Staff working for Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. lost a metal part they removed from a reactor at the Bruce nuclear power station in April, and didn't tell anyone until an employee from the station found it in June when it triggered the alarm on his radiation monitor.Bruce Power immediately notified the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission that one of its workers received a radiation dose, as is required under safety rules.
Critics say the incident highlights a serious loophole in Canada's nuclear regulations. AECL is a contractor at the site, refurbishing the aging Bruce 1 station, and isn't immediately required to divulge when it loses track of highly radioactive materials pulled from reactors.
The missing part – a piece of metal about 10 centimetres in size – came to light only because a worker inadvertently received a radiation dose, which is considered such a serious incident that it must be reported to regulators either “immediately” or by the end of the next business day.
Bruce Power was miffed by the incident, and has informed AECL that, from now on, it wants to be informed if radioactive material goes missing.
“We do expect that if material is unaccounted for, we want to be told about it,” said Steve Cannon, a Bruce spokesman. “We talked to AECL about that. … They understand that it's important.”
The missing piece was emitting high amounts of radiation, and would have given any worker holding it the maximum yearly allowed dose of this form of energy – feared because it can cause cancer – in only a few minutes.
But workers in the plant didn't come near the dangerous part because they handled it using remote-control devices, and the employee who made the discovery got only a chest X-ray type dose by quickly backing away.
The regulatory report filed by Bruce on June 24 indicates that AECL “became aware on April 23” that the piece was missing, but “they failed to notify” the station's radiation protection department. “The increased hazard would have existed from that time,” it said.
Greenpeace nuclear critic Shawn-Patrick Stensil said “it's amazing that you can lose a major radioactive component and not have an obligation to report it.”
He contended that the incident, which he said “shows a culture of secrecy,” will undermine AECL as it tries to sell new reactors in Ontario, where the government wants new atomic power plants built to meet future electricity needs.
Dale Coffin, a spokesman for Crown-owned AECL, played down the events, saying no one was harmed over the two-month period that the piece was missing because workers weren't in the area. Once it was found, the location, in the reactor vault, was safely cordoned off. “There is no requirement on our behalf to notify the CNSC because nobody was in there working,” Mr. Coffin said.
The Bruce nuclear station is located on Lake Huron near Kincardine, Ont.
The lost piece was known as a calandria tube insert ring. The regulatory report on the incident said no other rings are missing. “It has also been reinforced with staff that should any items that could significantly change radiological hazards be unaccounted for radiation protection staff are to be immediately notified,” it said.
'It feels like a sci-fi film' - accidents tarnish nuclear dream
The Guardian - SaturdayJuly 26-2008
French nuclear companies are hoping to play a central role in the government's plan to build a new generation of reactors. At home, however, the industry has been buffeted by a series of mishaps. Angelique Chrisafis reports from Bollène
For the past two weeks, Eymard, 41, and her children, 13 and seven, have had a phobia of taps. To wash up, they go out to the yard and fill a bowl from a specially delivered plastic tank of purified water on a fork-lift tractor. They carry the water up to the bathroom to wash. Even the dog drinks bottled water, and it is left out for the birds.
"I feel as if everything's constantly dirty," Eymard said, her hands deep in soapy lather scrubbing plates.
The view from the house over the fields is dominated by the nearby cooling towers of the Tricastin site, a nuclear power plant run by EDF, the company which is poised to buy British Energy and take control of most UK nuclear stations.
Next to the plant is a nuclear treatment centre run by a subsidiary of Areva, the nuclear group which hopes to design many of the new British reactors. Last month an accident at the treatment centre during a draining operation saw liquid containing untreated uranium overflow out of a faulty tank. About 75kg of uranium seeped into the ground and into the Gaffiere and Lauzon rivers which flow into the Rhône. Eymard's house is 100 metres from one of these streams.
