Where I Stand - Brian Greenspun: Reaching ground-zero

Sunday, Jan. 10, 1999 | 9:04 a.m.

WHOOPS!

That's what normal human beings say when they discover that they have made a mistake or when they are surprised that a result they expected does not come to pass. It is, in short, a word of apology or, at least, an acknowledgement that something went wrong.

I read the Las Vegas Sun's story under the headline, "Ground-water plutonium spurs more research," looking for some semblance of that word. After all, for years the Department of Energy -- formerly called the Atomic Energy Commission -- has been telling Nevadans, no, promising us, that nothing could or would go wrong with the nuclear weapons testing that until recently was rocking Las Vegas with every megaton blast. One of the bedrock commitments, of course, is that the plutonium that was dispersed as part of the nuclear explosions would never reach our ground water or in any other way expose Nevadans to unreasonable health risks.

The Sun's story indicates that the government, once again, was wrong. Radioactive plutonium, one of the most deadly substances, if not the most deadly substance known to man, has left the Nevada Test Site grave in which it was supposed to repose for eternity. Admittedly the travel distances are not great and the time it has taken is quite substantial in generational terms, but the fact remains that what couldn't happen has happened.

And nothing even close to a "whoops" has been uttered by the DOE or any of its sponsors in the U.S. Congress.

Not that such an utterance would help ease the minds of Nevada's mothers and fathers who have always been concerned about the health and safety of their children. The mere thought of the plutonium traveling a mile farther than our government told us it would ever go is reason enough to question what is in store for us and our progeny as we look out a generation or two.

After all, if the impossible happened in less than 30 years and for up to a mile, how long will it now take for the highly probable to continue the expansion of the radioactive death rays to travel the relatively few number of miles it will take to contaminate a major food source and some of the major water sources for the Southwest.

The DOE, of course, says it needs to study this unexpected phenomenon. I say the government needs to do much more than that. If the milk cows in the Amargosa Valley and the foodstuffs grown just a few miles southwest of the Test Site are in danger of being contaminated, there is precious little time left for studies. Action is required to stop any further migration of the cancer- and leukemia-causing particles, for if there is the least bit of acceleration in this deadly process, millions of people could be in jeopardy.

The explanation to date is that the plutonium "hitched a ride in the ground water attached to tiny particles, known as colloids." The scientists concluded that, "We argue that colloidal ground-water migration must have played an important role in transporting the plutonium." Whoops!

That wasn't supposed to happen. So what else is the DOE telling Nevadans about matters nuclear?

What immediately comes to mind is the national political effort to dump the country's high-level nuclear waste in the middle of the Nevada desert, just a few miles from the place where the leaking plutonium has been found. One of the qualifying factors for the nuke waste dump is the need to keep that stuff stable in the environment for at least 10,000 years.

So, one might ask, if colloids can transport plutonium particles a mile from its final resting place in just 30 years, how long might it take to travel the plutonium to Las Vegas' ground water and food sources? I'm sorry. I didn't ask the question the right way. Add the high probability that one of the 34 earthquake faults will go active -- remember the quakes that have shaken, not stirred, Las Vegans in recent years -- and move that radioactive waste and water together light years faster than DOE minions would want us to believe? Now ask yourselves the question.

Admittedly, I don't know the answer, either. But, common sense would tell all of us that once the impossible has happened -- and it has with the movement of the Test Site's plutonium -- then the improbable, highly possible and potentially likely will certainly occur. And that means that all the promises, commitments and assurances that the Department of Energy, the U.S. Congress and their puppet masters in the nuclear power industry may give us to force us to accept what the rest of the country doesn't want, will be for naught.

Because there will come a time when what we have been told could never happen, will occur. And when that happens -- it may be in 20 years or in 200 years -- those who live in Nevada, or anywhere along the affected food or water chain, will have disease and death far greater than any of us want to imagine. Mostly, I suggest, because the victims will be our children, their children and their children.

And when that occurs, words like "whoops" will be meaningless. Most words will be equally so.