DOE seeks new monitor for Test Site

Monday, Nov. 9, 1998 | 10:59 a.m.

The U.S. Department of Energy has asked the Desert Research Institute to submit a proposal for off-site monitoring around the Nevada Test Site, the former nuclear weapons experimental proving ground 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The department had notified the federal Environmental Protection Agency it was shutting down air-monitoring stations around the state because nuclear testing is no longer conducted at the Test Site. The DOE proposed to do its own monitoring.

Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., objected to the department surveying itself and asked Energy Secretary Bill Richardson to continue independent monitoring.

In meetings last week, the department informed the DRI, the research arm of the University of Nevada System, that 17 air-monitoring stations around Nevada and water monitoring will continue with improved samplers, said David Shafer, DRI program manager for DOE projects.

Although the institute cannot analyze all the radiation possible, it could contract with private laboratories or team up with the EPA, the former independent oversight agency for off-site monitoring, Shafer said.

"It's good to know they are going to maintain the off-site stations," said DRI liason Russ Cullison. "That's good news."

A decision on which agency will continue off-site monitoring is not expected before the end of the month.

For 30 years the U.S. Public Health Service and then the EPA had collected samples of air, water, milk, meat and vegetables around the site where more than 1,000 nuclear weapons had exploded as the United States raced the former Soviet Union in building nuclear arms.

In September 1992 President George Bush declared a nuclear test moratorium and the Test Site's mission changed drastically. Once supporting 10,000 employees, the DOE's Nevada Operations Office dropped to less than 3,000 workers.

"The EPA has been our partner for a long, long time," DOE spokeswoman Nancy Harkess said Friday, "but our priorities have changed and our budget is shrinking."

The department's priorities have shifted from air to ground water monitoring, Harkess said.

Air monitoring was important when both above-ground and underground nuclear experiments were conducted. Without ongoing tests, however, the government's concern has shifted to ground water after residents in Nevada and California expressed concerns about radioactivity moving in the ground water.

The department's own scientists discovered last year that plutonium from an underground blast in 1968 had traveled almost a mile from the crater that was supposed to contain the explosion.

"The threat isn't to the air anymore, and with tighter budgets, we have to decide what is more important," Harkess said. Drilling wells to track radiation moving through ground water has become the top priority, she said. No decisions have been made on the off-site monitoring program.

Whatever solution the department chooses, it has to be an independent reviewer, said Jed Harrison, chief of the EPA laboratory. The public does not trust the DOE to monitor itself.

"Let's make sure we are doing the right thing as far as the public is concerned," Harrison said.