Like a handful of rural homes near the nuclear site, hers is plumbed into the local groundwater from wells. For 20 years she has drunk from the tap. But after the incident there was a ban on drinking the groundwater, using it to water fields - as all local farmers do - or swimming or fishing in local lakes and streams. Since then, Eymard feels like she is in an episode of The Simpsons, in a Springfield where people's trust has been abused by haphazard mistakes. "It feels like a science fiction film where experts constantly come to examine and film the people who've been exposed."
At the centre for adults with learning disabilities where she works, some have seen her on the TV news and innocently asked for her autograph. At 10.30am on the dot, two men in green overalls from the nuclear site appear at her door to collect the daily sample of water from her tap to analyse it for uranium. Levels have fluctuated daily.
Even after the official ban was lifted this week and the families' urine samples tested normal, Eymard won't drink from the tap. "I always trusted that nuclear was totally secure. But now I wonder, have there been other accidents in the past we haven't been told about?"
The nuclear site at Bollène sits in a picturesque corner of Provence between the lavender fields and cypress trees that stretch north to the nougat capital of Montélimar and to the historic town of Avignon 30 miles to the south, which was hosting its famous theatre festival when the spillage occurred.
Until now most locals have accepted the plant as a risk-free part of everyday life in nuclear-dependent France. More than 80% of France's electricity is generated by the country's 58 nuclear reactors - the world's highest ratio. But the leak has shaken French trust in nuclear safety and embarrassed Nicolas Sarkozy as he crusades for a French-led world renaissance in atomic power.
The president wants to export French nuclear know-how around the world, including to Britain where nuclear power supplies 19% of electricity, and London and Paris are to cooperate on a new generation of nuclear power plants. Areva, 90% state-owned, is at the heart of foreign cooperation agreements not just with Europe but countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Algeria and Libya. Last year it clinched the biggest commercial nuclear power contract on record, worth €8bn (£6.3bn), to supply China with two reactors and provide nuclear fuel for nearly two decades.
Areva has been criticised by France's nuclear safety watchdog over the Tricastin leak for not adequately informing local authorities and for unsatisfactory measures and operational procedures. The leak rated at level one of the seven-stage scale of nuclear incidents.
It was detected on the night of July 7 but the town hall and locals who continued to drink water contaminated with uranium were not informed until the following afternoon. Areva's chief executive, Anne Lauvergeon, called the leak an "anomaly" which posed no danger to humans or the environment. The treatment plant has been shut and the subsidiary's director removed.
But in recent days there have been other, lesser incidents at nuclear sites. In Romans-sur-Isère, north of Tricastin, at another site run by an Areva subsidiary, officials discovered a burst underground pipe which had been broken for years and did not meet safety standards. A tiny amount of lightly enriched uranium leaked but not beyond the plant. This week, about 100 staff at Tricastin's nuclear reactor number four were contaminated by radioactive particles that escaped from a pipe. EDF described the contamination as "slight".
The French government has now ordered tests on the groundwater around all nuclear sites in France. The environment minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, said there were 86 level-one nuclear incidents in France last year and 114 in 2006.
People living near the Tricastin plant remain concerned. In basil and coriander fields farmed by the extended Eymard family not far from the nuclear site, part of the crop was ruined after wilting during the ban on using contaminated water. The herbs, which are sold to make frozen seasoning, have been tested for radioactivity and cleared.
Roger Eymard, 69, a retired farmer, now washes by pouring purified water into the shower fitting of his camper van parked in a stable. "Nuclear was progress and we wanted that. We thought people were competent. Now we ask, were there previous incidents we weren't told about?"
France's IRSN nuclear safety institute has pinpointed high levels of uranium in the groundwater that it said could not have been caused by the recent leak alone. A separate commission raised the possibility that this contamination could be linked to military nuclear waste at the Tricastin plant from 1964 to 1976.
The area's image has been so dented that the nearby Rhône Valley wine makers whose label is Coteaux du Tricastin want to change their name. In nearby Bollène, sales of bottled water have soared despite assurances that the tap water is unaffected. Some people have even asked chemists for iodine tablets, recommended for a nuclear emergency.
