www.nytimes.com/2006/11/12...nions/12LI-
By KELLY MCMASTERS
> Published: November 12, 2006
> AT the geographic center of Long Island, just
> before the fish tail splits, three plumes of
> radioactive tritium snake through the earth. These
> plumes extend from soil beneath Brookhaven
> National Laboratory, where they originated during
> experiments involving one of the lab's nuclear
> reactors in the late 1990s, and travel by
> groundwater east and south.
>
> The United States Department of Energy, which owns
> the Brookhaven lab, recently posted a legal notice
> in local newspapers requesting public comment on
> some options for cleanup. The department offered
> five plans for the public to consider, from simply
> monitoring the plumes to digging up the
> contaminated soil and shipping it to an
> undisclosed location. The department recommends
> monitoring to be sure the plumes shrink over the
> next decade as predicted. And if they don't?
> "Additional actions will be evaluated."
>
> The department's notice directed readers to a Web
> site. Two maps there are particularly educational.
> The first is called Operable Units and Areas of
> Concern. It highlights 30 sites on the lab's
> campus, including Graphite Research Reactor spill
> sites, a Building 830 pipe leak and a Particle
> Beam Dump. There is also the 123-acre stand of
> pines and oaks known as the Gamma Forest, which
> was irradiated with cesium-137 between 1961 and
> 1979 in order to research the effects of radiation
> on plants.
>
> In other words, the map charts decades of
> accidental leaks and spills and intentional
> releases of radiation, most of which issued from
> the site's two decommissioned reactors. (Two other
> reactors remain operational.)
>
> The second map outlines groundwater flow from the
> lab; two bright blue arrows point east toward the
> Hamptons, and six point south directly at Shirley,
> a mostly blue-collar community to the south that
> shares the Hamptons' beautiful coastline but none
> of their social cachet.
>
> I grew up in Shirley. As a child there in the
> 1980s, I was fascinated by the lab, partly because
> the neighborhood fathers who worked there - most
> of them in support and service positions - traded
> jokes about glowing in the dark. Today, the jokes
> have turned sour.
>
> A class action lawsuit has been filed against the
> Brookhaven lab, and most of the plaintiffs are
> from the Shirley area. The complaints range from
> depressed real estate values as a result of living
> in a contaminated area to the claim that cancers
> and other illnesses have resulted from the
> laboratory's pollution. A children's cancer
> cluster - by 2000 there were 19 children in the
> area afflicted by a rare soft-tissue cancer -
> rings the lab like a necklace.
>
> The plaintiffs' lawyer is Richard J. Lippes, who
> fought and won the Love Canal case near Buffalo in
> the 1970s. The Shirley case has been going on for
> more than a decade already. During that time, the
> lab has managed to clean up almost all of the
> nuclear and chemical pollution flowing east toward
> the Hamptons while largely ignoring Shirley.
>
> When Brookhaven was constructed in 1947, Shirley
> didn't exist; most of the East End of Long Island
> was covered in potato farms and brush. It was this
> isolation - the thick cover of pines and distance
> from large populations - that made the site
> attractive to scientists engaged in such
> inherently dangerous research.
>
> Sixty years later, the laboratory is still hidden
> away in the middle of the Pine Barrens, but
> beneath it lies an aquifer that is one of the
> nation's largest single sources of drinking water,
> serving nearly three million people.
>
> I understand that the lab is worthy of
> celebration - six Nobel Prizes have been won by
> scientists associated with Brookhaven. I also unde
> rstand that much of the work the lab conducts,
> including medical research into addiction and
> cancer, is vitally important. But over the six
> decades the lab has been on Long Island, a dense
> population has crowded around it.
>
> Meanwhile, the lab released radioactive tritium,
> cesium, europium, radium, strontium, plutonium and
> several known carcinogens into the environment.
> Cancer rates on Long Island have soared without
> explanation. For many of these cancers, including
> breast cancer, the only proven cause, aside from
> genetic predisposition, is exposure to radiation.
>
> With all that in mind, I would like to suggest my
> own plan for Brookhaven's cleanup. Let's call it
> Option 6: Close the remaining two nuclear reactors
> on the Brookhaven National Laboratory property. It
> is time.
>
> Nuclear reactors made sense in the 1940s when most
> of Long Island was brush and pines. But it makes
> no sense to house them in a dense residential area
> where so many lives are at risk and mistakes -
> radioactive, potentially cancer-causing mistakes -
> continue to be made. Shut them down.
>
> Kelly McMasters, who teaches creative writing at
> Columbia, is writing a book about the hamlet of
> Shirley.
