Posted on 13-5-2003

Neo-nuclear Nightmares
By Pratap Chatterjee, Special to CorpWatch, May 1, 2003 www.corpwatch.org

Intro, by Alan Marston

In the neo-classical tradition a problem (electricity supply in NZ) is
exploited as an opportunity, an opportunity to get something through the
door that has in the past been utterly rejected by the public who will have
to live, and die, with it - nuclear power. We are currently witness to
various authors suggestions as to the wonders of nuclear power and its
sure-fire potential to solve all New Zealand's electrical energy problems.
Well then, let's take a look at Bechtel's record in the USA as a major
supplier of nuclear powered electricity generation in the heartland of
neo-democracy, the USA.

Big Dig, Big Bucks

Last month, the San Francisco-based Bechtel Corporation won a $68 million
contract to rebuild Iraq following the devasation wrought by the US
invasion. Bechtel is notorious for having friends in high places, perhaps
explaning how they got the contract in the first place. The privately owned
corporation has operated with impunity, whether siphoning off millions of
taxpayer dollars from government contracts or poisoning the communities
surrounding their ventures. In the second part of our series we look at the
enviromental and human right impacts of just a few of Bechtel's operations.

San Onofre, California, has a 950-ton radioactive problem: a nuclear
reactor built by Bechtel that nobody wants. The unit was shut down over a
decade ago in 1992 by its owners, Southern California Edison, who preferred
not to spend $125 million in required safety upgrades.

The only place that will accept the reactor is a dump in South Carolina but
railway officials refused to transport the cargo across the country. The
next suggestion was to ship it via the Panama Canal but the canal operators
said no. So did the government of Chile when the power plant owners asked
for permission to take it around the Cape of Good Hope.

The only option left is to ship it all the way around the world, although
even that is looking unlikely as harbor officials in Charleston, South
Carolina, are already suggesting that they may deny the reactor entry.
Edison officials are currently desperately looking for a port that might
accept the toxic cargo before the dump shuts its doors in 2008.
Part of a Pattern

This is, by no means, the only nuclear headache created by Bechtel. The
company estimates that it has built 40% of the United States nuclear
capacity and 50% of nuclear power plants in the developing world. That
accounts for 1,200 reactor years at 150 nuclear power plants. Indeed,
Bechtel is still building nuclear reactors including the 1,450 megawatt
nuclear reactor in Qinshan, China.

In fact, the world's first nuclear reactor to generate electrical power was
completed just over 50 years ago by a team of Bechtel engineers in the
sagebrush desert of southeastern Idaho under contract to the federal
government. The 100-kilowatt EBR-1 was completed on December 21, 1951,
ushering in the dawn of commercial nuclear power. Bechtel was quick to
capitalize on its newfound nuclear expertise.

"Nobody doubted that nuclear energy could work. The real question was,
could anyone make a profit in it?" recall the authors of Bechtel: Building
a Century , the coffee table book that the company produced to mark the
company's 100th anniversary in 1998.

The question is deeply ironic for ratepayers in California who are still
paying for the financial bills and the environmental costs of the San
Onofre nuclear power plant, which has two reactors that are still
generating power.
Environmental Perils

The local environmental costs continue to mount every day as the plant
sucks in huge quantities of plankton, fish and even seals with the water to
cool the reactors. It is destroying miles of kelp on the seabed by
discharging water that is 25 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than ocean
temperature, according to Mark Massara, director of the Sierra Club's
coastal program.

"It's an unequivocal environmental and economic disaster with no redeeming
features whatsoever," Massara noted.

And Don May, the president of California Earth Corp who has been fighting
the plants since the 1960s, says that the future cost could be much higher
because there is a major fault line about two miles away that is overdue
for an earthquake. What worries him most is the fact that Bechtel installed
one of the reactors backwards.

"The way the reactor has been installed at the site means that the seismic
braces will exacerbate the impact of an earthquake rather than reduce it.
In addition the reactor walls have been worn down to half their original
thickness from constant bombardment." May explained. "If there is an
earthquake, Lord help us."

Bechtel admits that the reactor was installed backwards but that's about it.

"There was not and is not any increased seismic risk," says Jeff Berger, a
spokesman for Bechtel. "Bechtel, as the original constructor, would not be
aware of reactor wall thinning problems. In-service inspections are
typically conducted by the utility or subcontracted to the reactor
supplier," he added.

Several former employees at the plant who have developed cancer have also
sued Bechtel and plant owner Southern California Edison for exposure to
radiation. It's a story that has become depressingly familiar for dozens of
communities living downwind from nuclear plants that are seeing alarming
increases in cancer.
Profiting From the Problem

To date, there has been no convincing solution as to how to dispose of the
waste generated at these sites. As a result, for the last three decades no
new nuclear power stations have been built because of the massive public
opposition to such projects. Yet Bechtel's revenue from nuclear work in
this country is skyrocketing.

