Steinberg
The end of 1997
brought a flurry of media reports in Connecticut about radioactive contamination from the
state’s notorious nuclear power plants. The Connecticut Yankee nuclear plant, located
about 20 miles up the Connecticut River from Long Island Sound, has been the focus of much
of the attention. But the Millstone nuclear plants, located just west of New London on the
Sound, have had reports of similar problems as well.
The Connecticut
Yankee plant was permanently shut down at the end of 1996 after 29 years of operation. All
three Millstone plants were shut down by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) after
years of consistently dangerous practices. They are currently rated as worst in the nation
by the NRC, and cannot be restarted without approval by the agency’s commissioners.
All four plants are owned and operated by Northeast Utilities (NU), New England’s
largest electrical utility. The Millstone plants comprise New England’s largest
electrical generating station. Because of problems at these plants, NU is struggling for
its life. Repairs at Millstone and the cost of buying replacement power cost the company
over $1 billion, and forced it to post a $51.7 million loss for the third quarter of 1997.
In the fall of 1996
two workers at the shut down Connecticut Yankee plant entered an area that NU had declared
decontaminated of radioactivity. Because the company was confident the area wasn’t
hot, it didn’t bother to test it for radioactivity before sending the two people in.
But when the two emerged they set off radiation alarms and were found to be severely
contaminated. This incident forced the NRC to investigate and eventually slap NU with a
hefty fine. But the story just kept getting hotter.
Connecticut
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal hired nuclear expert John Joosten in April 1997 to
investigate Connecticut Yankee’s radiological track record. Blumenthal didn’t
want rate payers or the state to get stuck with decommissioning costs for the plant that
were due to NU mismanagement.
Joosten’s
findings were a bombshell. He revealed that in 1979, and again in 1989, NU had operated
the Connecticut Yankee plant with badly damaged nuclear fuel rods. Joosten contended that
the large amounts of radiation released through the cracked rods had spread contamination
through the plant and beyond. Joosten also found that other unsafe practices at the plant
had caused contamination of the site’s soil, parking lots, wetlands, roof septic
system, silt in its discharge canal, water wells, and a shooting range three-quarters of a
mile away. NU documents also reported the movement of radiologically untested materials
around and off the plant site.
In a September 16,
1997 press release, Attorney General Blumenthal declared, “What we have is a nuclear
management nightmare of Northeast Utilities’ own making. The goal is no longer to
decommission a nuclear power plant, but rather to decontaminate a nuclear waste dump.”
The previous July
NU had declared a landfill on the edge of the plant site a radioactive zone. Levels of two
radioactive substances, Cobalt 60 and Cesium 137, were found to be three and six times,
respectively, above federal limits. The wooded area was then fenced off and radiation
warning signs were posted. But for years it had been accessible to the public. NU was
unable to explain how the hot stuff got there.
Cobalt 60 remains
dangerously radioactive for over 50 years, Cesium 137 for 300. October brought revelations
of more Cobalt 60 found in contaminated soil transported from the plant—this time in
1989 to the playground of a day care center operated by the spouse of a plant employee.
Governor John Rowland promised that children enrolled at the day care center at that time
would be tested for radiation. But over a month later none of the families had even been
contacted.
It emerged that
during the 1980s and into the 1990s NU had been giving away soil, asphalt, and concrete
blocks from the Connecticut Yankee site to local residents. Federal law required NU to
test these materials for contamination before they left the plant site. But NU was not
able to document that it had done so.
At the end of
October Connecticut residents learned that since 1972 NU had banned Connecticut Yankee
workers from drinking site well water contaminated with tritium—radioactive hydrogen.
NU said it had stopped allowing consumption of water from the wells because a skunk had
fallen into one of them.
A November 4 Hartford
Courant story reported that tritium levels in the wells exceeded federal limits for
drinking water on several occasions in 1975—and that during that same year the NRC
allowed it to stop reporting tritium levels in the wells.
