BNFL, Inc. is the British company which has contracted with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to remove 126,000 tons of radioactively contaminated nickel, aluminum, copper and scrap steel from three massive factories that enriched uranium for atomic bombs in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The lawyer for BNFL confirmed today before D.C. Federal District Court Judge Gladys Kessler that there is no restriction on the end-use of the radioactive metal that is to be removed from the buildings once released for commercial recycling. As previously briefed, this includes dental braces, hip-joint replacements, whistles, tableware and other items in daily use.
He stated that a day-care center could be housed in the Oak Ridge DOE uranium enrichment buildings after the project is complete, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency just recently criticized the DOE at Oak Ridge for allowing supposedly cleaned buildings to be leased without adequate health and safety protection.
A union and several national and local environmental and public health groups are suing DOE and BNFL under the National Environmental Policy Act. oral arguments in the case were heard on April 29, 1999. The plaintiffs have filed an injunction against the recycling of radioactive metals into commerce and are calling for a full environmental review of this precedent-setting action.
“This project alone could deliberately release the largest known amount of radioactive metal from nuclear power and weapons into the marketplace in U.S. history. Radioactive metal would be recycled with no labeling, warning, notification or consent from those that will come in contact with the many consumer products made from it. This is just the tip of the iceberg,” stated Diane D’Arrigo of Nuclear Information and Resource Service. “If they get away with this, it will be irreversible and will become a routine practice, at public expense.”
The State of Tennessee Department of Environmental Conservation, has licensed several private radioactive metal processing companies and on March 26, 1999 approved, with no public involvement, a precedent-setting amendment allowing Manufacturing Sciences Corporation (now a part of BNFL) to release the nickel from the uranium enrichment cascades. The nickel has radioactivity throughout (volumetric contamination). The market price of nickel, not any concern about radiation exposure to the public will drive the recycling decision and timing, by BNFL (hoping to make a profit) and DOE (getting rid of its nuclear waste). Surface contaminated scrap steel could become volumetrically contaminated when smelted with other metal and fabricated into consumer products.
The DOE is quietly releasing radioactive material on a case-by-case basis from its other nuclear weapons sites, in addition to some from this project. Nuclear power facilities are believed to be releasing some radioactive materials into commerce, probably mainly through processors such as those in Tennessee. Dangerously, that amount could dramatically increase as nuclear power reactors and weapons sites close and dismantle.
The plaintiffs are the (former) Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Natural Resources Defense Council, Citizens for a Healthy Environment and Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance.