A congressional report to be released next week says underground nuclear tests conducted in Nevada are surrounded by "safeguards built into each test (that) make the chances of an accidental release of radioactive material as remote as possible."
The study, carried out by the Office of Technology Assessment, an arm of Congress, looked into charges that the Department of Energy is both careless in holding underground tests in Nevada, and concealing leaks of radioactivity."There is essentially no possibility that a significant release of radioactive material from an underground test could go undetected" by either DOE or the Environmental Protection Agency, the report says. If a "person had been standing at the boundary of the Nevada Test Site in the area of maximum concentration of radioactivity for every test since Banebury (1970), that person's total exposure would be equivalent to 32 extra minutes of normal background exposure (or the equivalent of one-thousandth of a single chest X-ray)," the office estimated.
At the same time, the agency said, "public concern over the testing program could be greatly mitigated if a policy were adopted whereby all tests are announced or at least all tests that release radioactivity to the atmosphere (whatever the conditions) are announced."
The office said Energy Department secrecy is largely ineffective anyway in concealing test information.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who with Rep. Wayne Owens, D-Utah, is about to introduce new legislation to aid victims of atmospheric atomic tests, said he was pleased to see the report's conclusions.
Testing between 1951 and 1963 released more than 12 billion curies of radioactive material into the air. Much of it fell to earth in southwestern Utah. Victims of several types of radiogenic illness sued the U.S. government for damages in federal court, and won at the district court level in Salt Lake City. The Supreme Court two years ago overturned that decision, saying the United States could not be taken to court for conducting the tests, nor for their consequences.
Releases from accidents or intentional releases since 1970 have totaled 54,000 curies, 36,000 of them from one test, Mighty Oak, in 1986. Between 1963 and 1971, 25 million curies were released from underground tests. The office said that an accident releasing 1 percent of the pre-1963 radiation would be considered "a major catastrophe today."
The Chernobyl accident in the Soviet Union released an estimated 81 million curies, about half of 1 percent of that created by U.S. testing between 1951 and 1963, the office estimated.
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Weather forces delay
Unfavorable weather at the Nevada Test Site has forced a three-day delay of a weapons-related nuclear test with a yield of between 20 and 150 kilotons, a Department of Energy spokesman said Friday. Code named "Hornitos," the test had been planned for Saturday.