Strange Stones: Dispatches from East and West (P.S.)

by Peter Hessler

  Uravan has been studied by Dr. John Boice, who founded the radiation epidemiology branch of the National Cancer Institute. He now teaches at Vanderbilt School of Medicine, and is also the scientific director of the International Epidemiological Institute, an independent research organization. When I met him at his office in Rockville, Maryland, he told me that Uravan, like many company towns, kept unusually good records. This allowed Boice and other researchers to find out who lived in the town and where they worked. Accessing data from 1936 to 2004, they traced mortality for a wide range of diseases. “We did find a significant increase of lung cancer,” he said. “But in men only. It was concentrated in the miners. There was nothing with the women who lived in town. If you’re looking at an environmental exposure, you’d expect men and women to be the same. And even the millers did not show this.”

  The overall Uravan mortality rate was 10 percent lower than the national average. There was less heart disease, which probably reflected the lifestyle of well-employed people who liked outdoor activities. Boice had conducted other studies in uranium regions, and the only significant risks he had found involved miners who labored in unventilated conditions, especially those who smoked. He noted that safety measures have made an enormous difference. “The radon levels are so low now,” he said. “In the early days, they had no standards.”

  Activists told me that Boice’s Uravan study was unreliable, because it had received funding from Union Carbide. When I had the material reviewed by independent experts, they said the methodology was sound, and the findings were in line with those of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which has found no statistically significant evidence that mill workers suffer higher mortality rates because of either the radiation or the chemical toxicity of uranium. In New Mexico, where the DiNEH Project is studying Navajo communities, some with a history of unregulated mining, researchers told me that they believe there is an association with kidney disease and other ailments, but they cautioned that the findings are still preliminary.

  Scientists said that, despite the public perception, radiation is a weak carcinogen. In the 1980s, the National Cancer Institute conducted an extensive study of all 107 American counties that contained a nuclear power plant or a Department of Energy nuclear facility. The study found no excess cancers. Recently, the institute participated in a fifteen-nation study that involved over four hundred thousand nuclear industry employees, all of whom had worn dosimeters that tracked radiation levels over years of work. Dr. Ethel S. Gilbert, a scientist at the institute, told me that they found no evidence of increased mortality for people exposed to doses of less than 0.1 sieverts, which is more than fifty times the average annual dose of an American nuclear-power employee. She talked about the challenges of explaining such issues, because people fail to distinguish between high and low doses of radiation. “They think if you get exposed it’s bad,” she said. “It’s hard to understand that the dose is important.” Gilbert described what researchers know about an exposure of 0.1 sieverts, which was found among only 5 percent of study subjects, mostly from the early years of the nuclear power industry. From the industry perspective, such a dose is high, but not in terms of health effects. “Out of one hundred people exposed to 0.1 sieverts, we would expect one cancer from that exposure,” Gilbert said. “But there would also be forty-two people who would get cancer for other reasons. It’s very hard to study these low levels, because there are so many other things that contribute to people getting cancer.”

  The effects of high doses are well documented, largely because of a sixty-year study of nearly a hundred thousand Japanese atomic-bomb survivors. With high levels of radiation, there’s a clear linear pattern—more exposure means an incremental rise in risk. But it’s unclear whether this pattern continues into the lower-dose range, where any health effects are so small that they can’t be demonstrated by epidemiological studies. Some experts and scientific bodies, including the French Academy of Sciences, have questioned the linear model for low levels, believing that radiation may be harmless up to a certain threshold. This is common for many elements and environmental factors—iron and zinc, for example, are healthy up to a certain threshold, but in high doses they are poisonous. Applying such a model to radiation, though, is controversial, because it would radically change risk assessment, as well as possible solutions for the storage of nuclear waste.

  United States regulations continue to follow the linear no-threshold theory. It has the benefit of being simple and safe, but it can also be misinterpreted. Because of Colorado’s elevation, a resident there receives two to three times the natural background radiation of someone who lives in New Jersey, so strictly speaking there should be an increased risk of cancer. (In fact, Colorado cancer rates are lower.) After the Chernobyl accident, in 1986, antinuclear groups and scientists used the findings from the Japanese atomic-bomb survivors, extrapolated downward for the radiation levels in Europe, and predicted tens of thousands of deaths from cancer. Critics note that this is like taking a set of deaths from motorists who drove a curve at a hundred miles an hour and making the assumption that, if people slow to ten miles an hour, they’ll die at a tenth of the original rate. This is also why $127 million was spent obsessively cleaning up an abandoned town whose former residents lived longer than the national average. Metaphorically speaking, the Uravan speed limit was set at one.

  Even worst-case disasters reveal surprisingly small effects. In Chernobyl, dozens of emergency workers died after fighting the reactor fire, but the health impact on neighboring communities seems to be limited. After more than twenty years of extensive study, there is no consistent evidence of increased birth defects, leukemia, or most other radiation-related diseases. The only public epidemic consists of high rates of thyroid cancer in children, whose glands are particularly sensitive to radiation. Fewer than ten people have died—thyroid cancer is usually treatable—but many have had to undergo surgeries, and it will be years before the full impact of the epidemic is known.