Not far from the nuclear site, Emilie Dubois, 61, sat by her luxury swimming pool framed by fig trees, poolside bar, shower and designer outdoor kitchen. But for two weeks the cover has been on as the family ordered tests on radioactivity levels in the pool water.
The day the emergency water ban was announced, more than 50 people swimming in a local lake were ordered out and fled. "It was as if there was a shark attack," one said.
Dubois was in her pool with her grandchildren when a town hall official arrived to tell her of a ban on watering with groundwater. He said he had orders not to give an explanation. She assumed it was a drought warning and got back in the pool. Only from television that night did the family learn of the leak. The pool, filled with local groundwater, was a potential contamination zone. It has now tested safe to swim in.
Her husband is a retired engineer from the plant and her sons work in the industry. "I've never questioned the safety of nuclear," she said. She has resumed watering her vegetable patch and ate freshly picked salad for lunch. "It's organic but it's been watered with the groundwater after the leak. Why would I eat anyone else's tomatoes that weren't organic? Although there are thoughts at the back of my mind as I'm eating."
Sarkozy recently announced that France will build a second new-generation nuclear reactor, a European pressurised water reactor or EPR. He said nuclear power was France's best answer to soaring energy prices and global warming. The Green party attacked the EPR as "useless, dangerous and expensive", saying: "France is becoming a nuclear showroom for Sarkozy the sales rep and Areva."
Not far from the stream that was contaminated from the Tricastin leak, Joel Bernard sat in his farmhouse tallying the loss to his carrots, radishes, turnips and cherries which couldn't be watered during the ban. "Until last week, it was paradise here," he said. "I don't want to return to the rural past. But something like this creates a kind of suspicion."
Deadly denial: Navajo miners in a different kind of Cold War
By Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Larry Martinez, who manages the Office of Navajo Uranium Workers, had organized the ceremony hoping to improve a working relationship that he described as "difficult and getting worse" between the Navajo and the labor department, which manages a federal program to compensate sick nuclear weapons workers.
Ten thousand Navajo men mined uranium for America's atomic bombs. The U.S. government knew early on that uranium could cause lung damage. But instead of warning the Navajo miners, the government decided to study what happened to them.
Now those who survived and the families of those who didn't are having trouble proving that they qualify for compensation.
"I'd like to have you understand this ceremony is going to create this coordination," Martinez said in English during the mostly Navajo-language ceremony. "We're all in this together, to make sure the Cold War patriot, the person who sacrificed his health to protect his country, is taken care of. When you leave here, you'll be part of what happened here."
But less than two hours after the ceremony, the spirit of cooperation appeared to have worn off.
At a public meeting to explain the benefits of the compensation program to sick Navajo uranium workers, the lead DOL official ejected some of the people he had just participated with in the cooperation ceremony.
Booted out were representatives of an in-home health care company from Denver authorized to provide care for gravely sick uranium workers.
Martinez was seething.
"Did that ceremony mean nothing to them?" the usually calm Martinez said.
Wall of opposition
Most of the uranium workers whom Martinez helps are by law supposed to be compensated automatically through a program created eight years ago. It compensates workers who sacrificed their health, and sometimes their lives, as they labored amid highly toxic and top-secret materials used to build nuclear weapons.
Many of the Navajo were compensated $100,000 by a previous program created in 1990 and were to be automatically eligible for the new one, so their total benefits would rise to the current standards.
Instead, the Navajos have joined other former nuclear workers in fighting a different cold war, this time against their own government.
A Rocky Mountain News investigation found that the compensation program has become so complex and adversarial that even claims that by law were to be automatically approved the Navajo being a striking example are being stonewalled.
Only one in four sick workers or their survivors has been compensated, while millions of tax dollars have been spent redoing faulty work, including repeatedly rewriting technical reports, re-examining old exposure records that workers say are wrong and reopening denied claims only to deny them again.
Meanwhile, top officials running the compensation program have collected tens of thousands of dollars each in bonuses. In all, program officials have been given more then $3.2 million in bonuses since the program began. That includes $116,000 in bonuses for Shelby Hallmark, the program's top official.
