WASHINGTON -- May 23 -- Radioactivity from the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge Reservation is contaminating surface and ground water in Oak Ridge, a new study has found. The results of that independent study were presented at a community meeting on May 22. Main concerns are for:

• Strontium-90, a bone-seeking, radioactive product of nuclear fission
  
• Radium-226, a radionuclide used for intense neutron sources
  

Clam shells collected from East Fork Poplar Creek, downstream of the Y-12 complex, were contaminated with strontium-90 at 100 times an EPA reference level. Water seeping from Y-12 into the Scarboro community tested positive for previously unreported radioactivity, including radium-226. That seepage is half as contaminated as Bear Creek, which has been a main focus of governmental clean-up at Oak Ridge.

The RadioActivist Campaign (TRAC), a non-profit scientific organization, based in Belfair, Washington, collected 15 environmental samples around Oak Ridge in November 2004. Analyses revealed unmonitored and under-monitored radioactive contamination in a stream in Scarboro, in East Fork Poplar Creek, and in the Clinch River downstream of White Oak Creek. TRAC used radiological indicators to identify the sources of the reported radioactivity.

Norm Buske, TRAC’s director, said, “Surface and ground water are already contaminated by production of new nuclear weapons materials at ORR. Official monitoring is overlooking a new generation of radioactive contamination.”

TRAC’s study also confirmed official results of no more than a trace of radioactive fallout, downwind of ORR.

See www.radioactivist.org/new.html for TRAC’s report, “Radioactive Pathways – Oak Ridge, Tennessee.”

The RadioActivist Campaign is a public-interest project of the Tides Center of San Francisco. TRAC’s staff has conducted radiological surveys around 28 nuclear sites since 1983.

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