Radioactive

A device that uses radioactive materials to measure the moisture and density of soil was stolen Wednesday from the Linthicum headquarters of the construction company that is building the light rail extension, county police said.The machine was taken from an old house in the 600 block of Camp Meade Road that is being used by Towson-based Whiting-Turner Contracting Co. The thief removed an air-conditioning unit from a window and broke into the house, setting off the alarm, about 10: 45 p.m., police said.

A contractor has recovered a gauge containing a small amount of radioactive material, after reporting the device stolen earlier this month from a work site at Fort Meade in Anne Arundel County. The Maryland Department of the Environment says the gauge was found Dec. 10 at the job site where it went missing. The contractor that owns the device told the department that it was in a locked transport container and showed no signs of having been tampered with or having released radioactive material.

Federal, state and Anne Arundel officials told about 40 North County residents last night that the removal of radioactive materials from county-owned property on Ordnance Road in Glen Burnie will begin within weeks.But many of those who gathered at the Glen Burnie High School auditorium said the answers they received did little to calm their anxieties that the cleanup would be inadequate, or that removing the contamination could be more harmful than just leaving it there.Many residents said they believe that county and federal officials involved in the cleanup of the land have not been candid with them, and they do not understand why the project is proceeding so quickly.

A gauge containing a small amount of radioactive material was reported stolen this week from a job site at Fort Meade, according to the Maryland Department of the Environment. The Troxler Model 3430 surface moisture density gauge, serial No. 37672, was last seen Monday at the temporary job site and reported stolen by GeoConcepts Engineering, along with other contracting equipment, about 2 p.m. Thursday, according to environment officials. The theft was also reported to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Fort Meade police were notified.

A bright yellow box the size of a suitcase may have looked like a good find to the burglar who prowled through an Odenton construction trailer overnight Wednesday, but police say its contents had no value to the thief -- and could prove hazardous to his health.The box contained a soil moisture-density gauge, which uses radioactive materials to measure the density of compacted soil.Although it emits harmless, minuscule amounts of radioactivity while enclosed in a tungsten and lead compartment, if opened, the exposed elements of americium, beryllium and cesium could cause anything from a rash to cancer, authorities said yesterday.

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine -- Nearly eight years after the Chernobyl meltdown, Ukrainian scientists have found that strontium-90 is leaching into the ground water and may reach Ukraine's most important water reservoir within a few years.The radioactive strontium is carried into the earth by rain and snow that penetrates the concrete-and-steel sarcophagus built in late 1986 to entomb the exploded Chernobyl Unit 4 nuclear reactor.Because of gaping cracks in the sarcophagus roof, about 820,000 gallons of precipitation have infiltrated the reactor building, according to new estimates by the Ukrainian state committee for nuclear and radiation safety.

I'LL TELL YOU WHEN I start to worry. I start to worry when "officials" tell me not to worry. This is why I am concerned about the following Associated Press report, which was sent to me by a number of alert readers: "RICHLAND, WASH. -- Radioactive ants, flies and gnats have been found at the Hanford nuclear complex, bringing to mind those Cold-War-era 'B' horror movies in which giant mutant insects are the awful price paid for mankind's entry into the Atomic Age. "Officials at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site insist there is no danger of Hanford becoming the setting for a '90s version of "Them!"

After sifting clues for five years, a team of scientific sleuths has found that puzzling clouds of junk orbiting the Earth are made up of radioactive debris leaking from a large group of orbiting Soviet nuclear reactors.It is the first major case of nuclear pollution in space and one of the messiest environmental legacies of the Cold War.The atomic debris, estimated at 70,000 detectable particles and perhaps millions of smaller ones, poses no danger to people, experts say. But it threatens to damage working satellites and will force engineers to add more shielding to help protect new spacecraft.

The Howard County section of The Sun reported on a stolen radioactive moisture-density gauge ("Radioactive gauge stolen from construction site," March 19). Beside the facts of the current event, the article brings to light an unbelievably negligent attitude about handling radioactive devices. Issues concerning radioactivity are often discussed without any quantitative measure, making it impossible to distinguish minor mishaps from major concerns. I want to applaud Julie Bykowicz of the Sun's staff for reporting not only the loss of a radioactive device but also giving a few numbers so that the magnitude of the problem could be evaluated.

BOSTON -- Louis Frankowski, 53, a former Fernald State School resident, recalls being a member of the Fernald Science Club in the 1950s and having blood drawn weekly, but he says he doesn't remember being told what membership meant.Being a member of the club, according to interviews and Fernald documents, meant participation in a Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University nutrition study involving radioactive milk and iron supplements.Mr. Frankowski lived at the Waltham, Mass.

