Nearly every creature that swims, walks or flies near the Paducah uranium plant carries unseen poisons that have escaped from the nuclear-fuel factory.
From the furtive mink to the darting sunfish to the soaring redtailed hawk, nature's denizens now have new, lifelong companions - chemical and radiological contamination, reports obtained by The Courier-Journal show.
Toxic chemicals have entered the Western Kentucky food chain, and abnormalities similar to birth defects have already shown up in at least one species.
A half-century of emitting, burying and dumping waste from the vast plant built to safeguard America has caused ecological damage for miles around, a 10-month investigation by the newspaper has found.
Streams, ponds, underground water, soil, plants and animals have been contaminated with some of the most dangerous chemicals known, including plutonium and dioxin.
The U.S. Department of Energy, Kentucky officials and the company that leases and runs the plant say environmental conditions at the site are improving. They note that polluted areas on plant grounds and in a surrounding wildlife area, which is used for hunting, fishing and camping, are marked and roped or fenced off.
And they have assured workers and the public that the contaminants pose no ''imminent'' danger.
''When I walk around that place, I am not worried for my health,'' said David Michaels, the assistant secretary of energy for the environment, safety and health. ''At present, it (the threat to public health and workers) is extremely low. And I'm comfortable and confident saying that.''
''I would not be afraid to live there,'' said Robert Logan, commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection.
But the official judgment on the contamination is being met with deep and mounting skepticism from many plant workers, environmentalists and residents - because much remains unknown about the extent of pollution and about past operations at the secretive plant, which was once part of the government's Cold War nuclear weapons complex.
''They are putting a soft spin on everything, the same as they've always done,'' said Merryman Kemp, a businesswoman who has lived in Paducah since 1965.
A member of a citizens' advisory board on the plant, she is worried that contamination is more widespread than is being admitted.
''I've been buying bottled water. I've quit eating the fruit off the two trees in my back yard,'' said Kemp, who lives about 10 miles from the plant. ''I'd like to move.''
BEYOND THE FENCE
Records show pollution didn't stay within plant
For nearly a year, The Courier-Journal has examined thousands of pages of public and secret government records obtained - through state and federal freedom-of-information laws - internal plant documents and files from lawsuits, and has interviewed state, federal and plant officials, scientists and community leaders. The findings include these:
= Fish studied by University of Kentucky scientists for at least 12 years show increasing contamination with various toxic metals. A 1998 UK report found that Big Bayou Creek and other streams near the plant contain 50 to 100 times as much lead as they did a decade earlier.
= Dioxin - the potent chemical that caused cancer among the residents of New York state's Love Canal neighborhood and was so prevalent in Times Beach, Mo., the town had to be destroyed - was found in soil samples from five drainage areas outside the plant fence in the early 1990s.
The levels at Paducah weren't on the scale of Love Canal or Times Beach, but they exceeded standards the state had set for the Energy Department. The contaminated soil is now stored at the plant in more than 11,000 55-gallon drums, most of which are buried.
= Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), which cause cancer and other diseases in animals and possibly in humans, have been found at levels ranging from traces to significant concentrations in fish, hawks, mice, rats, mink, raccoons and a bobcat.
= Incomplete records suggest that almost 9 ounces of highly radioactive plutonium were released into the air and water and buried at the plant, greater than the amounts released at most other Department of Energy nuclear sites. Traces of plutonium and neptunium were found in soil samples 11 years ago as far as nine miles from the plant, and traces of neptunium were found in apples, but there apparently was no further investigation.
= Streams that flow off site are now believed to be carrying small amounts of radioactive material into the Ohio River, the DOE recently conceded. Though diluted by the Ohio's huge flow, radioactive substances may build up in sediment and enter the food chain.
= Underground, three plumes of water contaminated with trichloroethylene, a suspected carcinogen, and radioactive technetium are spreading northward from the plant, and one is believed to have reached the river. Traces of contaminants have penetrated as far as 14 stories below ground.
The Paducah plant is not the worst of the sites on the nation's Superfund list - a sort of Fortune 500 of environmental problems - at least based on what is now known.