The federal limit
for tritium in drinking water is 20,000 curies per liter. Prominent nuclear expert John
Gofman has stated that before the Nuclear Age, the natural occurrence of tritium in fresh
water was 6 to 24 picocuries per liter.
The Connecticut
Yankee plant released far more tritium into the environment during its 29-year run than
any other commercial U.S. nuclear plant. The tritium was discharged into the Connecticut
River. Since that river is a tidal stream, the tritium flowed not only south into Long
Island Sound and its popular wetlands and shoreline, but also north to Hartford and
beyond.
As the year’s
end approached, NU and state and federal officials were scurrying around testing soil,
water, and building materials taken from the plant to nearby homes. They were seeking
5,000 concrete blocks included on this hot list. The blocks had formed a barrier around a
radwaste cask before it was sent for disposal in the late 1970s. They were then made
available to workers at about that same time.
Some 320
contaminated blocks were found at 2 homes. Of these, 20 contained radioactivity “above
the natural occurrence in the environment,” according to a state official. Also over
the fall, Connecticut media reported that soil from the Millstone Nuclear Power Station
had been taken to baseball, soccer, and football athletic fields for children directly
adjacent to the plant.
At an October
meeting in Waterford (the town where Millstone is located) an NU official, in response to
my questions, revealed that the soil had neither been decontaminated nor tested before it
left the plant site. The official stated that NU’s recent testing of the soil found
nothing above natural levels of radiation. But the town of Waterford hired an independent
consultant to do further tests.
I asked the
official when the soil had been removed from Millstone to the fields. He told me it was
“a 1976 time frame.” We’ll soon learn the radiological significance of that
time frame.
On November 18,
1997, Connecticut Attorney General Blumenthal filed a $1 million lawsuit against NU,
alleging that it “thumbed its corporate nose at Connecticut’s environmental
laws.” The suit contended that Millstone dumped amounts of hazardous chemicals
exceeding state and federal limits into Long Island Sound hundreds of times between 1992
and 1996.
The state’s
lawsuit was largely fueled by information from another suit, filed by former Millstone
employee James Plumb. In his 1996 action Plumb alleged that he was fired after repeatedly
raising safety concerns at Millstone 3. The federal government is also investigating Plumb’s
charges.
The Untold Story
State and federal
officials, as well as the media, have studiously and repeatedly asserted that all these
contaminated sites and materials pose no threat to the public. But other sources have
indicated that Connecticut’s nuclear contamination has been far worse than recently
reported, and that its health effects have been devastating.
In October 1977,
Dr. Ernest Sternglass, professor of radiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical
School, showed that from 1970 to 1975 cancer deaths increased 58 percent in Waterford, 44
percent in New London, 12 percent in Connecticut, and 8 percent in Rhode Island. By
contrast, cancer mortality increased 6 percent for the U.S. as a whole, 7 percent in
Massachusetts, and 1 percent for New Hampshire when comparing those same years.
Sternglass
attributed the Connecticut and downwind increases to radioactive releases from the
Millstone 1 nuclear plant, which began commercial operation in late 1970. In late 1974 the
plant began releasing much higher levels of radiation. Its 1975 airborne radioactive
emissions totaled nearly three million curies—the highest such amount reported in a
single year by a U.S. commercial nuclear plant except for Three Mile Island in 1979.
During 1975
Millstone 1 also released nearly 10 curies of Iodine 131 into the air. Sternglass pointed
out in his 1981 book Secret Fallout that “a single curie of Iodine 131 could
make 10 billion quarts of milk unfit for continuous consumption, according to existing
guidelines adopted by the federal government.”
Millstone l’s
high releases in 1975 were largely due to its operation with “leakers”—defective
fuel rods. As at Connecticut Yankee in 1979 and 1989, this allowed massive contamination.
Ironically, Sternglass’s 1977 report was done for then Congressperson and now Senator
Christopher Dodd, whose home is near the Connecticut Yankee plant.
Millstone l’s
radioactive releases remained high into the late 1970s. In its egregious twenty-five year
operating career, it has discharged nearly six and one-half million curies of radiation
into the environment, again second only to Three Mile Island.