It was rather sad to read that Rep. Steny H. Hoyer is shilling for Constellation Energy: ("Calvert Cliffs first in line for loan guarantee, Hoyer says," July 2). Hoyer should be promoting renewable energy sources instead of admitting that nuclear energy can't survive economically without taxpayer subsidies. How can anyone support nuclear power today? The banks won't finance a reactor and the insurance companies refuse to issue policies for nuclear power plants. The technology is too dangerous, and no state wants to be the repository for nuclear wastes.

The Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered commercial vessel, will be docked at Canton Marine Terminals in Baltimore for at least the next year as crews scrub the ship of remaining radioactive materials. The sleek 596-foot cargo and passenger vessel arrived at Vane Brothers Co.'s berth Thursday, after the company won a $588,380 annual contract from the U.S. Maritime Administration to secure the vessel for up to three years. Constructed in the 1950s under President Dwight D.

March 17 1950 Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley announced they had created a new radioactive element, californium.

Audit says PSC failed to get state approval for $453,000 contract The state Public Service Commission awarded a $453,000 no-bid contract to a Washington law firm and paid a $27,000 court-ordered judgment without getting approval from the Board of Public Works, a legislative audit found. The audit, which examined the period from Jan. 9, 2004 to Dec. 10, 2006, also found that the commission overbilled utilities to support its operations by $2.2 million. "It happened before I got here, and it won't happen again," said PSC Chairman Steven B. Larsen, who was appointed this year by Gov. Martin O'Malley.

LONDON -- An Italian KGB expert who warned Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko that his life might be in danger the day he was poisoned has a "significant quantity" of radioactive polonium-210 in his body, authorities said yesterday. British health officials also said they had detected a small quantity in a close relative of Litvinenko's, though neither of the new victims has shown signs of illness. The revelations came as police zeroed in on traces of radiation found on British Airways jets that flew between Moscow and London, one of which may have carried suspects transporting the radioactive poison.

OLJATO, Utah -- Mary and Billy Boy Holiday bought their one-room house from a medicine man in 1967. They gave him $50, a sheep and a canvas tent. For the most part, they were happy with the purchase. Their Navajo hogan was situated well, between a desert mesa and the trading-post road. The eight-sided dwelling proved stout and snug, with walls of stone and wood, and a green-shingle roof. The single drawback was the bare dirt underfoot. So three years after moving in, the Holidays jumped at the chance to get a real floor.

Columbia radioactive waste-treatment company GTS Duratek Inc. said yesterday that it has hired First Security Van Kasper, a San Francisco investment banking firm, to help determine whether it should sell its petroleum-products subsidiary.GTS Duratek currently owns 80 percent of that subsidiary, DuraTherm Inc. of San Leon, Texas. DuraTherm specializes in processing petroleum sludge. Any oil squeezed out of the sludge is recycled, and what remains is sent to landfills.DuraTherm took in $10 million in revenue last year.

GTS Duratek, a company specializing in environmental clean up, was awarded a contract to help dispose of radioactivity from Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant near Wading River, N.Y.The Long Island Power Authority awarded the contract for the two-year project, which is valued at about $14 million.GTS Duratek's employees will monitor the radiation on plant workers, help clean equipment and handle the radioactive waste after the cleaning, according to company officials.The cleanup will occur as Shoreham is decommissioned.

WASHINGTON -- A leading expert on cargo security told a Senate subcommittee yesterday that America is "not acting like a nation at war" when it comes to working to protect the country from radiological or nuclear materials. Stephen E. Flynn, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that even the monitoring systems being installed at border crossings and seaports around the country won't catch everything a terrorist might try to smuggle in. Laying out a harrowing scenario in which a single weakness in the global supply chain could allow a dirty bomb to end up in a container traveling from Indonesia to Chicago, Flynn said "we are living on borrowed time" when it comes to cargo security.

ROCKVILLE -- A new round of testing has found that casks used to transport dangerous nuclear waste are capable of surviving a catastrophe such as Baltimore's Howard Street Tunnel fire with no more than minor releases of radioactivity, according to a report presented to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission panel yesterday. NRC experts found that one of three types of cylinders commonly used to carry spent nuclear fuel would withstand such a fire with no radioactive release whatsoever. They said a fire as hot as the 2001 Howard Street blaze could breach the seals on two other cask models, but concluded that the amount of radioactive material released would be "very small."