Sobering Findings in the Desert

Tritium is not the most dangerous of the radioactive materials that would be dumped at Ward Valley in California’s Mojave Desert. But the proposed dump would receive a great deal of the carcinogen in pharmaceutical and nuclear reactor waste, and a recently disclosed study on tritium raises new questions about the potential environmental threat of the substance as well as others that would be disposed of there.

In recent weeks, scientists acknowledged the existence of year-old test results that show unusually high levels of tritium and other radioactive pollutants 357 feet below the desert surface at Beatty, Nev., and only 10 feet above aquifers connected to the Colorado River. These residues were near a closed waste dump with geological and weather characteristics similar to Ward Valley’s.

Tritium was also found at Ward Valley in 1989 by U.S. Ecology, a waste disposal firm that plans to build and operate the dump there. The company found tritium as deep as 100 feet, which was as far as it probed.

Because the Ward Valley site is undeveloped, the tritium there is most likely from atmospheric nuclear tests conducted nearby in the 1950s and 1960s. At Beatty, state officials speculate, the tritium may have resulted from some waste company pouring liquid tritium onto the ground while that dump was in operation.

The presence of tritium per se is not the issue at either location. The issue is that high levels of this dangerous substance may have penetrated close to deep ground-water sources, contrary to previous predictions that radioactive material would remain largely immobile in the dry soil.

If tritium stored at the surface can seep into ground water that enters the Colorado River, other radioactive isotopes as well may be able to do so. That possibility should prompt the state to do now what it should have done months ago: require independent tests on how far down tritium is at Ward Valley and to explore how this isotope migrates so deep in concentrations many times higher than normally found in the atmosphere.

The Ward Valley site is on federal land. The California government, which must acquire title before U.S. Ecology can build the dump, has been reluctant to commit to this key testing since it was first suggested years ago by the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. Geological Service and others.

Under terms of the most recent formal agreement between California and the Interior Department, the state could conduct those tests after the federal title was transferred and indeed after construction of the dump began. We think that key questions about the dump site’s safety must be answered first. In Congress, a rider to the recent budget bill would have unconditionally transferred title to the Ward Valley site and exempted that transfer from judicial review. President Clinton cited this reckless rider as one of the reasons he vetoed that budget bill. Hold firm, Mr. President.