Sick workers believe that their government is intentionally thwarting them. They are not alone.
"It's an ideological issue," said Bill Richardson, the former energy secretary who persuaded the Clinton administration to enact the compensation program. "When the Bush administration came in, they saw this as an entitlement program they didn't believe in. They had to comply with it, but they did so by putting up barriers so it wouldn't work properly."
A White House spokesman declined to comment, saying that the labor department would speak for the administration.
While DOL didn't respond to the Rocky's inquiries, it sent a statement responding to Richardson: "The Department of Labor has paid out nearly $4 billion dollars to energy worker claimants, well in excess of estimates provided by then-Secretary Richardson's Department of Energy, which led to the official Congressional Budget Office report. In just eight years, DOL has already issued payments to almost three times as many workers and their families (6,500 vs 15,000) as the CBO estimated would be paid in ten years. We remain committed to making sure that energy workers receive the compensation to which they are entitled."
The DOL's Web site says that more that 42,000 claims have been paid. The department did not respond to questions about the discrepancy between 15,000 paid versus 42,000.
Counting the cost
The controversial method of determining which workers deserve compensation has been fraught with problems, but program officials have clung to the process. Government scientists at the National Institute for Occupation Safety and Health continually change the way they estimate how much radiation workers absorbed.
More than two thirds of these estimates involving more than 12,000 sick Cold War veterans have had to be reviewed or completely reworked because of changes in the methods scientists say will give the best estimates. And because the scientific understanding of how toxic substances cause disease continues to evolve, virtually no case can ever be closed for good.
Larry Elliott, who directs dose reconstruction at NIOSH, declined to say how much each of nearly 18,000 dose reconstructions cost taxpayers. But since the program began, his office has spent more than $280 million in administrative costs.
Too much of that has been wasted, said U.S. Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., cousin to Colorado Congressman Mark Udall.
"Nothing could be more irresponsible than to spend taxpayer dollars fighting claimants rather than compensating them," Tom Udall said. "When claimants are forced to submit to unnecessary tests or when NIOSH spends time and resources hunting for records that simply don't exist taxpayer money is wasted and sick workers are forced to bear additional suffering."
One key government contractor was paid for completion of essential reports, and got paid more when those reports proved faulty and had to be fixed.
One of the key documents used in the dose reconstruction is called a site profile. This report attempts to list the kinds of toxic exposures workers in different jobs at different sites might have encountered. But not one of the site profiles for any of the major weapons sites was correct the first time, the Rocky found in reviewing various versions of the reports.
A big part of NIOSH's administrative expense went to Oak Ridge Associated Universities, the Tennessee-based consortium that won the original $70 million contract to do the profiles and estimate worker radiation doses. As of last year, the contract, still going after nine extensions that include new dose reconstruction work, had nearly tripled to $200 million.
As one result, the administrative costs for the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program are 15 times higher than similar programs.
While the government declined to detail its spending in response to the Rocky's questions, labor department officials acknowledged earlier this year that administrative costs for the program reach about 33 percent of its payments to claimants.
That is a stunning figure for administrative costs when compared with the 2 percent for a sister program that compensates uranium miners and people exposed to atomic bomb testing. Administrative costs for Social Security Disability Insurance are about 2.5 percent of payments.
Officials say part of the reason is that the nuclear workers program is much more complex than the other compensation programs. But that, says Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., whose district includes the former Rocky Flats weapons site near Denver, is exactly the problem.
"It's putting the onus and the burden on the people who are already carrying significant burdens," Udall said. "I think it's an outrage."
Double dose of rejection
DOL has had to reopen thousands of cases it had already denied, citing changes in the scientific methods it uses to determine who receives compensation.
Government scientists discovered, for example, that Rocky Flats contained a previously unknown kind of plutonium "Super-S" that had not been monitored or studied. They spent two years working on a scientific method to estimate the radiation wallop that the Super-S might have given Flats workers. Some were notified by letter that their denials were being overturned and their cases reconsidered.