After Sternglass’s
1977 report the Connecticut Department of Health Services stopped publishing annual
reports from the Connecticut Tumor Registry. These statistics had been published each year
since the 1930s. The last published figures showed that from 1970 to 1977, cancer deaths
in the state increased 62 percent in Waterford, 45 percent in New London, and 16 percent
in the state as a whole.
In 1979 Sternglass
produced another report that linked infant mortality problems in Rhode Island to
Millstone and Connecticut Yankee radioactive emissions. Sternglass indicated that from
1965 to 1970 Rhode Island and New Hampshire had the same infant mortality rates,
reflecting the national trend of decline. But after the Connecticut nuclear plants started
up, Rhode Island’s decrease lessened, while New Hampshire’s continued to
decline.
In 1990 Jay Gould
and Benjamin Goldman published Deadly Deceit, inspired in great part by
Sternglass’s work. One chapter, “Cancer In Connecticut,” again indicated
sharply elevated cancer mortality attribued to Millstone and Connecticut Yankee
radioactive releases. The authors reported that cancer deaths in Middlesex county (site of
Connecticut Yankee), New London county (site of Millstone), and Kent and Washington
counties downwind in southwestern Rhode Island “rose 30 percent from 1965-69 to
1975-82, compared to Connecticut’s rise of 24 percent, and a U.S. rise of 16 percent.”
Gould’s 1996
follow up to Deadly Deceit, The Enemy Within, showed that age-adjusted breast
cancer deaths in Middlesex and New London counties rose far above national rates
subsequent to the startup of Connecticut’s nuclear plants. Comparing the periods
1950-1954 to 1980-1984, Gould showed a 14 percent increase, while the national rate rose 2
percent. And comparing 1950-1954 to 1985-1989 yielded a 19 percent increase in the two
counties, with the national increase 1 percent.
Also in 1996,
Joseph Mangano, an associate of Sternglass and Gould in the New York City-based Radiation
and Public Health Project, published a study of thyroid cancer in Connecticut in the European
Journal of Cancer Prevention. Using information obtained from the Connecticut Tumor
Registry, Mangano showed that from 1971-1975 there were 20 reported cases of thyroid
cancer in New London county. But from 1976-1980 (beginning 5 years after Millstone 1’s
startup), there were 38 cases reported—an astounding 86.8 percent increase in this
very rare disease. The rate of increase for these periods for this disease in the rest of
Connecticut was 12.2 percent
Comparing similar
5-year periods for Connecticut Yankee, Mangano reported a 54.7 percent increase in thyroid
cancer incidence in the latter period, compared to 18.2 percent elsewhere in the state.
Mangano attributed
these sharp increases in Middlesex and New London counties to Iodine 131 emissions from
Millstone and Connecticut Yankee. Thus far Iodine 131 has been the main culprit identified
in causing health problems following the Chernobyl disaster. Like its non-radioactive
cousin, radioactive iodine tends to concentrate in the human thyroid gland.
Connecticut is the
corporate home of Northeast Utilities and has been the state most dependent on nuclear
power. It is also corporate home to General Electric, designer and seller of most of the
nation’s worst nuclear reactors, such as Millstone 1. Not far east of Millstone, in
Groton, the General Dynamics Electric Boat Company has built most of the U.S. Navy’s
nuclear powered submarines, including all the Tridents. The U.S. Sub Base just north of
Electric Boat homeports 20 nuclear powered attack submarines as well.
Connecticut is also
home to some of the nation’s worst nuclear contamination. Because of its heavy past
dependence on defense contracts and nuclear power, there is still a strong denial of
possible health consequences from the state’s nuclear contamination, both in the
media and the general population. But as Northeast Utilities and its nuclear credibility
crumble, so too may the bland assurances of all the proper authorities. <
Michael Steinberg
is originally from a small seacoast town west of Millstone Nuclear Power Station. He is an
investigative reporter, currently based in Durham, North Carolina and is working on a book
<W0>Millstone and Me, chronicling Millstone’s history and affects on people in
the region.