>
By KELLY MCMASTERS
> Published: November 12, 2006
> AT the geographic center of Long Island, just
> before the fish tail splits, three plumes of
> radioactive tritium snake through the earth. These
> plumes extend from soil beneath Brookhaven
> National Laboratory, where they originated during
> experiments involving one of the lab's nuclear
> reactors in the late 1990s, and travel by
> groundwater east and south.
>
> The United States Department of Energy, which owns
> the Brookhaven lab, recently posted a legal notice
> in local newspapers requesting public comment on
> some options for cleanup. The department offered
> five plans for the public to consider, from simply
> monitoring the plumes to digging up the
> contaminated soil and shipping it to an
> undisclosed location. The department recommends
> monitoring to be sure the plumes shrink over the
> next decade as predicted. And if they don't?
> "Additional actions will be evaluated."
>
> The department's notice directed readers to a Web
> site. Two maps there are particularly educational.
> The first is called Operable Units and Areas of
> Concern. It highlights 30 sites on the lab's
> campus, including Graphite Research Reactor spill
> sites, a Building 830 pipe leak and a Particle
> Beam Dump. There is also the 123-acre stand of
> pines and oaks known as the Gamma Forest, which
> was irradiated with cesium-137 between 1961 and
> 1979 in order to research the effects of radiation
> on plants.
>
> In other words, the map charts decades of
> accidental leaks and spills and intentional
> releases of radiation, most of which issued from
> the site's two decommissioned reactors. (Two other
> reactors remain operational.)
>
> The second map outlines groundwater flow from the
> lab; two bright blue arrows point east toward the
> Hamptons, and six point south directly at Shirley,
> a mostly blue-collar community to the south that
> shares the Hamptons' beautiful coastline but none
> of their social cachet.
>
> I grew up in Shirley. As a child there in the
> 1980s, I was fascinated by the lab, partly because
> the neighborhood fathers who worked there - most
> of them in support and service positions - traded
> jokes about glowing in the dark. Today, the jokes
> have turned sour.
>
> A class action lawsuit has been filed against the
> Brookhaven lab, and most of the plaintiffs are
> from the Shirley area. The complaints range from
> depressed real estate values as a result of living
> in a contaminated area to the claim that cancers
> and other illnesses have resulted from the
> laboratory's pollution. A children's cancer
> cluster - by 2000 there were 19 children in the
> area afflicted by a rare soft-tissue cancer -
> rings the lab like a necklace.
>
> The plaintiffs' lawyer is Richard J. Lippes, who
> fought and won the Love Canal case near Buffalo in
> the 1970s. The Shirley case has been going on for
> more than a decade already. During that time, the
> lab has managed to clean up almost all of the
> nuclear and chemical pollution flowing east toward
> the Hamptons while largely ignoring Shirley.
>
> When Brookhaven was constructed in 1947, Shirley
> didn't exist; most of the East End of Long Island
> was covered in potato farms and brush. It was this
> isolation - the thick cover of pines and distance
> from large populations - that made the site
> attractive to scientists engaged in such
> inherently dangerous research.
>
> Sixty years later, the laboratory is still hidden
> away in the middle of the Pine Barrens, but
> beneath it lies an aquifer that is one of the
> nation's largest single sources of drinking water,
> serving nearly three million people.
>
> I understand that the lab is worthy of
> celebration - six Nobel Prizes have been won by
> scientists associated with Brookhaven. I also unde
> rstand that much of the work the lab conducts,
> including medical research into addiction and
> cancer, is vitally important. But over the six
> decades the lab has been on Long Island, a dense
> population has crowded around it.
>
> Meanwhile, the lab released radioactive tritium,
> cesium, europium, radium, strontium, plutonium and
> several known carcinogens into the environment.
> Cancer rates on Long Island have soared without
> explanation. For many of these cancers, including
> breast cancer, the only proven cause, aside from
> genetic predisposition, is exposure to radiation.
>
> With all that in mind, I would like to suggest my
> own plan for Brookhaven's cleanup. Let's call it
> Option 6: Close the remaining two nuclear reactors
> on the Brookhaven National Laboratory property. It
> is time.
>
> Nuclear reactors made sense in the 1940s when most
> of Long Island was brush and pines. But it makes
> no sense to house them in a dense residential area
> where so many lives are at risk and mistakes -
> radioactive, potentially cancer-causing mistakes -
> continue to be made. Shut them down.
>
> Kelly McMasters, who teaches creative writing at
> Columbia, is writing a book about the hamlet of
> Shirley.
>
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