John Upton Gas pipeline safety San Francisco Profiles Bay Bridge eyebar fix Hetch Hetchy series Earthquake anniversary Cosco Busan oil spill Radioactive air pollution→ johnupton@gmail.com latest at baycitizen.org			Air pollution, radioactive dust from proposed weapons tests In August 2008, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory withdrew the permit application outlined in the following articles. Dust up  original / top By John Upton Tracy Press, Apr. 21, 2007 Analysis of an air pollution permit application filed two weeks ago shows that tons of radioactive depleted uranium and other toxic heavy metals could be blown up in outdoor military test blasts near Tracy. Yearly, 20 explosions could each vaporize 220 pounds of depleted uranium at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Site 300 testing ground, off Corral Hollow Road in the San Joaquin Valley air basin. Lawrence Livermore has applied to detonate more than 4 tons a year of depleted uranium on outdoor gravel-lined Site 300 blast tables. The lab already conducts 60 to 100 smaller test blasts annually in which an unstated amount of depleted uranium is used "routinely," according to a February letter sent to Tracy homes by Site 300's manager. Lab officials this week said they have no immediate plans to detonate much of the material listed in the permit application, including 20 grams annually of radioactive tritium, 1,450 pounds of lead and 1.3 tons of corrosive lithium hydroxide, a common ingredient in batteries. Quantities of materials listed in the permit application were based on "back-calculations" of doses allowed by the Environmental Protection Agency outside Site 300's border, according to Mike Dunning from the lab's nuclear weapons program. The lab applied for the highest limits possible to save time and money on later permit amendments and additions, Dunning said. The executive director of lab watchdog Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, Marylia Kelley, described as "unrealistic" the lab's assumption that just 9 percent - or up to 720 pounds per year - of the uranium that could be blown up outdoors at Site 300 would be light enough for the wind to carry it away from the 7,000-acre weapons testing site. Lab spokeswoman Lynda Seaver said the rest - as much as 7,300 pounds annually - would settle on the ground at the 50-year-old site, which is already listed by the EPA as one of the nation's most-polluted pieces of land. Depleted uranium has advantages in military use, but its health effects are disputed. Some blame it for causing debilitating wartime illnesses, while others argue its radioactivity is so weak that it's harmless. Depleted uranium is used in munitions because it's twice as heavy as lead and because it has characteristics that allow it to penetrate tank and other armor and then explode, according to Richard Muller, a Berkeley-based physicist. Muller, after a 34-year career, resigned last year from the 47-year-old JASON science and technology advisory group, which is sponsored by federal intelligence, energy and defense agencies. "They make a hollow region in the explosive and they coat that with depleted uranium," Muller said. "When they set off the explosive, the depleted uranium is pushed into the empty space at high speed, where it goes forward with enormous velocity. "They don't use it for the radioactivity - the radioactivity is just a little bit of a pain in the neck. Depleted uranium is not terribly radioactive." Depleted uranium is used in American armor as well as grenades, bombs and armor-piercing bullets. U.S. forces have used it in both Iraq wars. Army munitions director Col. Jim Naughton in a 2003 press briefing on depleted uranium said the powerful bomb material gives the U.S. military a big advantage on the battlefield. "The Iraqis tell us, 'Terrible things happened to our people because you used it last time,'" Naughton said. "Why do they want it to go away? They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them." A 2002 report commissioned by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which summarized other studies, blamed the hundreds of tons of depleted uranium used in Iraq for the debilitating and widespread Gulf War syndrome, for a four- to six-fold increase in Iraqi birth defects after the first Gulf War and for a seven- to 10-fold increase in Iraqi cancer rates. Specific individual deaths and serious illnesses were linked in the report to inhaled depleted uranium, which is toxic and emits low-level radioactivity for the average three to four years that it takes to leave the lungs, according to the report. "The users of depleted uranium have tried to keep the effects of depleted uranium secret," wrote report author Y.K.J. Yeung Sik Yuen. According to a December letter to the Tracy Press editor signed by Lawrence Livermore health physicist Gary Mansfield, the health effects of depleted uranium are negligible. "A key