, Cobalt-60 (the most dangerous material in the landfill) will decay to baseline levels by 2014," said Sue Dayton, former Sandia Citizens Advisory Board member. "If danger to workers was really an issue, why isn't (Sandia) discussing cleanup in 2014?" The answer, she says, is money. Sandia's annual environmental cleanup budget for the entire lab operation is about $20 million according to Gould -- $10 million less than its estimate of what it would cost to clean up just the one site. Stewardship, depending on the amount of testing done, is projected to cost around $120,000 per year. Gould says another problem in moving the waste is: where to put it. But opponents point to numerous other nuclear waste sites that have been cleaned up in the past -- many of whose contents have been moved to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad. DOE, critics claim, is afraid of what it may uncover if it digs up the landfill.

Uncovering the odds

Crisscrossing the landfill are seven trenches, each 180 feet long and 20 feet wide. There also are 40 smaller pits, the contents of which are listed as "classified." Inside the trenches are explosive device components, containers used to hold nuclear material and cleanup items such as mop heads, gloves and clothing. Electronics, television cameras and even a tractor-trailer are also buried there. The landfill was first created in 1958. Of the 2.6-acre landfill, one-sixth of an acre is classified, and only a select few Department of Energy officials and Sandia employees are privy to those records. The pit is unlined, meaning that containers of waste were placed directly into the soil. Sandia quit using the landfill in 1989 as the Cold War wound down and national environmental consciousness increased. The major disagreement now lies in whether the waste poses a threat to the community. Miles Nelson, a member of Sandia Labs' Citizens Advisory Board and a local physician, said the radioactive cancer-causing metals will be dangerous for a long time -- "much longer than the DOE will remain vigilant." Sandia scientists maintain the nuclear waste in the landfill exists in low levels, and what is now "hot" will have mostly decayed to safe levels by 2014. Even if the waste contained in the landfill were to start leaking out of its containers and into the ground today, it couldn't travel well through the sandy soil and therefore would not be a major threat, according to Bill Rhodes, health physicist and manager of the radiation protection program at Sandia Labs. "Rocks and soil tend to filter stuff out," he said.

Science as a guessing game

The labs' activities are watched over by a Citizens Advisory Board, founded in the early 1990s by Sandia. It is made up of unaffiliated members of the community and Department of Energy and Sandia employees. The board is recommending a course of action to Sandia and DOE for the Mixed Waste Landfill and other contaminated sites. But the board itself is divided on the issue. The chasms resulted in the formation of a splinter organization, the Citizens Action to Clean Up Albuquerque's Nuclear Waste Dump. Spearheaded by the husband-and-wife team of Nelson and Sue Dayton, the splinter group is committed to the complete excavation and cleanup of the landfill. Since no consensus could be reached within the advisory board, the group hired an independent investigator to look at the contents of the landfill and recommend how best to deal with the waste. The investigator, Dr. Mark Baskaran, a geologist from Wayne State University in Detroit, conducted his analysis and presented his work to board members. Baskaran did not take any of his own samples -- he used the data provided by Sandia to compare the ratios of different radioactive isotopes. If the ratios differed from their natural values, he concluded there were man-made sources of radioactivity present. The results of his research only heightened the controversy of the issue. From his analysis of the data provided by Sandia officials, Baskaran reported:

Groundwater has already been contaminated with plutonium, strontium, uranium and tritium.

Plutonium in the air above the landfill is not global fallout, but is coming from either the landfill or other source.

Uranium that has reached groundwater is not naturally occurring, but is man-made contamination.

"If the data is right, then clearly I can say that there is contamination," Baskaran said. Sandia officials say that their data were not intended for the type of high-precision analysis Baskaran did and therefore his results are misleading.

