Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory

Last updated

The United States Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory (NRDL) was an early military lab created to study the effects of radiation and nuclear weapons. The facility was based at the Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco, California.

Contents

History

The NRDL was formed in 1946 to manage testing, decontamination, and disposition of US Navy ships contaminated by the Operation Crossroads nuclear tests in the Pacific. [1] A number of ships that survived the atomic detonations were towed to Hunter's Point for detailed study and decontamination. Some of the ships were cleaned and sold for scrap. The aircraft carrier USS Independence, which had been heavily damaged and contaminated with nuclear fallout by Operation Crossroads explosions in July 1946, was brought to the NRDL for study. [1] [2] After years of trying in vain to decontaminate the ship enough that it could be safely sold for scrap, the Navy ultimately packed the ship full of nuclear waste and scuttled the radioactive hulk off California near the Farallon Islands in January 1951. The ship's wreck was discovered resting upright under 790 m of water in 2009. [3] [4]

The NRDL used several buildings at the Hunter's Point shipyard from 1946 to 1969. Working with the newly formed US Atomic Energy Commission (predecessor to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission established in 1974), the Navy conducted a wide variety of radiation experiments on materials and animals at the lab, [5] including the construction of a cyclotron on the site for use in radiation experiments and storage for various nuclear materials.

Activities

An article published 2 May 2001 in SF Weekly detailed various aspects of nuclear testing at NRDL from declassified records: [1]

The NRDL often experimented with and disposed of nuclear material with little apparent concern that it was operating in the middle of a major metropolitan area. Among other things, historical documents show, scientists at the NRDL:

  • – Oversaw the dumping of huge amounts of contaminated sand and acid into San Francisco Bay after they were used in attempts to clean irradiated ships.
  • – Spread radioactive material on- and off-base, as if it were fertilizer, to practice decontamination.
  • – Burned radioactive fuel oil in a boiler, discharging the smoke into the atmosphere.
  • – Sold radioactive ships as scrap metal to a private company in Alameda.
  • – Hung a source of cobalt-60, a nuclear isotope that emits high-energy electromagnetic radiation similar to X-rays, in San Francisco Bay for two weeks, apparently just to see what would happen.
  • – Conducted human experiments that included requiring people to drink radioactive elements.
  • – Experimented with significant amounts of a wide variety of long-lived radiological poisons, including plutonium, cesium, uranium, thorium and radium.
  • – Studied and disposed of thousands of irradiated mice, rats, dogs, goats, mules, and pigs, among other animals. At one point, the lab owned a ranch in Contra Costa County used specifically to raise animals for radiation testing.
  • – Sought permission to dump 1,000 gallons of liquid waste containing "small amounts of fission products" into San Francisco Bay, as an experiment to study how tidal action would dilute the radioactivity. The experiment was meant as a precursor to the disposal of 1,000 gallons of liquid radioactive waste in the bay every day. (The documents do not say whether the experiment or the daily dumping occurred.)
    — Davis, Lisa, Fallout, SF Weekly

Contamination

The first use of radioactive materials at NRDL predated the issuing of licenses by the Atomic Energy Commission, but the AEC later issued licenses for a broad spectrum of radioactive materials to be used in research at the NRDL. Radioactive materials specific to nuclear weapon testing were exempted from AEC licensing. For closure of the NRDL in 1969, the AEC issued licenses for decommissioning activities. AEC licenses for the shipyard and NRDL were terminated in the 1970s. [6]

The NRDL testing and decontamination activities caused significant contamination of the shipyard site. [7] [8] The NRDL and the military radiation training school at nearby Naval Station Treasure Island loaded the nuclear waste left from experiments into steel barrels and sent weekly barges to dump them offshore near the Gulf of the Farallons, which is a US National Wildlife Refuge and a major commercial fishery. Between 1946 and 1970, records estimate the lab and naval station dumped an estimated 47,000 drums [9] of nuclear waste in the Pacific Ocean 30 miles west of San Francisco, creating the first and largest offshore nuclear waste dump in the United States. [1] The USGS states the barrels contain only "low-level radioactive waste," [9] but this is disputed by historical records and experts. [1] [10]

The US Navy completed a Historical Radiological Assessment of the Hunter's Point Shipyard in 2004, including the known NRDL facilities on the property, years after the SF Weekly article cited declassified documents showing that many sites and buildings used by NRDL were not included in the Navy's list of sites with potential for radiological contamination. [11] Many of the buildings formerly used by NRDL had been razed by that point.

The former shipyard site is still being decontaminated, and has been split into multiple parcels to allow the Navy to declare them clean and safe for redevelopment separately. [7] While Lennar has built and sold hundreds of new condominium units on the site of the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, [12] regulators, activists, and cleanup workers have claimed that the site is still heavily contaminated and that the company contracted to handle the cleanup and testing, Tetra Tech, has repeatedly violated established cleanup protocols, [13] deliberately falsified radiation test results at the site to falsely show that there is little remaining radiation, [14] [15] and fired employees who attempted to force workers to perform radiation tests as required. [16]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States Atomic Energy Commission</span> Independent federal government agency (1947–1975)

The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by the U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S. Truman signed the McMahon/Atomic Energy Act on August 1, 1946, transferring the control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands, effective on January 1, 1947. This shift gave the members of the AEC complete control of the plants, laboratories, equipment, and personnel assembled during the war to produce the atomic bomb.