  Even this epidemic, like the accident itself, could have been avoided entirely. The Soviet reactor lacked a containment facility, a design flaw that is unimaginable today, and the Communist government delayed announcing the accident. “The Russians could have done one thing that would have gotten rid of the epidemic of thyroid cancer,” Boice told me. “They could have said, ‘Don’t drink the milk.’ ” In surrounding areas, cows ate grass contaminated by fallout, and people fed the milk to their children. An open society would have responded differently; even as far back as 1957, when a fire at a badly designed British nuclear facility called Windscale released radiation, all local milk was dumped into the sea. In 2011, when an earthquake and tsunami caused a partial meltdown in two nuclear reactors in Japan, there was no public epidemic, because residents were evacuated and food was monitored for contamination. Despite the fact that the Japanese reactors had been poorly managed and maintained, they released only a sixth of the radiation of Chernobyl—the containment facilities helped prevent a disaster. There’s been no evidence that the Japanese public was exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, and of the four thousand people who worked on the plants in the wake of the disaster, only one hundred and three were found to have received an exposure of more than 0.1 sieverts. At that level, scientists would predict a 1 percent increase over the normal cancer rate. It’s a relatively small effect, especially in the context of a tsunami that killed more than twenty thousand—but the nuclear meltdown is all that most people remember.

  Boice told me that the biggest health problems from high-profile accidents are often psychological. A twenty-year study showed no consistent evidence that the low amounts of radioactivity released in the Three Mile Island accident have had a significant impact on mortality in communities around the reactor. But people suffered from high rates of stress and increased alcohol consumption. Places near Chernobyl have high rates of alcoholism, tobacco use, and depression. After the Ukrainian accident, European countries as dista
nt as Greece reported a significant spike in elective abortions, owing to a fear of birth defects. Because of Chernobyl, a number of European nations scaled back dramatically on nuclear power, and Italy closed down all its reactors. Twenty years later, Italy purchases electricity from France, which is 80 percent nuclear, and which ranks twenty-fourth out of twenty-seven European Union countries in terms of absolute greenhouse gas emissions.

  None of the cancer specialists I spoke with opposed nuclear power for health reasons. Invariably, their biggest worry was the storage of nuclear waste, although many people note that this problem is more political than scientific. Several scientists told me that there should be greater public concern about medical radiation, because high-dose procedures like CT scans can be overprescribed, and regulation is light in comparison with the nuclear power industry. (From 1996 to 2006, the number of CT scans performed in the United States increased nearly threefold.)

  Boice expressed concerns about terrorism, but largely because he believes people are seriously misinformed about radiation. Converting yellowcake or even enriched reactor fuel into an effective bomb is complex and probably impossible for a terrorist group, but that’s not the issue. Even materials with low levels of radioactivity—for example, the kind of stuff you find in gardens and living rooms in southwestern Colorado—would terrify most people. “We’ve studied radiation for one hundred years,” Boice told me. “We know a lot about it. But it’s invisible. A colleague said, ‘If you could paint it blue and see it, it wouldn’t be such an issue.’ ”

  While most grassroots environmentalists remain antinuclear, the evidence of climate change has led some prominent greens to become vocal supporters. Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, left the organization, and believes that it takes an unscientific view of the issue. The Gaia theorist James Lovelock is a particularly outspoken advocate, as is Stewart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog. In 2009, Mark Udall, the Democratic senator from Colorado, addressed the issue on the Senate floor. “For some,” he began, “news that a Udall is speaking favorably about nuclear power will come as a stark—and perhaps unpleasant—surprise.” Udall comes from a prominent family of environmentalists, and his uncle, Stewart Udall, who died in 2010, represented the Navajo uranium miners in their lawsuit. Senator Udall told me that he deeply respects his uncle’s legacy, but that current regulations are much improved and the threat of climate change requires new thinking. “The risks that are attendant to the use of nuclear power are worth embracing,” he said. “Just like the risks that come with increasing the use of natural gas, or frankly even renewables.”

  Udall prefers wind and solar energy, but he acknowledged that they aren’t capable of significantly displacing coal in the near future. He believes there are solutions to the issue of nuclear-waste storage. When I mentioned the proposed mill in his home state, he said, “I can support such a project if all the requisite laws and regulations are met.” He continued, “My uncle wrote very compellingly about the nature of the Cold War, and how we were driven into a mindset that we have to be secretive here, we don’t need any regulation or controls, because that would somehow threaten the very existence of America. We’ve moved into another era.”

  I asked whether fear of climate change, like the old fear of the Soviets, might lead to rash decisions and carelessness. “Given the difficulty that we face right now in Washington in convincing a supermajority in the Senate that we have to respond to climate change,” Udall said, “I’m not as worried about that. But I think it behooves us to never forget these lessons.”