But there are gaping holes in the Energy Department's data about pollution. For example, the DOE acknowledged last summer in its plan for attacking surface-water contamination that ''documentation pertaining to specific releases from the (plant's) storm sewer system currently is not available.''
In a February letter, the Environmental Protection Agency called the lack of information on the ''primary pathways for contaminants . . . completely inappropriate.''
A former top Energy Department official said he thinks the agency is concealing dangers to workers and the public. The DOE thinks it can get away with this, charged Robert Alvarez, a consultant who was formerly a senior adviser to Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, because it perceives Paducah as comparatively remote, geographically and politically.
''I would apply what I call the East Hampton test to this,'' said Alvarez, referring to the swank summer resort of the rich and powerful on New York's Long Island.
''If you found this in East Hampton, do you think there would be 'no imminent danger?' ''
209 TROUBLE SPOTS
'The place is unique,'
U.S. energy official says
Over the decades, contaminants spread from the plant through wholesale dumping and discharges of radioactive and other hazardous waste into the air and water.
So far, 209 contaminated sites have been located on plant grounds and nearby land. Earlier this year a contractor strung 11 miles of rope to warn of radioactive debris dumped in the neighboring West Kentucky Wildlife Management Area.
Wendell Seaborg, who became the DOE site manager in Paducah this year, said, ''The place is unique in my experience because there was contamination in an area where the public had access.''
Paducah veterinarian Johnny Myers, who runs retrievers in the wildlife area, said concerns about the contamination contributed to a 50 percent drop in attendance at a recent dog field trial.
He worries the area will be closed if the government doesn't clean it up. ''We have a gold mine here,'' he said.
David Evans has the same fear. Evans said he has trained dogs in the wildlife ara for years and has not been concerned about pollution.
He worked at the plant for seven years and his father worked there for about 30 years.
''If they show me proof of a danger, then I'd be thinking about it,'' he said. ''My major concern is that it could close. It's the only area available to work dogs.''
Disposal practices considered acceptable in the 1950s, 1960s and even into the 1970s were looser than they are today. Indeed, the dumping dated to the operations of the Kentucky Ordnance Works, an ammunition plant, on the same site during World War II. It left chunks of TNT behind.
The TNT, spread over ''a few acres'' in the wildlife area, is now fenced off. It is ''pretty stable'' but would ignite if heated, said Gary Chisholm of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' district office in Louisville. ''You just don't want kids or hunters picking the stuff up or walking home with it. ''
After the uranium plant opened, radioactive and hazardous waste, including uranium and asbestos, went into what had been a dump for construction debris, according to an Energy Department draft report dated June 1, 2000.
Air and water pollution were not much of a concern in the plant's first decades, either. All kinds of chemicals flowed into the streams from what eventually totaled 19 pipes and ditches. For example, in a report released in February on past practices at Paducah, the Energy Department said tritium, a radioactive substance used in nuclear-bomb triggers, had been found in 1991 in five drainage flows.
The report also said contaminated gases were released for decades. ''The magnitude of these unmonitored releases is unknown,'' the DOE said. Past estimates of how much radiation reached the public are clearly ''questionable, '' it said.
The DOE estimated, however, that 66 tons of uranium spewed from the stacks between 1952 and 1990. Although uranium is a millionth as radioactive as plutonium, it's also a toxic metal that can harm the kidneys.
The agency also said radioactively contaminated emissions apparently had been discharged into the air at night, when they were less visible.
Dumping, burying and discharging wastes on the plant grounds, plus major leaks under buildings, created another path of contamination - into the ground water.
The underground plumes of polluted water have become well-known to hydrologists and geologists nationwide as ''the mother of all plumes,'' said Jack Stickney, a geologist with the Kentucky Geological Survey.
The chief contaminants in the plumes are trichloroethylene (TCE), a degreasing solvent that can break down into even more toxic substances such as vinyl chloride; and technetium, a radioactive element.
TCE, the Energy Department's Michaels said, is ''probably of greater concern than the radioactivity in some cases.''
A June 1999 investigation conducted for DOE found severe contamination in the ground at four places around a repair and machine shop at the plant. The sites pose risks of cancer and toxicity that ''exceed the accepted standards'' of the state and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the investigators wrote.
