Press Release

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Main findings

Recommendations

I. Introduction

II. National Primary Drinking Water Regulations – Radionuclides
A. Bone dose estimation in ICRP 2
B. Bone dose estimation, present-day dose conversion factors
1. Bone doses according to FGR 11
2. Bone doses according to FGR 13

III. Conclusions

IV. Costs

V. Estimating the impact of residual radioactivity

VI. Other risks and radionuclides

References

IV. Costs

Public water systems are not at present contaminated at or near the requested MCL for alpha-emitting, long-lived transuranic radionuclides. A strengthened alpha-TRU drinking water standard is preventive rather than remedial. Only a small, one-time cost for an initial set of baseline samples is anticipated for those water systems that draw water from sources that include DOE sites with significant plutonium waste or soil contamination in drainage areas. We recommend that this one-time cost be borne by the DOE.

Since no known contamination of public water systems above 0.15 picocuries per liter of alpha-emitting, long-lived transuranic radionuclides exists, no further action would be required of public water systems and no further costs would be incurred provided there is sufficiently thorough monitoring by the DOE, coupled with remediation programs that are suited to free release of the sites in the long term. This will be sufficient to protect downstream surface waters and underground water systems. The DOE is supposed to carry out such monitoring in any case and therefore no additional, ongoing monitoring costs are anticipated.

The Department of Energy, which is responsible for management of almost all the wastes and materials that pose risks of water contamination with alpha-emitting, long-lived transuranic radionuclides, is supposed to take adequate remedial action at sites like the Idaho National Laboratory, Hanford, the Savannah River Site, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. If it does so, no remediation costs for public water systems would be required under our recommended changes to the National Primary Drinking Water Regulations.

The costs of not tightening the standards would be to signal that remediation of nuclear weapons sites with large inventories of plutonium in the waste could proceed without adequate attention to safe drinking water health protection goals. DOE could then remediate these sites and declare them cleaned up without reference to a science-based drinking water standard that corresponds to current understanding of plutonium movement and irradiation of the human body. Finally, some remediation actions could, in the long run, pollute the water above drinking water standards, and worse, be irremediable. No known technology could remediate vast bodies of water such as the Savannah River or the Snake River Plan Aquifer if, once polluted, the aim is to reduce pollution from a few picocuries per liter to sub-picocurie per liter levels.