Features

About 10 members of the Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste demonstrated outside the Lawrence Hall of Science Wednesday afternoon to call attention the oxidation of tritium just down the hill at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

The protesters were wearing raingear fashioned into costume Hazmat suits, which came in handy during the afternoon rains. 

LBNL is oxidizing about 5 liters of mixed waste, which includes tritium. The lab’s goal is to heat the mixed waste until the organic materials are burned away, leaving only the tritium. The isolated tritium can then be shipped to a low-level waste site where it will be buried and allowed to decompose naturally. 

According to the lab, the experimental process is safe and will only release a small percentage of the tritium into the atmosphere, an amount well below EPA standards. 

CMTW are skeptical of the lab’s claims and point to an incident in 1998 in which elevated levels of tritium were released during a similar process. 

The protest was also timed to coincide with a visit by the Environmental Protection Agency, which was surveying two tree groves between the Hall of Science and the laboratory. The tree groves are being sample to determine if they contain tritium. 

The Lawrence Hall of Science is visited by over 150,000 children each year.