issue is that the health effects, if any, of a substance depend not on whether any of the substance is inhaled or ingested, but on how much of the substance is taken into the body," Mansfield wrote. "Because it is so weakly radioactive, it is very difficult to take enough depleted uranium into your body to cause any harm." The Bush administration last month invited the $1.7 billion-a-year Department of Energy weapons lab, which will be partly managed by military contractors starting later this year, to design a new generation of atomic warheads. Lab officials have denied that their San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District permit application is linked to that mission. Developer, activist appeal bomb testing permit  original / top By John Upton Tracy Press, Dec. 13, 2007 The developer of the Tracy Hills project and a local shoe-shop owner have filed objections to planned explosives tests expected to contain depleted uranium at Site 300. Site 300 operators refused this week to assure the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District that radioactive material would be kept out of the planned blasts, which may be up to more than three times the size of any other local test explosion in at least 13 years. The refusal prompted Sarvey Shoes owner Bob Sarvey to appeal an air district permit issued that was issued Nov. 13 to allow the blasts. "I'll probably lose, as usual," Sarvey said, "but I've got to give it a chance, because I don't want radiation blown all over Tracy." Wind blows from Site 300 over the city of Tracy 45 percent of the time, according to a 1994 report commissioned by Site 300 operators. Radioactive material isn't regulated by the air district, but California law commits public agencies to study the environmental impacts of projects they approve. Sarvey, in a letter to the air district, accused Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory of filing a misleading permit application because it said Site 300 is at a remote location 10 miles from the city. Tracy's city limits were moved within a mile of Site 300 during the 1990s real estate boom to accommodate the 5,500-home Tracy Hills project. A hill separates Site 300 from the planned homes, the construction of which has been delayed, in part, by the city's slow-growth law. Tracy Hills LLC, which is owned by Angelo Tsakopoulos' AKT Investments, called for a hearing to appeal the permit, in part because of concerns about noise and emissions. Sarvey's letter said the district failed to consider health impacts from radioactive material or from other explosive tests. The letter also said the district failed to consider noise impacts on residents or the impacts on endangered species. But Sarvey said in the letter that he had yet to thoroughly review the lab's permit application or engineering analysis, because the district failed to warn locals about it. Sarvey said he first learned of the permit through a Tracy Press article, published last week just two business days before the cut-off date for appeals. Air district permit director Dave Warner said the permit allows the lab to emit up to 1,440 pounds of particulate matter up to 10 microns in diameter per year - well below the 20,000-pound limit that requires public notification. A Lawrence Livermore spokeswoman defended the lab against charges by Sarvey and Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment that it had been secretive about the planned blasts. "We are not bound to do a public notice for every permit we request," Lynda Seaver said by e-mail. "We worked directly with the local air quality board and our various regulators." Seaver pointed to the lab's environmental impact statement to show that the public had been told of the planned blasts. A 794-page preliminary report published in February 2004 stated on a table on Page 338 that 350-pound blasts would be the largest blasts possible at the site. But the report didn't say this would represent an increase relative to existing tests, which have been capped at 100 pounds by air district rules since the district was formed in 1992. The table was repeated in the final report published 13 months later, and 1,429 pages of appendices mentioned the 350-pound limit four times. The limit was not mentioned in the 50-plus page summaries of the preliminary or final reports. The lab held community meetings to discuss the report, but no written public comments mentioned the limit. The draft and final reports did not state that energy in outdoor blasts could increase eight-fold annually to the equivalent of 8,000 pounds of TNT, as allowed under the new permit. An air district board is expected to consider the appeals of Tracy Hills and Sarvey at its Jan. 3 meeting in Modesto. San Joaquin County Supervisor Jack Sieglock is the only air district board member from this county. All 11 board members hold elected positions with county and city governments. The lab