They found TCE, PCBs, neptunium, cesium, beryllium and other toxic metals. In two of the areas - one a fifth of a mile long and another a sixth of a mile long - more than 6.3 million cubic feet of soil was estimated to be contaminated, enough to fill about the first 17 floors of the 102-story Empire State Building. One boring found toxic metals in soil below the water table at levels as much as 400 times normal.
Contaminants also have been spread in other ways, according to three current employees who filed a whistle-blower lawsuit last year. They allege that radioactive salt was used to melt ice on roads, employees tracked contamination off the site to their cars and homes, and vehicles transported radioactive materials right into the heart of Paducah.
New standards, monitoring and controls, as well as technological improvements, have decreased pollution from the plant, although it still occurs and sometimes exceeds what is allowed under permits from the state.
Earlier this month, the state cited United States Enrichment Corp., which leases and operates the plant, for high levels of toxic chemicals at three discharge points outside the plant fence. The releases, checked during March and April, were six to 27 times the state-allowed toxicity.
USEC must determine what is causing the high readings and report to the state by mid July.
INCREASING EFFECTS
'Nearly every fish . . . shows signs of contamination'
The contamination reaches into nearly every organism near the Paducah plant that has been tested.
Fish, for example, have been studied for at least 12 years. And the contamination in those fish is generally rising, UK studies show.
''Nearly every fish we looked at shows signs of contamination,'' said Wesley Birge of the University of Kentucky's School of Biological Sciences.
A 1998 report on stoneroller minnows near the plant found that ''metal pollution in the Bayou Creek system, especially Big Bayou Creek, now exceeds by a considerable margin that reported in 1988.''
At one site of plant effluents, not one minnow embryo survived.
The report said a host of metals - beryllium, cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, nickel, silver and zinc - are moving downstream and were found in the fish at levels higher than in 1988. A study of the underwater vegetation minnows eat found high metal concentrations.
The DOE's annual environmental report for 1998 noted that polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), ''the highest potential ecological concern to fish-eating birds and mammals,'' were present in sunfish and stonerollers at twice the level in fish from a less polluted creek farther from the plant, meaning the PCBs were coming from the plant. Copper, lead, selenium and uranium also were found in the fish.
The DOE report said PCB levels in fish in Little Bayou Creek ''continue to be low.'' But fish the state recently sampled in the area had almost 10 times the state PCB standard for fish that can be safely eaten, said Albert Westerman, a branch manager in the Kentucky Division of Environmental Services.
Another UK study in 1998 found that PCBs were moving through the food chain. Some red-tailed hawks contained enough of those chemicals to perhaps decrease the hawk population in the plant area. A 1997 Clemson University study showed that white-footed mice and marsh rice rats collected around the uranium plant also contained PCBs. The contamination also showed up in the livers and kidneys of minks.
PCBs also have been found in raccoons and a bobcat. Copper, iron, manganese and zinc have been detected in rabbits. The muscles and livers of some deer have revealed exposure to silver, beryllium, nickel and vanadium.
Radioactive material, too, has been found in animals on the site and around the plant. A 1990 DOE inspection report states that trace quantities of neptunium were found in deer, rabbits, and squirrels. Other annual environmental reports tell of finding uranium, strontium, technetium and, starting in 1993, plutonium in deer.
The 1998 UK minnow study found so much toxic metal in the water and sediment of streams near the plant that ''metal pollution may pose a threat to environmental health as far downstream as the Bayou Creek confluence with the Ohio River.'' Such spreading contamination should be given ''high priority,'' the study said.
The implications for life in the Ohio River are obvious, said Birge, one of the authors of the minnow study.
''There's little doubt the Ohio River is receiving contaminants,'' he said. ''That means you will see further downstream sediment contamination in fish.''
Most ominous are the abnormalities found in one type of tiny insect.
A 1992 environmental report by UK said that places where eyes form on the larvae of midges sometimes weren't properly defined, were fused together or were missing. In some cases, the eyes were forming in the wrong places, the study found.
''In humans, we would call it birth defects,'' Birge said.
