Tri-Valley CAREs

Thursday, July 21, 2005  
Lab officials say fire posed no toxic threat

By: Keay Davidson at [email protected]
Published In: San Francisco Chronicle, page B-5, copyright 2005

A large grass fire penetrated into and burned about 200 acres of an outdoor explosives test site at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory late Tuesday and Wednesday morning, raising concerns that contaminants at the Superfund site may have been released into the atmosphere.

But lab officials denied there's any danger that the fire might have vaporized toxic contaminants and expelled them into the atmosphere. The 200 acres that burned -- a small part of the 7,000-acre explosives facility known as Site 300 -- have suffered "little ground contamination" from years of explosives tests, lab spokeswoman Lynda Seaver said.

The state's environmental agencies are still trying to decide whether to get involved in investigating the possible environmental effects of the fire.

"We'll probably be working with the (state) Department of Health Services to determine what the next step should be," state Department of Toxic Substances Control department spokesman Ron Baker said late Wednesday afternoon.

For several decades at Site 300, scientists have conducted test explosions -- both inside buildings and in the open air -- of simulated nuclear weapons and chemical explosives. As a result, the site is contaminated with toxics including trichloroethylene, tritium and depleted uranium.

In 1987, the federal Environmental Protection Agency gave Site 300 Superfund status, which makes it eligible for funding for cleaning up highly contaminated sites.

"Past activities at the site have resulted in releases of contaminants to the subsurface such as volatile organic and high-explosive compounds, radionuclides, and metals. The affected areas are being treated in a variety of ways that integrate groundwater extraction and treatment, source isolation, and hydraulic control," according the lab's Web site. An EPA Web site says that the "primary health threat posed is drinking contaminated groundwater."

As a routine precaution Wednesday, the EPA asked the lab to submit its post-fire measurements of local air quality at Site 300 to the agency, EPA spokesperson Mark Merchant said. Otherwise, however, the EPA is not actively involved in the investigation of the fire's atmospheric effects.

The fire began early Tuesday evening and remains unexplained. More than 650 firefighters from the lab, California Department of Forestry, Livermore- Pleasanton, Tracy, and Alameda and San Joaquin counties extinguished the 10, 000-acre fire by mid-morning Wednesday, lab officials said.

Livermore closed Site 300 and sent employees there home early Tuesday so they wouldn't get in the way of firefighters, lab officials said. It remained closed Wednesday and is scheduled to reopen today. The lab's main facility is 15 miles from where the fire started and was unaffected by the blaze.

Grass fires are a concern at nuclear weapons labs. Contaminants in the soil can, in theory, be vaporized by a fire, then expelled into the atmosphere.

The fire concerns a prominent local anti-nuclear activist, Marylia Kelley of Tri-Valley Cares in Livermore.

"Wildfires are a common problem in that area and have occurred a number of times," Kelley said. "It would be less worrisome if this was the first time in history it had ever happened, but it's actually a major problem."

She's especially concerned by encroaching development: As suburbs creep into the area, there's a growing danger that a major fire could unleash Site 300's toxics onto communities beyond the lab site. She advocates shutting down all weapons research at Site 300.

In 2000, a 45,000-acre wildfire threatened Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Afterward, lab scientists studied whether the fire had sent ground contaminants into the air. The Los Alamos study concluded there was less than a 1-in-10-million chance that anyone would breathe cancer-causing chemicals or radioactive materials unleashed by the fire.

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