Ineel Waste Not Moving Toward River, Physicist Says

A health physicist with the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory has challenged a watchdog group’s claim that increasing concentrations of radioactive waste are migrating toward the Snake River.

Physicist Eddie Chew and retired health physicist John Horan on Thursday attacked a report by the Troy-based Environmental Defense Institute.

The group’s director, Chuck Brocious, wrote the report.

It compared 1989-1995 U.S. Geologic Survey water sampling data from 22 of 55 monitoring wells near where the Snake River Aquifer discharges into the Snake River between Rupert and Hagerman.

It alleged that because all 22 showed an increase in either gross beta or gross alpha radiation, the samples show radioactive contamination from INEEL is migrating to the Snake River via the aquifer and is increasing. The wells are downstream from INEEL, where vast quantities of radioactive waste went into injection wells, unlined pits and ponds for decades.

Sample concentrations are higher for 1994 and 1995 when compared with 1989 numbers.

But radioisotopes from natural, non-INEEL sources and fallout from worldwide nuclear weapons testing easily account for all radioactivity detected in the aquifer samples, Chew said.

When dealing with such minute concentrations, measurements can easily vary by 50 percent, Chew said.