Berkley calls for expedited NTS cleanup

Monday, Nov. 5, 2001 | 10:45 a.m.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., asked today that the Nevada Test Site be placed on the federal environmental cleanup priority list because of potential ground water contamination from underground nuclear explosions.

In addition, Berkley said that if a nuclear repository is built at Yucca Mountain on the western edge of the Test Site, the combined radiation contamination would exceed the Environmental Protection Agency's radiation limit.

Berkley based her request on a 1988 Energy Department study of the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Up to 300 square miles might be contaminated with both radioactive and toxic wastes from more than 1,000 nuclear weapons explosions conducted over 35 years, according to unclassified DOE documents. Of those, 260 blasts were deliberately set off under or near the ground water system, the documents say.

"As of today, much of this waste continues to leach radioactivity to the ground water system that flows unimpeded from the NTS to public and private aquifers in the states of Nevada and California," Berkley wrote to EPA Administrator Christie Whitman.

After the DOE completed its studies, the Test Site ranked in the worst 10 percent of the nation's 1,200 Superfund sites, including such polluted areas as the Stringfellow acid pits in Southern California.

However, the EPA has never made a decision to clean up the site. About half of the nation's Superfund sites have been cleaned up.

Berkley also requested Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to suspend action expected later this year or early next year on recommending Yucca Mountain as the world's first high-level nuclear waste repository until the Test Site ground water can be evaluated and the EPA can make a decision.

Spokesmen for the DOE and EPA had not seen the letters this morning and declined to comment.

In her request, Berkley asked that more monitoring wells be drilled near the Test Site's northwestern boundary, where some of the largest atomic bombs were tested. A scientific panel reviewing the Test Site's ground water monitoring made a similar suggestion in 1999.