443 



3,000-foot and 6,000-foot sites. These, according to Joseph, were 

 variously used between 1946-62. There are records of the U.S.S. 

 Cahokia carrying the waste to the sites. And these were records 

 that will probably turn up independently when DOD, DOE, and 

 NRC complete their records search. 



Mr. Anderson. Well, of these three sites that are used, those are 

 the largest licensed sites. And I wonder why you did not use those 

 coordinates? For example, the three main AEC-licensed depositors 

 in the San Francisco area were the U.S. Navy, the Nuclear Engi- 

 neering Co., and the Ocean Transport Co. Did you not contact these 

 groups before you made your decision to dive into those areas? 



Mr. Dyer. Our records were that the largest users or generators 

 of the waste were the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory and 

 Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories. 



Mr. Anderson. These companies I am referring to are the ones 

 who disposed of their waste that would go into those three licensed 

 areas. 



Mr. Dyer. I am not exactly addressing your question. I am trying 

 to explain where we got our records and why we went to those 

 areas we selected. 



Dr. Mattson. Congressman, do you understand that the data you 

 have in front of you today Mr. Dyer did not have when he made 

 his choices. It was not a clear trade off between your data you are 

 reading from today and what he was choosing from in 1974, 1975, 

 and 1977. He may have been able to find it. 



Mr. Anderson. The license has been available for the last 20 or 

 30 years. 



Dr. Mattson. That is true. 



Mr. Anderson. And in our letters to you and to them we gave 

 the information prior to your hearing. 



Dr. Mattson. These surveys were conducted in 19 



Mr. Dyer. 1974 was the first one. 



Dr. Mattson. The decision he made as to where to go was on the 

 basis of Arnold Joseph's report from the Atomic Energy Commis- 

 sion, a readily available document. The kind of records searching 

 which has uncovered the sort of document you are referring to had 

 not occurred at that time. And one can argue it should have, but it 

 had not. This is the man who made the choice of where to go. And 

 he told you the basis on which he made that choice. 



Mr. Dyer. I think I would like to add one thing here. One of our 

 first objectives of the surveys was to evaluate the existing technol- 

 ogy. And what we were looking for was whether any submersible 

 system or remote control system could examine the sites closely. 

 What we had determined from the earlier surveys that had been 

 done for the AEC in 1958 and 1960, was that the only systems 

 available to look at the sites were surface ships that could random- 

 ly drop down sampling devices and collect samples. But the prob- 

 lem was they did not know whether they were anywhere near 

 radioactive waste drums. We wanted to be certain that these sites 

 actually did contain radioactive waste drums. 



So we wanted a system that would be able to go down there and 

 look. At that time the only system available was the CURV III, 

 belonging to the U.S. Navy. And that CURV III was really only 

 operating to about 3,000 feet. 



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