spokewoman said the planned explosions would not be nuclear explosions. She said there has never been a nuclear weapons test at Site 300. "The uranium used in any Site 300 test is depleted and, therefore, can never achieve fission," Seaver said. "The same is true of the tritium. The 300-pound tests will not contain tritium." Seaver said the majority of outdoor tests at Site 300 would be 100 pounds or smaller. Bigger bombs, more explosives  original / top By John Upton Tracy Press, Dec. 7, 2007 Outdoor explosions planned for Site 300 next to Tracy will be three times more powerful than any other local test explosion since before 1992, and a new permit will allow the energy in outdoor explosions to increase from the equivalent of 1,000 pounds of TNT every year to 8,000 pounds. Gordon Krauter, who works at Site 300's indoor testing center, said Thursday that he expects the test explosions to contain the equivalent of 300 pounds of TNT, although a permit granted by the San Joaquin County Air Pollution Control District allows blasts of up to 350 pounds. A typical small car bomb is roughly equivalent to 500 pounds of TNT, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "You couldn't feel them in Tracy, but you could certainly hear them," said Krauter, who said the first such detonation could happen later this month. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories spokeswoman Lynda Seaver said that although Tracy residents would be warned through the Tracy Press when explosions are planned, residents might not hear them. She said weather balloons would test to what extent sound and shockwaves would bounce off the atmosphere back to Tracy before the explosions are detonated. Representatives from Lawrence Livermore, which runs Site 300, refused to say how many bombs or bomb components might be tested in a year. Site 300 manager Jim Lane said the explosions have yet to be scheduled. Lane wouldn't name a project linked to the planned explosions, saying it is "sensitive," but it's understood they will be part of a relatively new program by a Lawrence Livermore engineering department. Lane said the tests would involve no radioactive material and would be unrelated to the federal government's Reliable Replacement Warhead program, which will redesign and rebuild the nation's nuclear arsenal. The only reason given by Lawrence Livermore for the eight-fold annual increase in explosives testing was "national security," according to air district spokeswoman Kelly Morphy. Site 300 has not previously needed an air district permit for its explosions because it has not exceeded 100 pounds of explosions per day, or 1,000 pounds of explosions per year since the air district was formed in 1992. According to Morphy, the permit will allow the explosions to emit up to 63 pounds of particulate matter of up to 10 microns in diameter per day, 18.6 pounds of carbon monoxide per day, 5.4 pounds of hydrogen sulfide per day, 1.5 pounds of nitrogen oxides per day, 0.7 pounds of volatile organic compounds per day and 0.4 pounds of sulfur oxides per day. Marylia Kelley, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment executive director, said emissions from the planned explosions would help form acid rain and other types of pollution. "This is a shocking change of plan," Kelley said. "This is a complete turnaround from February 2006 when the (Department of Energy) announced it was going to phase out the explosive testing activities at Site 300." Kelley said she suspected the increase in explosives testing is related to the National Nuclear Security Administration's plans to consolidate, dismantle and rebuild nuclear warheads by 2030. She said Tri-Valley CAREs will have an information session on that program at the Tracy Community Center at 6 p.m. Tuesday. Lawrence Livermore, which is run and staffed by the University of California, also applied to increase the amount of toxic waste it can store at Site 300 from 3,300 gallons to 5,500 gallons, according to Department of Toxic Substances Control permit project manager Andrew Berna-Hicks. Seaver said the waste would not be radioactive, and she said Site 300 wanted to take advantage of existing waste-storage capacity to reduce the number of trips by trucks carrying waste out of the 7,000-acre site, which is a mile from Tracy's city limits. Site 300 is being considered by the Department of Homeland Security to run an anti-biological terrorism laboratory that would test and store incurable fatal diseases such as the Ebola virus and mad cow disease. Groundwater, surface water, soil and bedrock that is contaminated with uranium, tritium, volatile organic compounds, percholates and nitrates led the Environmental Protection Agency to include Site 300 in its Superfund list of the country's most contaminated sites. top				← Dust up, Apr. 21, 2007 ← Developer, activist appeal bomb testing permit, Dec. 13, 2006 ← Bigger bombs, more explosives, Dec. 7, 2006