446 



Have you been able to reconstruct at all from past records the 

 material that went into some of the dumpsites where there have 

 not been retrievals? 



Mr. Mattson. There are several kinds of information available. 

 There were some survey articles written. This report we have been 

 talking about, written by Arnold Joseph, attempted to say general- 

 ly what kinds of canisters or other containers had been used. There 

 were pictures drawn in that book of concrete vaults, of the steel 

 drums with the concrete poured in it in varying ways. Mr. Dyer 

 just described a couple of ways that they used the concrete. 



That kind of information I think we're fairly comfortable with, 

 understanding or feeling we know the spectrum of things that were 

 put out there. But the exact isotopic content, which radionuclides 

 were put in those barrels, and in what number of curies, that kind 

 of information is poor. We are, on occasion, able to find in the 

 records whether the material is source, byproduct, or special nucle- 

 ar material, names invented under AEC regulations. 



In some instances people did make estimations of curie content. 

 In others, the people responsible for the dumping didn't know how. 

 I saw somewhere today that someone referred to question marks in 

 records. I have seen those myself. So the precision of what was in 

 the barrels is not high. 



Mr. Hughes. So that when you actually are able to retrieve a 

 barrel from a particular location, that doesn't necessarily represent 

 the contents of the barrel at that particular site? 



Mr. Mattson. No; when we pick a barrel, and we have picked 

 three to bring to the surface, we have no way of telling whether 

 that is representative of all the materials. 



If I might digress for just a moment; in looking at the sediments 

 near the barrels that were broken, where we could see they were 

 leaking, and trying to understand how the radioactive materials 

 were transported away from the barrels, the kinds of materials we 

 find are plutonium, cesium, strontium, in elevated levels relative to 

 fallout levels. 



Our measurements show that those elevated levels trail off 

 rather rapidly as you move away from the barrels. In the technical 

 reports which we have made available there are figures which 

 show this behavior. This is part of our regulatory development 

 plan, to understand how the materials, once they leave the barrels, 

 are transported in the marine environment. 



So from that kind of work we have a fair picture of the kinds of 

 materials that were dumped there, and they're what we would 

 expect. They're the junk from laboratories, from hospital uses, 

 from production uses, weapons production activities in the early 

 years of the nuclear program. 



Mr. Hughes. If I could just go to another topic altogether, the 

 mandate of the EPA under the Ocean Dumping Act is to regulate 

 low-level radioactive waste disposal. Because we prohibit high-level 

 wastes, I think it's a fair assumption that EPA was to perhaps 

 make some findings to determine whether or not it would be in the 

 public interest to permit the dumping of low-level wastes not pro- 

 hibited by statute. 



What do you envision to be the responsibility of the Administra- 

 tor in developing a program for low-level waste dumping? What are 



