25 October 1979
SUBJECT:
Enewetak History - Decision to Clean Lujor Island to 80 pCi/qm
1. During the 3-4 May Enewetak Cleanup Conference tt was thought the Lujor
soi] contamination (of greater than 500 pCi/gm) could not be significantly
reduced because of its distribution. Yet it was undesirable to quarantine
the island of Lujor since it did not fit into a category of the new DOE
guidelines of 40/80/160 pCi/gm for living/agricultural/food gathering
islands. A decision was made to obtain a definition from DOE of an island
that is classified as having surface contamination between 160 and 400 pCi/gm.
It should be noted that Lujor was planned for use as an agricultural island and
to obtain that planned use 24,700 cubic yards of contaminated soilg
need to be removed.
The Bair Committee in their Report of April
made the following statement:
would
28, 1978
"A third priority should be the cleanup of picnic island half-hectare
areas exceeding (with 70% confidence) 160 pCi/g.
If resources are
exhausted, some islands may not be cleaned up; final dose assessment
may indicate that these islands will have to be permanently quarantined.
We note that the soil profile on Pearl is anomalous since the concentration
of transuranics appears to be uniform with depth.
We believe that the
possibility of effective cleanup for use as a village or agriculture
island is remote.
However, the possibility of covering Pearl with the
less contaminated soil from the village islands and, perhaps, from the
agricultural islands should be considered for lowering the average surface
contamination levels and reducing the logistics problem of transporting
the soil from the other islands to Runit."
2. After the Lujor debris removal it was noticed that the surface concentration
decreased considerably from previous levels. In SITREP No. 66 for the week of
August 14-20, 1978, it was stated that the existing condition of Lujor meets
Condition A (160 pCi/gm). The movement of heavy engineering equipment on
Lujor required to remove the contaminated debris appears to have churned up
the surface of the soil and mixed it with subsurface. The decrease in surface
level reading indicates that information available to the Bair Committee
Report was probably in error and the transuranic contamination was not uniform
with depth.
3. DOuring the February 12, 1979 Northern Island Fission Product Survey
Conference at FCDNA, Kirtland Air Force Base, it was learned that a large
estimating error was made in the quantity of contaminated soil stockpiled
on Runit awaiting placement in the Cactus Crater.
Since the project was
ahead of schedule and space was available in the Cactus Crater a decision
was made to clean Lujor down to agricultural level (80 pCi/gm) if possible.
4. The decision to clean Lujor was significant since originally Lujor was
considered too contaminated to clean without dedicating a great effcrt which
would have impacted the ability to clean up other hicher priority islands.
The cleanup of Lujor to an agricultural island was successfully completed
with the removal of 15,000 cubic yards.
.
Mr. Thomas P. Jeffers/OALG ©...
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