Test Site monitors find no evidence of radiation

Benjamin Grove

Friday, May 2, 2003 | 10:15 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department reported Thursday that no radiation from four decades of nuclear bomb testing at the Nevada Test Site was found in air or water at 24 monitoring stations around the border of the massive site.

The annual report, published by the National Nuclear Security Administration in October 2002 but released Thursday, was for calendar year 2001, the most recent available. The NNSA is the Energy Department arm that manages the 1,375-square-mile Test Site, with its nearest border 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The monitoring stations program was established in 1981 after the Three Mile Island nuclear plant disaster spurred fears about lingering radiation from nearly 1,000 above- and below-ground tests conducted at the Test Site. Tests were halted in 1992.

The stations are operated by trained local citizens, mostly teachers but also farmers and ranchers, who take weather readings and monitor for airborne radiation.

All the monitoring stations in 2001 recorded gamma radiation readings typical of normal naturally occurring "background" radiation, said Ken Hoar, director of environment, health and safety for the NNSA Nevada office.

There also was no migration of radiation on the Test Site itself, said Mike Skougard, an NNSA team leader.

It's no surprise the sensitive monitors did not pick up significant radiation readings. That's only happened twice, NNSA officials said: after the Chernoybl disaster and after an April 1986 underground test at the Test Site known as "Mighty Oak," when large volumes of radiation were vented into the air.

Still, critics have at times questioned the accountability of the monitoring program. And they have long wondered whether the monitoring stations were in "exactly the wrong place," said Peggy Maze Johnson, director of Citizen Alert, a grassroots Nevada environmental group.

"With as many bombs as they tested out there, to say that nothing has come of all those tests is pretty hard to believe," Johnson said.

The 24 monitoring stations test air samples but do not monitor groundwater. Those are monitored at 50 or 60 wells off the Test Site that are separate from the citizens monitoring program, Hoar said.

Johnson said the state needs more groundwater well monitors and in strategic locations to develop more accurate readings of the speed and direction of radiation in groundwater.