Tritium

One of three tritium-producing nuclear reactors shut down in 1988 because of safety and environmental concerns will be restarted in December and should be producing nuclear weapons fuel by early 1991, Energy Secretary James D. Watkins told Congress on Tuesday. After the first reactor at the Savannah River plant in South Carolina is back in operation, tentative plans call for restarting the second next March and the third in the fall of 1991.

Here we go again. With the Obama administration's promise of federal loan guarantees to build two new nuclear power plants at a cost of $8.3 billion, the radioactive monster is rising from a long dormancy, pumped to life by the lobbyists for nuke designers, nuke contractors, nuke operators and nuke consultants and their generous spending. Over the last decade, the nuclear industry has spent more than $600 million lobbying the federal government and another $63 million in federal campaign contributions, according to an analysis of public records by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.

The Energy Department announced Friday it has resumed selling tritium to U.S. and foreign companies even though it has failed to find missing amounts of the radioactive gas that can be used in making nuclear weapons. The department is satisfied that none of the missing material was diverted for illicit production of nuclear weapons, said spokesman Phil Keif, although a government report released Friday said investigators could not prove there was no diversion.

The Energy Department is spending $328 million to clean up two separate areas of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory -- the agency's largest nuclear-weapons cleanup project in California. The cleanup is relatively minor compared with others in the U.S., but it still has led to conflicts between the local community and the federal government as both search for a solution that is affordable and environmentally acceptable. Livermore is one of two U.S. labs that designed nuclear weapons.

The Energy Department said Friday that it has suspended commercial shipments of tritium, a radioactive gas used primarily in nuclear weapons, because small quantities are missing. But an official called the action "no big deal" and suggested that shipments may be resumed next week. Spokesman Phil Keif said that a review of the matter is "pretty well over" and that Energy Secretary James D.

Failure to restart tritium gas production this year at the government's Savannah River, S. C., weapons plant eventually could impair the nation's nuclear arsenal, a top Energy Department official said Thursday. But his testimony suggested that the problem is less immediate than some officials had indicated earlier. Troy E.

Despite fresh obstacles to restarting nuclear weapons reactors at the government's Savannah River Plant in South Carolina, the United States does not face a shortage of perishable tritium gas that could imperil the nation's nuclear force, Energy Secretary John S. Herrington said. Herrington said that he foresees no need to "cannibalize" tritium from some weapons to keep others in working order, as some officials have suggested might be necessary.

The Energy Department has decided after a lengthy review to recommend restarting a troubled South Carolina nuclear reactor in July, 1990, so it can resume production of tritium, a vital component of nuclear weapons, government sources said Wednesday. The new timetable means that operation of the tritium-producing reactor at Savannah River will be delayed at least six months beyond the target previously set by the department. But Energy Secretary James D.

Despite the shutdown of all three of its weapons production reactors for safety reasons, the government has sufficient supplies of tritium, a key fuel in thermonuclear weapons, to meet current defense needs at least until 1990, according to federal officials and independent analysts.

The Energy Department has enough of the vital radioactive gas tritium to meet its nuclear weapons production requirements for several years and can substantially slow the timetable for restarting a reactor that produces the gas in Savannah River S.C., a study by the General Accounting Office says.

Re "Groundwater Reveals Radiation Leak at San Onofre," Aug. 18 Unacceptable. That's the only way to describe the leaks of cancer-causing tritium at the San Onofre nuclear power plant. The possibility of contaminated drinking water is just one of the reasons nuclear power plants are not worth the risks they pose to public health, safety and the environment. California should not trust the Nuclear Regulatory Commission nor the plant's owners to properly protect the public. Illinois sued one of its nuclear plant owners after a similar leak contaminated drinking water there.

Radioactive, cancer-causing tritium has leaked into the groundwater beneath the San Onofre nuclear power plant, prompting the closure of one drinking-water well in southern Orange County, authorities said. Officials have not found evidence that the leak from the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, California's largest, has contaminated the drinking water supply. As a precaution, San Clemente officials shut down and are testing a city well near the contaminated area.

The governor's demand that California, not the federal government, control the safety testing at the proposed Ward Valley radioactive waste dump (March 15) is somewhat perplexing in light of the fact that the governor has consistently opposed efforts to reduce the amount of tritium waste destined for the site. Waste tritium has leaked from storage facilities in South Carolina, Washington and Nevada. The leaks in Nevada contaminated the ground water several hundred feet below the dump, which is particularly alarming since that facility is located on the same type of desert terrain as the proposed Ward Valley dump.

In a move that critics fear could blur the lines between civilian and military nuclear operations, the Clinton Administration said Tuesday it would consider the use of a civilian reactor to produce a radioactive gas crucial to building nuclear weapons. The Administration also said it might build a linear accelerator to make the gas instead of using a reactor.

A panel of the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that locating a proposed low-level radioactive waste dump in Ward Valley in the eastern Mojave Desert would not risk contamination of the Colorado River or other sources of drinking water. The report, however, was neither unqualified nor unanimous. Two members of the 17-member committee of scientists dissented on a key safety issue.

Your editorial (March 26) noting that the California Department of Health Services may have overestimated the amount of tritium to be buried at the proposed Ward Valley nuclear waste dump to conceal the amount of nuclear power plant waste going to the dump leads to a very simple conclusion--the best way to deal with waste tritium is to recycle it, not bury it. As The Times has noted in its articles and editorials, because waste tritium is...

New soil tests have found low levels of radioactive pollution just outside the northern boundary of Rockwell International's Santa Susana Field Laboratory, officials said Friday. Environmental officials said that the levels of tritium, a form of radioactive hydrogen, are so low that they do not pose a health risk. The tritium was found about 100 feet from the lab's property line.

The growing concerns about safety at the Department of Energy's Savannah River nuclear weapons plant will almost certainly require delaying the restart of the first of the facility's three shut-down tritium-producing reactors beyond next summer, a congressman and other Capitol Hill sources said Monday.

New soil tests have found low levels of radioactive pollution just outside the northern boundary of Rockwell International's Santa Susana Field Laboratory, officials said Friday. Environmental officials said that the levels of tritium, a form of radioactive hydrogen, are so low that they do not pose a health risk. The tritium was found about 100 feet from the lab's property line.