Snake River Plain Aquifer Contaminated By Nuclear Waste, Says Watchdog Group Experts Discount Charge, Say Any Radioactivity Can Be Accounted For By Purely Natural Causes

An environmental group is claiming that radioactive material from nuclear waste dumped in eastern Idaho has contaminated the Snake River Plain aquifer as far as 100 miles from the site.

But two health physicists from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory maintained that the Environmental Defense Institute misinterpreted the information used to reach that conclusion.

“This is a prime example of junk science,” said John Horan, a retired INEEL health physicist who served on the INEEL Health Effects Subcommittee.

Institute Director Chuck Brocious, who wrote the report and also serves on the subcommittee, compared U.S. Geological Survey samplings from 1989 and 1995 of beta and alpha radiation from 22 of 55 monitoring wells downstream from the INEEL near where the aquifer discharges into the Snake River between Rupert and Hagerman. He found increases in either gross beta or gross alpha radiation in all 22 cases.

“It shows conclusively that radioactive contamination from the INEEL site is migrating to the Snake River via the aquifer and that it is increasing appreciably,” Brocious wrote.

But during this week’s subcommittee meeting Horan and INEEL health physicist Eddie Chew maintained Brocious took the information out of context and maintained that the conclusion that the increased radiation was from material at the INEEL.

Chew said scientists have known for years that natural radioisotopes percolate into the aquifer with precipitation from farm fertilizers, irrigation return flows, even fallout from nuclear weapons testing. Since the samplings Brocious used do not measure specific radioisotopes, he said, it cannot be determined whether the increase came from isotopes at the INEEL.

Chew said the concentrations of radioactivity in the latest samples, while higher than before, remain extremely small and can be easily accounted for by natural causes.