At one location on Big Bayou Creek, a third of the larvae had eyespot abnormalities. At six other locations, between 6 percent and 17 percent of larvae were abnormal.
But no studies have been done around Paducah to determine whether the pollution is causing genetic mutations, Birge said. That would be more serious, because animals pass such changes on to their offspring.
The DOE's Michaels said in an interview that the contamination is insufficient to have a significant impact on wildlife.
''My sense is that none of the exposures are at any level where we can expect any sort of genetic shift in the biota, in the flora and the fauna,'' said Michaels, who is an epidemiologist with 20 years' experience dealing with occupational- and environmental-health issues.
''I think the bigger concern is that the contamination of either animals or plants will lead to human disease. And that's the reason we try to control that.''
DIOXIN
Toxin-laced wood drew
salvage hunters to dump
One of the most deadly carcinogens known also has leached from the plant.
Dioxin was in wood preservative used on the redwood linings of cooling towers at the Paducah plant, according to Greg Cook, spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs Co., the DOE's environmental contractor.
Records of 1986 tests on the wood show dioxin was not one of the substances looked for. The wood was put in landfills at the plant.
The landfills were accessible to the public and the dioxinlaced redwood ''attracted salvaging from the public and possibly workers,'' said the Energy Department's June 1 draft report.
The dioxin from the wood had contaminated enough soil at four plant sites by 1990 that the state required the soil to be excavated and put in drums. The dirt contained as much as 4.5 times the dioxin that the state allowed.
Of the more than 11,000 barrels of dioxin-contaminated soil, about 3,000 are stored above ground, primarily because they also contain radioactive contaminants. The rest of the drums of soil were crushed and put into a landfill at the plant.
USEC checked for dioxin in its effluents in 1994, 1997 and 1999 and found nothing, according to company spokeswoman Georgann Lookofsky.
Bechtel's Cook said the Energy Department has found no spread of dioxin contamination, either.
Animal studies have shown that even at extremely low levels, in parts per trillion, dioxin causes reproductive and immunological disorders as well as damage to growth glands and the liver.
PLUTONIUM
9 ounces are missing; traces are in soil, water
Eleven years ago, traces of plutonium and another highly radioactive element, neptunium, were detected in soil 8 miles and 9.3 miles from the site.
The samples were taken at locations south and west of the plant. The wind rarely blows in those directions over the plant. No samples were taken at similar distances in other directions from the plant.
A 1990 internal memo from DOE's Oak Ridge office said ''the significance of trace quantities of transuranics in the environment did not appear to have been fully evaluated.''
The memo said traces of neptunium also were found in apples grown nearby. Radioactive substances also have shown up in vegetable gardens and crops near the plant. In 1992 Kentucky scientists detected radioactive technetium in turnip greens, beets, lettuce, brussels sprouts, tomatoes, corn and squash.
Plutonium, often referred to as the world's deadliest poison, came into Paducah in minute quantities as an accidental byproduct of ''impure'' uranium that had been used to fuel reactors that made plutonium at other DOE facilities. The DOE estimated the total amount of plutonium at Paducah through the years at 328 grams, or 11.6 ounces.
The whereabouts of threequarters of that plutonium, almost 9 ounces, is unknown, other than evidence of it in the environment.
In its February report on Paducah, the DOE acknowledged that plutonium and neptunium were released into surface water, especially from 1956 to 1970, and that the amounts were ''significantly'' underestimated. The department did not say by how much.
Traces of plutonium also were found in ground water outside the plant fence, the DOE said last October.
The February report said plutonium and neptunium also could have been released into the air, though such releases were ''considered to be insignificant.'' However, the DOE has said there was no specific monitoring for air emissions of those two elements.
The 11.6 ounces of plutonium that passed through the plant is what could reasonably be inferred from the plant's poor record-keeping. Alvarez said that number is just a guess. A draft DOE report obtained this month by The Courier-Journal, however, said a new analysis confirmed the accuracy of the earlier estimate.
Plutonium is so dangerous that inhaling as little as 3 millionths of an ounce - the weight of just one of 6,250 equal slices of an aspirin tablet - would guarantee fatal lung cancer in a human being.