A dirty bomb or radiological dispersal device is a radiological weapon that combines radioactive material with conventional explosives. The purpose of the weapon is to contaminate the area around the dispersal agent/conventional explosion with radioactive material, serving primarily as an area denial device against civilians. It is not to be confused with a nuclear explosion, such as a fission bomb, which produces blast effects far in excess of what is achievable by the use of conventional explosives. Unlike the cloud of radiation from a typical fission bomb, a dirty bomb's radiation can be dispersed only within a few hundred meters or a few miles of the explosion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Enewetak Atoll</span> Coral atoll in the Marshall Islands; site of U.S. nuclear testing during the Cold War

Enewetak Atoll is a large coral atoll of 40 islands in the Pacific Ocean and with its 296 people forms a legislative district of the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands. With a land area total less than 5.85 square kilometers (2.26 sq mi), it is no higher than 5 meters (16.4 ft) and surrounds a deep central lagoon, 80 kilometers (50 mi) in circumference. It is the second-westernmost atoll of the Ralik Chain and is 305 kilometers (190 mi) west from Bikini Atoll.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Operation Crossroads</span> 1946 nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll

Operation Crossroads was a pair of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946. They were the first nuclear weapon tests since Trinity on July 16, 1945, and the first detonations of nuclear devices since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The purpose of the tests was to investigate the effect of nuclear weapons on warships.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nuclear and radiation accidents and incidents</span> Severe disruptive events involving fissile or fusile materials

A nuclear and radiation accident is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as "an event that has led to significant consequences to people, the environment or the facility." Examples include lethal effects to individuals, large radioactivity release to the environment, or a reactor core melt. The prime example of a "major nuclear accident" is one in which a reactor core is damaged and significant amounts of radioactive isotopes are released, such as in the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hunters Point Naval Shipyard</span> Former US Navy installation in San Francisco

The Hunters Point Naval Shipyard was a United States Navy shipyard in San Francisco, California, located on 638 acres (258 ha) of waterfront at Hunters Point in the southeast corner of the city.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Radioactive contamination</span> Undesirable radioactive elements on surfaces or in gases, liquids, or solids

Radioactive contamination, also called radiological pollution, is the deposition of, or presence of radioactive substances on surfaces or within solids, liquids, or gases, where their presence is unintended or undesirable.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Waste Isolation Pilot Plant</span> Deep geological repository for radioactive waste

The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, is the world's third deep geological repository licensed to store transuranic radioactive waste for 10,000 years. The storage rooms at the WIPP are 2,150 feet underground in a salt formation of the Delaware Basin. The waste is from the research and production of United States nuclear weapons only. The plant started operation in 1999, and the project is estimated to cost $19 billion in total.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Goiânia accident</span> 1987 radioactive contamination incident in Brazil

The Goiânia accident was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on September 13, 1987, in Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil, after an unsecured radiotherapy source was stolen from an abandoned hospital site in the city. It was subsequently handled by many people, resulting in four deaths. About 112,000 people were examined for radioactive contamination and 249 of them were found to have been contaminated.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Savannah River Site</span> US Department of Energy reservation in South Carolina

The Savannah River Site (SRS) is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reservation in the United States, located in the state of South Carolina on land in Aiken, Allendale, and Barnwell counties adjacent to the Savannah River. It lies 25 miles (40 km) southeast of Augusta, Georgia. The site was built during the 1950s to refine nuclear materials for deployment in nuclear weapons. It covers 310 square miles (800 km2) and employs more than 10,000 people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Operation Hardtack I</span> Series of 1950s US nuclear tests

Operation Hardtack I was a series of 35 nuclear tests conducted by the United States from April 28 to August 18 in 1958 at the Pacific Proving Grounds. At the time of testing, the Operation Hardtack I test series included more nuclear detonations than the total of prior nuclear explosions in the Pacific Ocean. These tests followed the Project 58/58A series, which occurred from 1957 December 6 to 1958, March 14, and preceded the Operation Argus series, which took place in 1958 from August 27 to September 6.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Santa Susana Field Laboratory</span> Industrial research and development facilities in California

The Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL), formerly known as Rocketdyne, is a complex of industrial research and development facilities located on a 2,668-acre (1,080 ha) portion of Southern California in an unincorporated area of Ventura County in the Simi Hills between Simi Valley and Los Angeles. The site is located approximately 18 miles (29 km) northwest of Hollywood and approximately 30 miles (48 km) northwest of Downtown Los Angeles. Sage Ranch Park is adjacent on part of the northern boundary and the community of Bell Canyon is along the entire southern boundary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Project 4.1</span> Radioactive fallout exposure study and experiment

Project 4.1 was the designation for a medical study and experimentation conducted by the United States of those residents of the Marshall Islands exposed to radioactive fallout from the March 1, 1954 Castle Bravo nuclear test at Bikini Atoll, which had an unexpectedly large yield. Government and mainstream historical sources point to the study being organized on March 6 or March 7, 1954, less than a week after the Bravo shot.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human radiation experiments</span> Studies of radiation effects on humans