The simple test solution

The solution seems simple: conduct a scientific investigation of the landfill, and then estimate the dangers it may pose to the community. Yet what one person calls science, another calls bunk. The first problem arises in taking an inventory of the landfill: Sandia managers say its contents are too dangerous to open up and count. Instead, the inventory is based on records that former workers kept, as well as interviews with scientists involved in the dumping 40 years ago. Critics don't trust the inventory method and believe there is more buried in the landfill than the records show. Another problem: how best to test the soil, air, and water for contamination. To date, testing has produced contradictory results. Sandia scientists have five monitoring wells and have bored 30 holes around the landfill to monitor the movement of any waste. Within each soil column, they took samples at intervals down to 550 feet, where groundwater is found. In one boring, low levels of plutonium contamination turned up at every depth interval, Gould said. Sandia solicited a second set of tests on the same soil samples: one it examined, and another sent to the New Mexico Environment Department. This time, the Sandia data again showed contamination, but the state's data showed no contamination. "That is bad science," said Dayton. But Gould defended the process, saying that multiple sampling is a standard procedure. "Any time you get a 'hit,' the first thing you do is resample it," he said. The controversial soil samples have since been thrown out and cannot be retested to settle the contamination question. "In retrospect, we should have held on to the core sample" and done more rigorous testing to help substantiate the conclusion that there is no contamination, Dick Fate, project manager for the long-term stewardship effort for the landfill, said. "It is possible that there are fluids that have been dumped in there that we don't know about," said Baskaran -- he did not have access to the classified records. Those fluids could have acted as a transport mechanism to carry waste down through the ground, he said. However, according to Fate, the radioactive component of the pits' contents was given to both Baskaran and the state Environment Department. What was left out were the shape and size of the classified weapons components -- details irrelevant to assessing the dangers they may pose, he said. He also said that one state Environment Department employee who did have security clearance was shown the classified records, and was satisfied the Department of Energy's unclassified records were sufficient for risk assessment. The 271,000 gallons of reactant coolant water, contaminated with tritium (an isotope of hydrogen), were dumped directly into the soil bottom of the landfill over a 30-day period in 1967. That contaminated coolant was detected 120 feet below the landfill, and 100 feet beyond the landfill's fence in 1990. Gould says that in follow-up tests in 1995, the tritium hadn't moved, and, therefore, will not move in the future. Fran Nimick, an environmental manager at Sandia, contends that there is no evidence for unnatural levels of tritium, plutonium, or uranium in the groundwater, either. Asked about the disparity between the two conclusions, he said: "Baskaran could've done a better job," Nimick said. "The way he wrote it up, it looks like he didn't do a thorough analysis." Baskaran said his critics "just don't understand," and recommended Sandia Labs send the data to the National Academy of Science for peer review. "The geochemists will tear them apart if they continue to talk this kind of nonsense," he said.

More data or more confusion?

At a Citizens Advisory Board meetings, members suggested soliciting an independent review of the landfill by the University of New Mexico, the National Academy of Sciences or the National Science Foundation. "We are talking about $10,000 to $15,000 to say once and for all whether or not there is any contamination," Baskaran says. Even members of the Energy Department, who trust their own analysis, think that this may be the best way to deal with the controversy. "No, I don't think we need more data. It's very clear that our data says there is no contamination under the MWL," said Fate. "It's not a matter of quality of data, but I do acknowledge citizens are very interested and I acknowledge the mystery behind nuclear waste," he added. "Whether needed or not, it might be appropriate to do sampling to a much higher precision level. The problem is that it will be very expensive -- it's not a trivial thing." Sandia scientists estimate it will cost around $600,000 to redrill new holes. It may have to be done just to calm people down, according to Gould. "The CAB pays very close attention; they are our conscience," Fate said. "I think we've bent over backwards, and that's why (the project) is taking so long."

Satisfying the citizenry

The Citizens Advisory Board will submit its recommendation to Sandia Labs within the next few weeks. The New Mexico Environment Department will then decide whether or not to accept Sandia's stewardship proposal, but it will be months before the state comes to a final decision on the landfill. John Keeling, head of management program permits at the state Environment Department, said getting a permit is a "long, drawn-out process" of reviews, petitioning and then public agreement. He said public opinion is a "big benefit." "Often we feel powerless to influence events when powerful agencies have vested interests," Nelson said in a written statement. "But you are not powerless, and you must consider alternatives that are in the best interest of your community, family, and. . . generations to come."