Put another way, the 11.6 ounces of plutonium known to have passed through the Paducah plant was enough to kill more than 4.1 million people - more than all the men, women and children in Kentucky - if they each had inhaled just that speck.
''You can expect that there was probably some exposure to the public from these radionuclides that was avoidable,'' said Edwin Lyman, scientific director at the Nuclear Control Institute, a non-profit research organization based in Washington.
''It doesn't matter how little plutonium there is in the body; no one wants it there. Once you inhale it, it's there for a long time and gets incorporated into the bones.''
This creek is closed off - though the gate was open in May - because of radiation. And that's not the only problem in streams: University of Kentucky scientists found the lead level multiplying.
Caption: Hummingbirds, insects, raccoons and turtles are among the creatures that live in a wildlife area contaminated by toxins spreading from the plant.
GRAPHIC: BY JAMES MALONE, THE COURIER-JOURNAL *****
***** The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY.) June 26, 2000, Monday MET/METRO SECTION: NEWS Pg.09a HEADLINE: Cold War Poison; The Paducah legacy; Cleanup: Elusive, terribly expensive Current plan excludes some enormous tasks BYLINE: JAMES R. CARROLL, The Courier-Journal SOURCE: STAFF DATELINE: PADUCAH, Ky.
By the time the 3,400-acre Paducah uranium-plant site is cleaned up, people will most likely have set foot on Mars.
The United States will most certainly have had a woman president.
And cancer will likely have been conquered.
The U.S. Department of Energy, or whatever it's called by then, says that in 2070 it will still be watching over at least parts of the vast complex.
The Energy Department or contract employees will be cutting the grass and fixing fences, and, more important, monitoring the barren property for residual contamination from operations begun 118 years before to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons and power plants.
The stark fact is that the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant isn't likely to be cleaned up, in the way most people understand the term, by the 2010 deadline. And it's not going to be anything more than an industrial site for decades to come.
The DOE has estimated it will cost $ 1.3 billion to eliminate all the contamination. Federal investigators recently questioned that estimate after finding that it left out much cleanup work. And state officials privately say that figure could more than triple.
Putting a final price tag on the cleanup will be impossible until officials know exactly what is on the site; whether it is spreading; what danger it poses; and what can be done to stop the contamination and to mitigate any environmental effects.
''There has been no thorough, independent review of the extent of air, land and water contamination,'' said, an environmental lawyer and director of the Kentucky Resources Council. And that's the only way to know that the cleanup would fully protect off-site areas, he said.
Further complicating matters is the fact that significant portions of the contamination can't be attacked until the plant closes. Also, there are questions about the effectiveness of some cleanup methods.
''You're dealing with waste materials that will continue to be a significant environmental problem well beyond our lives,'' FitzGerald said.
DEADLINES, DOLLARS
Critics say DOE budgets too little time, money
The 2010 deadline the state has set for the Energy Department to clean up the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant is the date by which Kentucky wants contaminated scrap metal and other waste removed, vacant buildings knocked down, buried waste hauled away and sources of pollution attacked.
Yet even if all that happens - a question mark in itself - the whole cleanup job at Paducah is very likely going to take much longer.
Right now, the scope, cost and length of the cleanup at Paducah are only partially known. All of those factors - but especially cost - are going to dictate the pace of the cleanup work.
The DOE estimates that repairing the vast environmental damage will cost $ 1.3 billion. That includes removing or containing contamination of the ground water, surface water, soil and buried wastes, as well as treating and disposing of 52,000 drums of mixed waste, and decontaminating and demolishing two large, unused buildings.
The state puts the number at $ 2 billion, adding in the cost of treating and removing 37,000 cylinders of depleted uranium now stored at the site. In the end, though, some officials in Frankfort say, the final cost of cleanup could be as much as $ 4 billion.
''Dollars are what's gonna talk,'' said Rob Daniel, director of the state's Division of Waste Management, who said spending will need to be ''well over $ 100 million a year.''