The answer to this apparent paradox may also be found in the sagebrush
deserts of southeastern Idaho where a new generation of Bechtel engineers
moved in almost exactly 50 years to the day after their predecessors began
work on the first commercial nuclear power plant.

This time the Bechtel team is in charge of managing and cleaning up the
toxic and radioactive mess left behind by the 52 reactors that have
littered the Idaho site in the past half-century as well as the 2 million
cubic feet of transuranic waste buried on site such as plutonium-covered
shoes, gloves and other tools used at the nuclear lab in Rocky Flats.
Colorado. The five-year contract is worth a cool $3 billion.

In the last decade Bechtel has earned billions of dollars from similar
contracts with the United States government to clean up the waste left
behind by five decades of civilian and military testing. From 1981 to 1999
Bechtel managed the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program
(FUSRAP), a federal program for the clean up of 46 sites contaminated with
hazardous, radioactive, or mixed wastes generated primarily by the nation's
early atomic weapons program.

In 1994 Bechtel became the "environmental restoration contractor" for 1,500
radioactive and hazardous waste sites and nearly 200 inactive facilities at
the former atomic weapons materials site at Hanford in Washington State. In
1996 the company won a chunk of the $6 billion contract to manage and clean
up the Savannah River nuclear weapons site in Aiken, South Carolina.

In 1997 Bechtel-Jacobs won a $2.5 billion five-year contract to manage
environmental cleanup in three government-owned uranium enrichment sites at
Portsmouth, Ohio, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Paducah, Kentucky. Overseas
Bechtel has won contracts to stabilize the concrete shelter that covers the
damaged Unit 4 reactor building of the Chernobyl nuclear power station in
Ukraine as well as contracts to build storage facilities for Russia's
dismantled nuclear warheads at the Mayak plutonium works near Chelyabinsk
in western Siberia.
Blemished Record

Bechtel claims in its literature that it is the "natural choice" for
nuclear work. Perhaps. It is, after all, the company with the most
experience in this field. Unfortunately Bechtel's record on nuclear clean
up is spotty.

For example the company's work cleaning up the mess after the nuclear
accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in the 1970s helped
make a bad situation worse. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC)
Office of Investigations found that Bechtel "improperly classified"
modifications to the plant as "not important to safety" in order to avoid
safety controls. In 1985, the NRC fined the two companies for harassing and
intimidating workers who complained about these lapses.

Meanwhile, last December Bechtel proudly announced it had finished cleaning
up trichloroethylene in the soil at the Paducah, Kentucky, site a year
ahead of schedule. The speed completion earned the company an award from
the Department of Energy. However, an embarrassed Bechtel spokesman
recently Greg Cook admitted that there were quality-assurance troubles at
the lab, which declared that the job was done, and that they would have to
re-check the results.

Local communities are already starting to object. Ronald Lamb, who lives
just two miles from the Bechtel managed facility and is a member of the
local Site Specific Advisory Board, complains that Bechtel refuses to turn
over even the most basic information about the contracts with the Board
itself.

"They've got an answer for just about any question you ask about how safe
everything is but they won't tell us how they are spending our tax money,"
Lamb said.

"My father died of cancer, my next door neighbor died with cancers behind
both eyes. Seventeen people have died of cancer in the 30 houses on the
next street and they are still studying what to do?"

Bechtel spokesperson Berger says that the company has done more than just
studies.

"We have established, with state and federal regulatory agencies, a new
approach that provides a more comprehensive evaluation of the site's
environmental media." Berger noted. "(We have also) disposed of roughly 20
percent of the site's total legacy waste, treated more than 350 million
gallons of contaminated groundwater, bringing contaminants down to within
Safe Drinking Water Act standards before release."

Bechtel also says it removed Drum Mountain, a 35-foot-tall pile of 85,000
rusted drums containing uranium tetrafluoride, at the Paducah site ahead of
schedule.

But the US Department of Energy agrees with some of what Lamb says. An
independent investigation into Bechtel's performance, completed by the
agency in October 1999, concluded: "The current radiation protection
program and some elements of worker safety programs do not exhibit the
required levels of discipline and formality."

"Further, there has been little progress in reducing or mitigating site
hazards or sources of environmental contamination. Weaknesses in hazard
controls are evident, ... oversight has not been sufficient, and
communication with stakeholders and workers has not been comprehensive and
responsive to stakeholder needs."

And Bechtel has a $5 billion ten-year contract to manage the Nevada test
site where the federal government has conducted over 1,000 nuclear tests.
Although the massive underground explosions that drew thousands of
protestors out to the desert town of Mercury, Nevada, are now over, Bechtel
is now helping the government conduct sub-critical nuclear tests.

Native Americans from the surrounding communities continue to fight to shut
down both the test site as well as the proposed Yucca Mountain dumpsite
that will be located within the property that Bechtel manages. Corbyn
Harney, a Western Shoshone elder who lives in the area, has been saying for
years, "These tests are a direct threat to our water and thus to all life
here in the desert."

So far, his complaints have fallen on deaf ears.