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A new report analyzing the risk of radiation exposure during a fire at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory says there is a much greater risk than reported in a similar 1996 analysis prepared by the laboratory. 

Berkeley’s Hazardous Materials Supervisor Nabil Al-Hadithy pointed out that the new report, funded by the city and prepared by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Heidelberg, Germany, is preliminary and the findings reflect a worse-case scenario. The final report is not due for 18 months. 

The draft report, released Monday, uses the scenario of a woman jogging downwind and within 135 feet of the Tritium Labeling Facility during a fire. If this scenario occurred, the jogger would be exposed to between 2,900 to 18,000 millirems of Tritium. The estimated exposure is 600 to 3,700 times higher than reported in the LBNL Safety Analysis Document prepared in 1996. 

The LBNL Tritium Labeling Facility works primarily with pharmaceutical companies researching new compounds. The compounds are incorporated with tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen, and then injected into living organisms. The compound’s migration through the organism can be tracked by the glow produced by the tritium.  

Biomedical researchers then use the information to help determine the compound’s effectiveness in treating a variety of diseases including cancer. 

Members of the Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste argue that the amount of tritium released from the labs in a fire will cause cancer, sterility and birth defects. According to the EPA a person should be exposed to no more than 10 millirems of tritium per year. 

Councilmember Polly Armstrong said she supports the Tritium Labeling Facility’s work, but would like to see the facility moved. 

“We can argue about millirems, air direction and such until the cows come home but when you have radioactive projects going on in an area susceptible to landslides, earthquakes and fires it just doesn’t seem safe,” Armstrong said. “I think it would be better somewhere in the desert.” 

The City Council has twice, once in September 1996 and again two years later in 1998, adopted resolutions requesting LBNL close the Tritium Labeling Facility. 

Al-Hadithy said the report does not find ongoing problems with the day to day operations of the facility although it does make suggestions for better site monitoring. 

He said Dr. Bernard Franke, one of the scientists who prepared the report, uses a worst case scenario of exposure to a woman jogging near the facility during a fire, but there is much more research that has to be done before Franke’s analysis can be relied on as an actual indicator of the danger to nearby residents and the Lawrence Hall of Science, a children’s museum near the labs. 

“As a city we encourage a scientific approach,” Al-Hadithy said. “And we have to remember that at this stage all the findings from the laboratory and Dr. Franke are very subjective.” 

Gene Bernardi, co-chair of the Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste and a neighbor of the LBNL said her group would like to see the facility closed down. She said the report doesn’t go far enough in analyzing exposure rates during a fire.  

“The report doesn’t take into consideration the compounded effect of materials stored in the Hazardous Waste Facility, which would likely be released during a fire,” Bernardi said. 

LBNL spokesperson Ron Kolb said Franke’s jogging scenario is based on assumptions, which the laboratory questions. “Dr. Franke suggests an independent analysis and we think that would be a good idea,” he said. “But we still believe, in a catastrophic fire, the threat to the local community would be relatively small.” 

Kolb said the laboratory will try to respond to Franke’s report within the next two weeks.