So far, the nearly $ 400 million in federal money spent on cleanup at the site has cleaned up almost nothing. According to the Energy Department, much of that spending went to finding out what contaminants are at the site, and to trying to contain the most serious threats to worker and public health, like treatment of the plumes of ground water fouled with trichloroethylene and radioactive technetium.
Critics say too much time has been lost, allowing contaminants to spread.
''The problem is serious,'' acknowledged Wendell Seaborg, the DOE's site manager at Paducah. ''We may have tried too hard to know too much when we got started.''
Now, under pressure from a very dissatisfied and impatient Kentucky delegation in Congress, the Clinton administration has begun funneling more money to Paducah with the aim of achieving noticeable cleanup at a site that has been sickening workers and contaminating the soil, water, air, animals and plants for almost five decades.
The first visible result of that increased spending is the start of the removal of Drum Mountain, a vast, 8,000-ton pile of crushed and contaminated barrels. The work began Friday.
But congressional investigators and Kentucky officials say still more money is needed to meet the 2010 deadline. The General Accounting Office, the non-partisan auditing arm of Congress, says that $ 124 million a year is needed, almost $ 50 million more than will be spent this year.
''2010 is realistic with a significant increase of federal funding for the cleanup job and increased focus from the Department of Energy,'' said Jack Conway, who heads Gov. Paul Patton's interagency task force on the Paducah plant.''
GLARING OMISSIONS
Cleanup plan leaves out some enormous problems
Even if the 2010 deadline is met, the plant site would not really be clean.
The plant continues to produce radioactive waste and other contaminants, and the cavernous buildings and huge gaseous-diffusion equipment would eventually have to be cleaned and removed - at an estimated cost of $ 1 billion.
And as long as the plant continues to operate, it may be impossible to reach the source of the contaminants leaking into the ground water. That source is believed to be under a building still in use.
Federal and state officials also have deep disagreements - some of them being fought out in court - over how ''clean'' the Paducah site should be.
The Energy Department and the state, for example, disagree over what level of radioactivity would be acceptable after the site is cleaned up. The DOE wants to leave some waste that the state wants removed.
There are numerous other items that are not reflected in the Energy Department cleanup plans but were found earlier this year by investigators from the General Accounting Office:
= The 496,000 tons of uranium hexafluoride stored in canisters on the site need to be converted to a more stable form and removed. The cost to build and operate a conversion facility is estimated at $ 1.8 billion to $ 2.4 billion. The conversion process itself would take almost 25 years.
= Sixteen unused buildings and structures have to be cleaned and removed. There are no cost or schedule estimates for such work.
= A million cubic feet of scrap metal and waste stored all over the plant must be treated and removed.
John Volpe, the state's top radiation-control official, said the buildings, scrap and waste could be cleaned up by the 2010 deadline - if the DOE put that work on a fast track.
WILL METHODS WORK?
Intended technology is unproven, GAO says
The GAO auditors also said some cleanup projections relied on unproven technology - for example, a plan to inject a gummy gel into the ground to intercept contaminated water underground.
If this new treatment doesn't work as planned, it actually could change the trichloroethylene (TCE), one of the two major contaminants in the water, into vinyl chloride, an even more toxic substance.
Another project calls for injecting steam underground to force the TCE back to the surface. Environmental Protection Agency officials told congressional auditors of problems with this technology at another site and said they weren't sure whether the geology under the Paducah plant would let it work there.
Existing efforts to remove contamination have already fallen short.
The ''pump and treat'' system that brings contaminated water to the surface, cleans it, then puts it back into the ground, didn't halt the flow of TCE and radioactive technetium to the Ohio River, nor did it stop the underground contaminants from spreading into surface streams.
Even if some of these technologies ultimately succeed, options for future uses of the site appear limited.
''This will never be an industrial site that will be . . . cleaned up where the general public would be interested in it,'' said Ric Ladt, chairman of the Paducah Area Community Reuse Organization, who emphasized he was speaking only for himself and not for his federally funded economic-development organization.
The property could remain a uranium-enrichment plant, become some type of metal-recycling facility, or a place for heavy manufacturing that could use some of the buildings or materials already there, Ladt said.
Other possibilities include wastewater treatment or power generation, he said. *****