Ward Valley Nuclear Dump

I am one of the many scientists who contributed to the 7,000-page license application with Department of Health Services on behalf of U.S. Ecology. Over the last three years, I have read articles and letters regarding the potential hazards at the Ward Valley site and not one of these contributions have been from a scientist that worked on the project who was in charge of experiments conducted at the site and aware of the validity of the conclusions. Many thousands of man-hours of work went into these experiments and I see the results either discounted or misinterpreted by individuals who evidently have not read the “voluminous reports.”

I was directly responsible for several experiments.

The findings from those experiments say that it takes thousands of years for water to percolate through the dry sediments and reach the aquifer; that even if water containing radionuclides were to contact the soil, the radionuclides would be removed totally from the water by sorption exchange, and that tritium from the low-level waste would stay in the upper 100 feet of the soil.

To say that there is no such thing as a safe radioactive waste dump is ignoring the physical and chemical nature of the Ward Valley site.

It is a sad state of affairs when some of the finest earth scientists are trained in this country and paid to devise and carry out detailed experiments costing many millions of dollars, only to have the results lost in a political quagmire because there aren’t enough citizens willing to take the time to read and understand the scientific reports.

EDWARD I. WALLICK

Victorville