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Where is Hicksville? and is Sylvania nuclear fuel plant different from a power plant?

http://www.newsday.com/business/printedition/ny-bzhick0509,0,1033837.story

Key Evidence in Nuclear Plant Case Missing

By Mark Harrington
Staff Writer

May 9, 2003

Lawyers for Verizon Communications Inc. told a judge they can’t find about 200,000 pages of documents that Hicksville residents say are crucial evidence in lawsuits that claim a former Sylvania nuclear fuel plant in their neighborhood operated secretly and unsafely and caused chronic illnesses.

In a May 7 letter to U.S. Magistrate Judge Arlene Lindsay in Central Islip, Verizon and its predecessor companies acknowledged they couldn’t find the records even though the 97 boxes were methodically cataloged in 1992, and had been stored for 30 years.

Lawyers for 200 former and current residents asserted many of the documents were labeled "permanent," meaning that they should never have been destroyed or required approvals in triplicate to do so. They called for a delay of the trial and an investigation.

Verizon is footing the unspecified bill for a cleanup that began in earnest this month at the site next to Cantiague State Park. Sylvania and its successor, GTE, which merged with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon in 2000, acknowledge the plant produced nuclear fuel rods in the 1950s and 1960s, but they say there are no current health risks. Residents filed suit in 2002 after the Department of Energy released studies outlining the extent of the nuclear fuel work, including that in Hicksville. Hundreds of homes are near the site in surrounding residential neighborhoods.

William Pratt, a lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis in Manhattan who represents Verizon and other Sylvania-successor companies, including GTE, called the request to delay the trial to investigate the loss a "meritless diversion." He noted the company had already provided 200,000 pages of documents to the residents’ lawyers, and he rebuffed their suggestions that the documents disappeared as state and federal authorities were preparing to investigate the site in the mid 1990s.

Pratt wrote "... As time passes and circumstances change, the likelihood increases of old documents being misplaced."

Lawyers for residents pointed out that the documents were known to exist in 1992 but disappeared sometime before investigators began asking for them in 1996. Pratt confirmed that the New York Department of Environmental Conservation during a 1996 probe of the facility requested documents related to Sylvania from GTE Corp. . The agency was told "that GTE either had not been able to locate documents or did not find the requested information in the documents available at that time."

Sylvania, which was acquired by General Telephone to become GTE in 1959, operated the plant from 1952 to 1966.

James Bogard, the nuclear material specialist at Oak Ridge National Lab who conducted a federal review of the site in 1994 to clear it for occupancy, said radiation levels were high but posed little risk, except if particles were breathed. Sylvania routinely incinerated uranium shavings in the open air behind the plant, according to a Stuart Opdahl, a former worker who testified in the case.

Matt Burns, a spokesman for the DEC, said Wednesday that the department was "not aware of any evidence to support the claim of any missing documents" during the DEC’s probe. He didn’t return calls yesterday.

NRC spokesman Dave McIntyre said that agency’s probe was done using files the NRC had in its own records and "would not have involved documents from the company."

Verizon and the DEC said there are no current health risks at the site, and that the residents’ lawsuits seeking $1.5 billion in damages are without merit. "We have found nothing to support the allegations in the lawsuits," said Sharon Hagar-Cohen, Verizon’s spokeswoman.

According to the DEC, around 90 cubic yards of contaminated soil were removed from the site in 1986. It’s unknown whether the DEC required that the previous excavation underwent the same procedures surrounding the current soil removal, which is being done inside large plastic tents with soil transferred to Utah by train in special sealed cars.

You said it was a Newsday article in the Afghan caves? They did follow the story on Sylvania nuclear fuel plant. See my post: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1013726/posts?page=9213#9213

And this one:

http://www.newsday.com/business/printedition/ny-bzbnl0509,0,506302,print.story

Memos Show Plant Shipped Tainted Goods

By Mark Harrington
Staff Writer

May 9, 2003

In October 1965 Brookhaven Lab staffers were kicking the tires on used equipment at the former Sylvania Electric nuclear fuel production facility in Hicksville when the first red flags were raised.

They discovered that a forklift, truck, a large boiler and even cafeteria tables -- items they were planning to ship back to Brookhaven -- all exhibited elevated levels of uranium contamination, according to BNL memos obtained by Newsday.

"Cafeteria equipment was stored adjacent to grossly contaminated equipment," wrote a BNL staffer. Worse, some items BNL did not test already had been sent to other companies and the Hicksville School District, which received lockers, floor waxers, ladders and fire equipment. It's unclear which schools took the items, or if it contained similar levels of uranium contamination, which BNL officials stress is low-risk. A Hicksville school district spokeswoman didn't return a call seeking comment. Former superintendent Edward Finn referred questions back to the district.

Verizon, which now owns the facility and has begun overseeing its cleanup, said there's nothing to indicate children were at risk.

"The suggestion that Sylvania sent materials to a school that were hazardous to the health of schoolchildren is without any support," said Verizon spokeswoman Sharon Cohen-Hagar, pointing to one Brookhaven memo referring to tools it received as being "in no way a health hazard."

Today, government and health officials say the Sylvania site, adjacent to Cantiague Park, poses no safety hazards to residents.

In lawsuits, residents have claimed the Hicksville plant caused hundreds of them to become ill and, in some cases, die. Cohen-Hagar said, "We have found nothing to support the allegations in the lawsuits," and she asserted that the current levels of contaminants at the site "pose no current health risk."

Charles Schaefer, radiation protection specialist at Brookhaven, said the lab considers so-called disintegration-per-minute levels of 1,000 to be safe. One area of the Sylvania facility BNL experts tested in 1965 showed dpm levels of 40,000, according to the memo. With readings at that level, the only concern would be if the material was breathed or ingested, though he still downplayed the risks. Even at the higher level "they are not very big numbers," Schaefer said.

Mary Olsen, a director and nuclear waste specialist at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington, an environmental watchdog group, said it's "perfectly possible" the items donated to the schools bore the same levels of contamination, and she noted that acceptable standards for exposure to radiation are based on adult men, not children. For its own part, Brookhaven Lab, which took shipment of thousands of pieces of equipment, would become inundated with uranium contamination, according to the memos.

The introduction of the equipment from Sylvania set off a stir when it was fully realized inside Brookhaven Labs in 1966. In a Jan. 3, 1996 memo, an official described the facility as "engulfed" in radiation contamination from the items. Stressing at the time that the discovery was not a health hazard, Brookhaven nevertheless decided to "quarantine" two buildings to begin an intensive cleanup of the thousands of tools it had acquired.

While acknowledging terms in the memos might have sounded drastic, Mona Rowe, a BNL spokeswoman, downplayed their significance. The quarantine, she said, prevented contaminated items from mixing with cleaned ones. Much of the cleanup work was done with soap and water, Shaefer said, adding he wasn't sure if the clean-up workers wore respirators. Still, officials at the time indicate it was a massive undertaking.

"It was the largest decontamination effort that the Laboratory has yet undertaken," a BNL official wrote. " ... We must all work at the job of preventing such a colossal mess from happening again."