Trouble with Tritium at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
L A Wood, Berkeley Voice, September 12, 1996

For more than a quarter century, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has operated its National Tritium Labeling Facility in Berkeley. Since its beginning, the tritium facility has discharged radioactive tritium into the hills above the University of California's main campus. This radioactive fallout has risen from the lab's stack into the atmosphere only to combine with hillside fog and drift back to the earth. This cycle has repeated itself so often that now Berkeley's air, soil, vegetation and groundwater have been affected.

Today, the tritium lab is on an extended shutdown from its annual servicing in March. Because of this, LBNL has been quick to boast of no radioactive tritium emissions. Yet, when the tritium lab starts up again, LBNL will be allowed to discharge as much as 80 to 100 curies into Berkeley's watershed each year. Our city has had little recourse in the regulation of these continued radioactive emissions.

Most Berkeleyans are surprised when they learn of this blatant disregard of both the city's ozone restrictions and a nuclear-free Berkeley. Community concerns were heightened because of an accident which occurred at the tritium lab in August 1993. The stack's uncontrolled release 63 curies of tritium in a 24-hour period marked a shift in the community's tolerance toward the tritium lab's pollution. It has also created distrust in LBNL operations.

After the accident and the public outcry that followed, LBNL stated that the tritium lab would seek an air quality policy of zero emissions. Unfortunately, the lab has fallen far short of this dec1aration.

LBNL also initiated a health risk assessment of the tritium lab's operations and its radioactive discharges. The assessment has already received criticism for its lack of independent review, even though the report has yet to be finalized, It appears to be just an attempt by LBNL to distract the community while hiding the lab's failure to implement a zero emission policy. The report will undoubtedly reflect the lab's PR line of low health risks, and similarly, a low mortality rate, despite the recognized scientific fact that there is no safe-dose level from ionizing radiation.

There are a number of sources of ionizing radiation that each of us is exposed to daily. The natural dose per person per year is approximately 0.1 rads (not counting radon). Tragically, extra chromosome damage has occurred in populations even in doses as low and gradual as an additional 0.08 rads annually over a 10-year period. Obviously, any additional source of ionizing radiation is a very serious matter.

Our Berkeley community has been asked by LBNL to approve a permit modification for the increased storage of radioactive and mixed waste. Lab representatives have tried to "sell" the image of safe, state-of-the-art containment for radioactive materials. It's no wonder that Berkeley residents have not bought into the new waste permit when the lab has systematically allowed deadly radioactive releases into our city, and that they plan to continue this unconscionable activity in the future.

The time has come for LBNL to cease all operations at the tritium lab until zero emissions can be established and maintained.