[CPEO-MEF] RADIATION, COMMUNITY: Alameda Naval Air Station (CA)

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

Radioactive Dredging, Digging Work to Start
Commissioners gripe that tour was misrepresented

by Marc Albert
Alameda Sun (CA)
June 5, 2008

Clean-up of radioactive waste from the former Naval Air Station-Alameda 
will enter a more intensive phase in coming weeks as workers under the 
auspices of the U.S. Navy begin excavating and removing soil and storm 
drains contaminated by decades of sloppy disposal of cadmium, 
radium-226, PCBs and other toxic compounds. Work is expected to commence 
in mid June.

The bulk of the contamination occurred from the 1940s until the 1970s. 
Some of the waste originated in the base's paint shops where 
glow-in-the-dark radium was painted on airplane instruments. Workers at 
the shop washed debris down ordinary sinks. The sinks emptied into storm 
drains, which dumped into Seaplane Lagoon near where the aircraft 
carrier U.S.S. Hornet is currently moored. The area is still used by 
recreational fishermen, despite some signs obliquely warning of danger. 
Radium-226 has a half-life of 1,602 years.

In all, Navy officials expect to remove 5,000 feet worth of storm drains 
and whatever contaminated debris is inside them and ship it to a 
long-term low-level radioactive waste dump in Idaho. Officials expect to 
remove 27,000 cubic yards of debris. Once that work is complete, the 
Navy plans to dredge 15 feet down within 100 feet of the storm drain 
outflow pipes and remove another 63,000 cubic yards of radioactive 
sludge from the lagoon and ship that to Idaho as well.

...

For the entire article, see
http://alamedasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3386&Itemid=10

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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