But many former workers found their new dose estimates lower than before.
Shelby Hallmark, the labor department executive who oversees the program, predicted workers' dismay with these so-called reworks earlier this year.
"More people are going to go back through reworks and get a second denial," he said. "It's not going to be pleasant for these folks."
Hallmark knew even then that the reworks were unlikely to result in more workers being compensated. That is because the original method used more claimant-friendly assumptions in estimating radiation doses. But the newer methods are more exact, Hallmark said.
The original estimates were "claimant-favorable ... overestimates," said Larry Elliott, who oversees the work at NIOSH.
But the original estimates apparently weren't favorable to all claimants. Elliott acknowledged some reworks came back higher than the original "overestimates."
The constantly changing methods have not benefited most workers, Mark Udall said, but the changes have benefited the contractors.
"It keeps those folks employed," Udall said.
Questions pile up
Among all of the complicated claims of illness related to half a century of nuclear weapons production, two kinds were supposed to be slam-dunks. If you were a uranium worker compensated in an earlier program, or a beryllium worker or uranium worker with lung damage, your claim was supposed to slide right through the system.
But that isn't happening because laws and rules are not being followed.
A 90-year-old Navajo woman who lost her uranium miner husband is still waiting for federal compensation from the new program, even though the law says that compensation should be automatic.
A 48-year-old beryllium worker tried for five years to get compensation that was supposed to be automatic, given his diagnosed lung disease.
An 86-year-old uranium miner is too sick to complete the breathing test required to prove that he qualifies for compensation.
But some workers never even make it into the system to be considered. DOL calls these "non-covered" applications because they failed to prove the employee worked at one of the more than 300 covered sites or had one of some two-dozen covered illnesses.
But the Rocky found evidence that the failure to prove information was sometimes the labor department's fault. For example, a uranium miner in New Mexico was rejected because DOL said he didn't submit medical records to prove his illness. But Jarvina Lee, a caseworker at the Navajo office of uranium miners in Shiprock, N.M., said she personally had sent 1,600 pages of medical records to DOL's Denver office on behalf of the worker.
DOL eventually found the box of records six months later at its Seattle office, after the worker had died.
"I don't know how someone could lose 1,600 pages of medical records," Lee said. "But we have had lots of horror stories like that."
The federal compensation program is so difficult to navigate for sick workers or their survivors that both the Navajo Nation and the state of New Mexico have established offices to help claimants file for their benefits.
"It's a sham," Richardson, the former Energy Secretary who is now governor of New Mexico, said of the program. "It's an insult to our workers, and it's wrong."
Vera Begay lives in a home on the Navajo reservation in eastern Arizona that was made from smooth, square stones her husband brought home from the uranium mines. The mines were so close by that blasted rock sometimes rained down on the three-room house, which even now is slightly radioactive.
Begay's husband died of lung cancer 24 years ago. She was given a "compassionate payment" for his lost life years ago, through the earlier program specifically for miners. That should have made her automatically eligible for additional compensation.
But the 90-year-old Begay whose grandson is Martinez, the man who oversees the Navajo Uranium Workers office has been waiting three years.
"I don't know why," Begay said in English, though she speaks mostly in Navajo.
Even Martinez is not sure why his grandmother has not received the compensation.
"She should already have been paid," he said.
Talk of reform so far just talk
Congress has the authority to change the compensation program, but so far, its efforts to do so haven't had much impact. A series of hearings in 2006 and 2007 resulted in little change. At least a dozen bills are pending that would improve the compensation program, but none has gone anywhere. There is talk of holding more hearings and submitting more bills to reform the law.
"The bottom line is we want to protect and help the most needy and most deserving folks," said U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo. "I think we have to continue to push on this."
U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., said he is working on new legislation to relieve the workers' plight.
"More and more evidence is surfacing that former workers have had their claims lost or ignored, that claims examiners were encouraged to deny claims, and that bureaucratic red tape is tying the program in knots," Salazar said.
"This is an absolutely unacceptable way to treat those who have sacrificed for our country."