  There’s a timeless quality to the far corner of Colorado, which is too remote for national chains, and where travelers stay at the Ray Motel in Naturita. The Ray still uses keys, and the key chain still has a 1970s-era message promising that if it’s dropped into any U.S. mailbox it will be returned free of charge. In January, when I checked in, a receptionist named Sherri Ross asked if I had arrived for the public hearing on the Energy Fuels mill. Ross explained that she was a former Uravan resident whose father and several uncles had all died from mining-related lung cancer. By now, this information was sufficient for me to guess that she was a wholehearted supporter of the industry. “We’ve had the biggest loss you can ever have, and we’re not against the mill,” she said. A cleaning lady walked past and commented that lung cancer had also killed her father, and she sure hoped the mining would come back.

  The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment was holding the hearing. Most people predicted that the health department would eventually grant approval, but lawsuits were still pending and others would likely be filed. The real issue, though, seemed to be financial. Energy Fuels is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and the share price had plummeted in the past year. There have been some signs of a nuclear resurgence, but the United States’ path remains unclear. Demand may be more likely to come from overseas, especially India and China, which have announced ambitious plans for nuclear power. At the moment, China relies heavily on power from coal-burning plants and hydroelectric dams, and the vast majority of the population lives in the south and the east, where the possibilities for wind and solar energy are not promising.

  George Glasier, the founder and CEO of Energy Fuels, told me that he was confident there would be demand. He had worked as a lawyer for uranium companies until the crash in the 1980s, when he bought a ranch in southwestern Colorado. Like many industry executives, he was savvy about riding the economic waves. A number of years ago, he had opened a gravel pit on his property, selling rock for use in covering the remains of Uravan. He had also sold a hundred thousand cubic yards of topsoil that was poured onto another contaminated mill site. Now that the industry seemed ready to shift from obsessive cleanup to real production, Glasier hoped to get back in business. He still kept a chunk of ore and a jar of yellowcake in his home. “That’s fairly high grade,” he said, handing me the rock. I didn’t open the jar.

  For branding purposes, Energy Fuels had named its project the Piñon Ridge Mill. “We didn’t want to have the word ‘paradox’ in there,” Glasier said. He produced a promotional display from the Nuclear Energy Institute: a plastic pellet that, if it were real enriched uranium, would have the generating capacity of a ton of coal. The display said: “Nuclear. Clean Air Energy.” It dated to the 1970s, when people worried about smog instead of climate change; the font was as old-school as the Ray Motel’s key chain. “I’d give it to you, but I don’t have any more left,” Glasier said.

  The hearing was held in the nearby town of Nucla, which is about fifteen miles from the mill site. Such meetings have been scheduled throughout the region, where reactions follow a pattern: the farther you go from the mill, the more frightened people seem. And there’s no telling what will be said when an open mic is offered in southwestern Colorado. At one meeting in the county seat, a man accused the health department of trying to murder citizens. Another time, a speaker reminisced about how great the tomatoes tasted in radioactive Uravan. He was followed by a man who announced, apropos of nothing, “I’m not really into a black guy for president.” Environmentalists said they often felt uncomfortable at such meetings, where locals sometimes express anger toward opponents. I sympathized with the outsider perspective—as a writer, I often inspired the same response. But I came to understand the reason for this anger. Natives were accustomed to condescension, especially with regard to health issues, when in fact their specialized knowledge ran deep. I took many local opinions with a grain of salt, but I learned to listen when people talked about uranium.

  At the Nucla meeting, more than two hundred citizens attended, and the vast majority wore orange buttons that said “Yes to Mill.” “We’re not afraid of uranium here,” Joyce Shaffer, a former Uravan resident, said into the microphone. “I don’t like skiing. I’m afraid of it. I don’t understand it. But I understand uranium, and I’m not afraid of it.” Another woman identified herself as a fourth-generation resident. “I’ve had family members who passed
from working in the nuclear industry,” she said. “I have no regrets for that.” A member of the Chamber of Commerce made a statement that could only come from a region called Paradox: “Uranium and tourism can coexist.”

  It wasn’t until the thirtieth speaker that somebody opposed the project. In the end, only five spoke out against it: they referred to health risks, wildlife issues, and the storage of nuclear waste. Craig Pirazzi, a Paradox resident, criticized the industry’s volatility. “These are not stable jobs,” he said. “These people deserve better than this.”

  Every August, Uravan natives return for their picnic. With the site fenced off, they congregate on the former baseball diamond, which is a mile to the southeast. The dugouts are long gone, and tufts of switchgrass have overrun the base paths, but there was never a cleanup here—no wire fence, no warning signs. The site is pleasantly shaded by big cottonwoods that escaped destruction.

  At the 2010 picnic, George Glasier told me he was happy to be ranching full-time. A few months earlier, he had stepped down as the CEO of Energy Fuels, announcing that the company needed new direction. Initially, the stock price dropped to twelve cents before rebounding a bit. Most people believe that the company hopes to get licensing approval and then sell out to a big corporation that can weather the uncertainty. It’s another timeless quality in the uranium towns: they might be thirty years too late, but it’s also possible that they’re ten years too early.