Since the discovery of ionizing radiation, a number of human radiation experiments have been performed to understand the effects of ionizing radiation and radioactive contamination on the human body, specifically with the element plutonium.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Energy Technology Engineering Center</span>

The Energy Technology Engineering Center (ETEC), was a government-owned, contractor-operated complex of industrial facilities located within the 2,850-acre (11.5 km2) Santa Susana Field Laboratory (SSFL), Ventura County, California. The ETEC specialized in non-nuclear testing of components which were designed to transfer heat from a nuclear reactor using liquid metals instead of water or gas. The center operated from 1966 to 1998. The ETEC site has been closed and is now undergoing building removal and environmental remediation by the U.S. Department of Energy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atomics International</span> Defunct US nuclear technology company

Atomics International was a division of the North American Aviation company which engaged principally in the early development of nuclear technology and nuclear reactors for both commercial and government applications. Atomics International was responsible for a number of accomplishments relating to nuclear energy: design, construction and operation of the first nuclear reactor in California (1952), the first nuclear reactor to produce power for a commercial power grid in the United States (1957) and the first nuclear reactor launched into outer space by the United States (1965).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lancs Industries</span>

Lancs Industries is a manufacturer of protective clothing, containments, gloveboxes, enclosures, lead shielding, and other supplies used for reducing risk and increasing safety of workers in potentially hazardous environments.

The Fukushima disaster cleanup is an ongoing attempt to limit radioactive contamination from the three nuclear reactors involved in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster that followed the earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011. The affected reactors were adjacent to one another and accident management was made much more difficult because of the number of simultaneous hazards concentrated in a small area. Failure of emergency power following the tsunami resulted in loss of coolant from each reactor, hydrogen explosions damaging the reactor buildings, and water draining from open-air spent fuel pools. Plant workers were put in the position of trying to cope simultaneously with core meltdowns at three reactors and exposed fuel pools at three units.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nuclear labor issues</span> Radiation workers health and labor issues

Nuclear labor issues exist within the international nuclear power industry and the nuclear weapons production sector worldwide, impacting upon the lives and health of laborers, itinerant workers and their families.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United Nuclear Corporation</span> Former nuclear mining, development, and applications business

The United Nuclear Corporation (UNC) was a diversified nuclear mining, development, and applications company based out of the United States. Formed in 1961 as a joint venture between the Olin Mathieson Chemical Corporation, the Mallinckrodt Corporation of America, and the Nuclear Development Corporation of America, the company is most well known today as the company behind the Church Rock uranium mill spill. In 1996 the company was acquired by General Electric, and remains to oversee the decommissioning of its former sites.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Davis, Lisa. "Fallout". SF Weekly. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  2. ↑ ":: Socket ::: The Farallon Islands Nuclear Waste Dump". socket.kongshem.com. Archived from the original on 6 March 2016. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  3. ↑ Lendon, Brad (17 April 2015). "Aircraft carrier that survived atomic blasts surveyed". CNN. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  4. ↑ "Scientists find radioactive WWII aircraft carrier off San Francisco coast". www.mercurynews.com. 16 April 2015. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  5. ↑ Pike, John. "Hunters Point / San Francisco Naval Shipyard". www.globalsecurity.org. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  6. ↑ "NRC: Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard". www.nrc.gov. Retrieved 20 June 2016.
  7. 1 2 "Search for Superfund Sites Where You Live" (PDF). 4 September 2015.
  8. ↑ "United States Environmental Protection Agency Fact Sheet, Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Radiological Program" (PDF). United States Environmental Protection Agency Fact Sheet, Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Radiological Program. United States Environmental Protection Agency. August 2014. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  9. 1 2 "Gulf of the Farallones Disposal Issues – USGS PCMSC". walrus.wr.usgs.gov. Archived from the original on 16 May 2014. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  10. ↑ Emshwiller, John R.; Searcey, Dionne (31 December 2013). "Nuclear Waste Sits on Ocean Floor". The Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  11. ↑ Historical Radiological Assessment, Volume II, Use of General Radioactive Materials, 1939–2003, Hunters Point Shipyard (PDF) (Report). United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. August 2004. Retrieved 2 January 2018.
  12. ↑ "Housing blooms at last at once-toxic Hunters Point shipyard site". San Francisco Chronicle. 9 June 2015. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  13. ↑ "Former Contractors Claim Hunters Point Cleanup is Botched". NBC Bay Area. 19 May 2014. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  14. ↑ "Worker Claims Supervisors Ordered Him to Hide Radiation". NBC Bay Area. 10 March 2016. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  15. ↑ "Radiation samples falsified to make Hunters Point look clean". nuclear-news. 15 October 2014. Retrieved 16 June 2016.
  16. ↑ "Regulators Question Hunters Point Radiation Testing". NBC Bay Area. 13 May 2015. Retrieved 16 June 2016.

37°43′32.18″N122°22′8.19″W / 37.7256056°N 122.3689417°W / 37.7256056; -122.3689417

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.