Why did a tiny leak bring down a hugely successful research reactor 25 years ago? Robert P Crease reveals the lessons we can learn
In 1997, exactly a quarter of a century ago, a productive scientific research reactor at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, began its slide into a gruesome and untimely death. How this happened is the subject of a book published in October that I co-wrote with Peter Bond, who was interim director of the lab at the time. Were this story fiction, its characters, plot twists and ironies would be entertaining. But because it’s fact, it’s a tragicomedy.
Entitled The Leak: Politics, Activism, and Loss of Trust at Brookhaven National Laboratory, the book is about the end of the High Flux Beam Reactor (HFBR). It was born in 1965, one product of the US government’s post-Sputnik burst in funding for scientific projects. The HFBR was the best facility in the US for neutron scattering experiments, with researchers using it for everything from materials science and medical diagnoses to nuclear physics and isotope production. Valuable and over-subscribed, it was safely operated by those who had built it. The HFBR’s “Occurrence Reports” – accounts of unusual incidents – are dull reading.
Anti-nuclear activists used fake facts to attack the reactor and made over-the-top comparisons to Chernobyl.
Then, in 1997, when the HFBR was 32 years old, the pool in which its spent fuel rods were stored was found to be leaking. Roughly 3m wide, 14m long, and 8–10m deep, the pool contained about 260 cubic metres of water containing tritium. A radioactive isotope of hydrogen, tritium emits low-energy beta radiation (electrons) that can be stopped by a piece of paper. With a relatively short half-life of 12.3 years, it’s widely used in self-illuminating “Exit” signs.
The HFBR’s spent fuel pool was found to be leaking about 30 or so litres of tritium-containing water a day. The leak did not, however, go into any sources of drinking water and nearly all the tritium would have decayed before the groundwater carried it to the lab border. Federal, state and local officials all declared that the leak posed no health hazard. And yet, the disclosure that the reactor was leaking ignited a media and political firestorm.
Fake facts
Anti-nuclear activists bypassed established procedures and expert advice to advance their cause, using fake facts to attack the reactor and making over-the-top comparisons to Chernobyl. The media loved the opportunity to print lurid headlines and show pictures of protestors dressed in skeleton suits and mushroom clouds. Politicians responded to the groups with the loudest and most threatening voices.
Brookhaven’s scientists had little political clout and were generally ill-prepared for public discussion; they wrote letters too long and technical for newspapers to publish and their explanations at public meetings were too careful and conscientious to counter all the impassioned and incendiary accusations. The truth of what the scientists said, it seemed, was judged by the political implications. Administrators took actions to further their political ambitions.
Worse, the publicity about the lab generated more publicity. The lab’s activities were exhaustively dissected and its every mistake and unusual occurrence publicized, reinforcing the impression that Brookhaven was unsafe and out of control. In the months after the leak’s discovery, even incidents unrelated to the leak required press releases. When a non-employee construction worker was tragically but accidentally killed by a digger driven by another construction worker, the US Department of Energy (DOE) – now highly sensitive to accusations that it had failed to oversee the lab – painted this incident in the same picture as the tritium leak.
Occurrence reports were now issued about insignificant events. One, in a medical clinic, was for an insect sting. “The insect appeared to be a wasp,” it was noted. “There was a 0.3cm diameter erythematous plaque in the right posterior aspect of the neck…An ice pack was applied and patient was observed for several minutes.”
Meanwhile, a celebrity-driven, well-funded anti-nuclear group, whose members included the actor Alec Baldwin and the model Christie Brinkley, lobbied the then DOE secretary Bill Richardson to close the reactor, spreading misinformation about it. On November 15, soon after a meeting with the group, Richardson – without informing the lab beforehand – decided to terminate the reactor.
It’s a crazy story so why re-tell it now? After all, in the quarter-century since the leak, several lab directors – as well as numerous US energy secretaries – have come and gone. Brookhaven’s mission has changed to focus more on heavy-ion physics and materials science, with neutron scattering researchers now having to go elsewhere to do their work. Wouldn’t it have been more useful for our book to focus on the scientific case for building more neutron-scattering facilities rather than to rehash the decision behind this one’s demise – or to discuss the philosophical issues of how such decisions ought to be made?
The critical point
The Leak aims to fulfil three functions of historical writing. The first is to provide an awareness of how we got to our present state. Neutron-scattering research in the US has become stunted despite the operation of the Spallation Neutron Source – completed in 2006, and itself oversubscribed – and no new research reactors have been built, partly a result of the HFBR termination.
The second is to expose the dynamics powering the story. Many examples of a similar plot are unfolding today, such as efforts to deny climate change or the results of elections, and The Leak details what made the Brookhaven plot succeed. The plot dynamics involve political ambition, celebrity influence, protest pageants with irresistible photo-ops, well-funded interest groups, rumours and fake news. By bringing these dynamics to the surface, our story makes them open to evaluation and critique.
Finally, a compelling and dramatic enough story about how an important institution was damaged could provide motivation for preventing such a plot to unfold in the future. Surely what happened at Brookhaven is not how we want important decisions about our health, safety and environment to be made?
