[NukeNet] Jefferson Proving Grounds-- Hearing about DU study

[Daisy Anders]

http://www.madisoncourier.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=253&ArticleID=39288&TM=56199.63
          10/5/2007 3:00:00 PM   Email this article • Print this article     Panel coming to Madison for JPG hearing

Peggy Vlerebome
Courier Staff Writer

A federal panel will be in Madison the week of Oct. 22 to conduct a hearing about how the Army plans to go about collecting data for a study related to the depleted uranium left at Jefferson Proving Ground.

The public will not be able to give testimony or present exhibits, but can attend the sessions of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, which is part of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The first session will begin at 10:30 a.m. Monday, Oct. 22 at Madison City Hall. The hearing could last all week.

Save the Valley environmental organization has raised a question that the licensing board has agreed can be addressed at the hearing. Richard Hill, president of Save the Valley, said Thursday that his group's witnesses will testify Monday, Oct. 22 and Tuesday, Oct. 23, and could be called back to testify later in the week or asked to submit written answers to questions.

The licensing panel also will hear testimony and receive exhibits from the Army and from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff.

Hill said the testimony will be extremely technical.

The hearing will be about the adequacy of the Army's proposed field sampling plan. 

Save the Valley, which has been granted intervenor status, raised several objections to the way the Army plans to gather data for the study. The NRC and its licensing board will use the study in deciding whether to grant the Army's request for an alternative schedule for its decommissioning plan for JPG.

The field sampling plan "is not properly designed to obtain all the verifiable data required," Save the Valley said in its contention. The data will be used to make computer models that Save the Valley said must be reliable and must accurately assess the effects of depleted uranium on "the meteorological, geological, hydrological, animal and human features specific to the JPG site and its surrounding area."

The Army was required to get a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in order to test depleted uranium tank-penetration rounds at JPG from 1983 to 1994. The Army left about 77 tons of DU projectiles and fragments where they landed in a 2,080-acre area that now is fenced and posted with signs warning of radioactivity.

Depleted uranium is what is left over from making fuel for nuclear power plants. It strengthens metal and is used for munitions that can pierce an enemy tank as well as for cladding U.S. tanks to protect them.
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