511 



How serious is the hazard? 



A rational approach to placing the severity of potential hazard in 

 perspective is to relate it to that due to naturally occurring 

 radioactivity. 



Nature has placed considerable quantities of toxic and radioactive 

 material in sea water, including such radionuclides as Uranium (10"3 

 parts per million), Radium (10-10 ppm) and Potassium-40 (.05 ppm).(2) 

 If one considers only the seawater column roughly defined by the Farallon 

 dumpsite ( ~10,000 km2,~i.o km deep), this defines a volume of lO^^ 

 cubic meters. Considering only the Radium content, one would expect a 

 total inventory in this volume of 1000 grams (1000 curies) of this 

 naturally occurring radionuclide. Via ingestion pathways (which are the 

 predominant route for human exposure in this case), this amount of Radium 

 is equivalent in toxicity to, for example, 4 tons (250,000 Ci) of 

 Plutonium-239. 



A similar perspective is obtained from considering the naturally occurring 

 Radium present in the sediments (10,000 km2 by 2 meter depth) contained 

 in the Farallon dumpsite. The radium content in these sediments amounts 

 to 6700 grams. This quantity of radium is equivalent in ingestion 

 toxicity to 26.8 tons (1,675,000 Ci) of Pu-239. 



According to WASH-734,(3) the total inventory of all radionuclides in 

 the Farallon dumpsite is 14,000 Ci, of which only 30 Ci consists of long 

 lived alpha activity. If all 30 curies were Plutonium-239 (a very 

 pessimistic assumption) or even if all 14,000 curies were Plutonium (a 

 completely absurd assumption), the hazard would still be trivial compared 

 to the naturally occurring Radium in the same area. It should also be 

 noted that Radium follows roughly the same exposure pathways and behaves 

 similarly to the transuranic elements toxicological ly. 



In brief, from a radiological standpoint, it would be inconsequential 

 whether the drums leak or not! 



" High-Level" versus "Low-Level" Wastes 



The assertion has been made that the nuclear wastes dumped at the 

 Farallons and other sites were not "low-level". This assertion is found 

 to be rather peculiar since there was not at the time, nor is there now, 

 any universally accepted definition for high or low-level wastes. There 

 have been, in fact, several suggested definitions, but as yet none are 

 official, or even generally accepted. 



In the nuclear industry, "high-level" waste is usually understood to be 

 the raffinates from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. Low-level 

 wastes are those produced from other sources. It should be pointed out, 

 however, that the term low-level waste does not necessarily imply low 

 hazard. 



In any case, whether the waste is high or low-level is somewhat irrelevant 

 from a public health standpoint. The important question is how much is 

 there? What is the total inventory? Estimates on the total quantity of 

 radioactivity present have been available for some time in WASH-734 and 

 other reports. Once in place, the semantic classification of the waste, 

 by itself, has little or no bearing on its environmental consequences. 



