Interview with Joe Deal

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first in te r v iew ) 03 / 1 6 / 7 P second in ter vieu) C2,’31/8?

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What should be included in book? 1. Prevent reinventing the wheel 2. Re/Using Ra-226 as controlling problem for cleaning up of old sites - memo on subject indicates not Elways true - e.g., in tailings - food chain is becoming important 4. Uranium behaves like radium, not plutonium 5. Perhaps everybody s o intrigued with all the new isotopes coming out - decided knew enough about uranium 6. The present activities (hTS - Las Vegas repository) Pu at Test Site Test Site in general [Visitor came in, not sure who it was, R.S.3 7. Discussion of NCRP, relationship to ICRP 8 . What the tests told us biomedically Gene Cronkite Payne Harris (Santa Fe) Vic Bond Bob Conard 9. Test site - inventory, NAEG Larson's soil samples have been returned from Seattle and are now in Nevada - no way to tell what can be done with them 10. Pacific Test Site: Following Bikini people Still seeing thyroid changes - even in low dose area

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BNL HP group doing the people measurements 1978 - whole body counter No supermarket they can visit Livermore - Bill Robison Garden studies - coconuts, papayas Give the whole story - "Rehabilitate the land and give it back The natives drank more coconut milk and ate more local fruit 11. Re/NTS - different from Pacific in that never admitted they had a problem (or only very recently) PHS says DOE should do the epidemiology Can give a lot of info now Atoll surveys by helicopters Briefing notes - charts Thousands of samples in pipeline How the U.S. leaves the Pacific site Background count in the normal atoll soil is very low because no U or Th in the soil 13. Range of doses i n chart

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Out of 100 people, 11-12 had over the 3 microcurie limit 14. Must have fallout story in the book Ask Walter Wisan 15. Sternglass - fallout didn't go where he said - new charts showing where it went US Geologic Survey has data too Re/Time for long tern effects to begin to show

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bnq perspective, zre there saw things which you think ouoht t o be included. in a book like this without fail7 A lot of peop1.e you know are rediscovering the wheel. problems of the "new discoveries" quoted over the Denver sites, w h i c h One of the first questions I ' d like t o ask you is, frcm your I'm just going t o give you sane, and I ' m -1ook.ihg for a memo. Exactly. That's why I 'm swing part of my life on doing this. These phone calls that I've mer,tioned are related mst ly to the aren't new a t all. We knew they were there a l l abng. into the business by working Kith the engineers, Bill Mott m6 his people in the area. One of the W q s thzt's beginning t o shew up is in cleaning up, i.e., s e t t i n g up the clean-up standards for these sites. We had always gone on the.assmption that i f you control the radium-226, you ~ obabl ycontrol the problan. And we're firading that my not be true. Well, I'm just going t o give you this memo. I'll get 'lAis i s my only copy, ht I'll get you one before you leave.It ' s a memo ve wrote t o our people there.It ' s the fact that it may be where the radium had been resroved fonn the tzilings, you have a different problm thah Mere later you just took out the uranium. There's a couple of these that are going tohit the fan Shortly in the press. had a plant for the Manhattan District. One 05 then being the V e r n e Avenue site in mat ' s where scmebcdy, maybe mllincrcxkt, had

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h t had to 90 Lack s m of the ores. and reclean it. rn it looks like +he f d - mey supp sed ly cleaned it up chain is the problem vith the protoactiniuu. DEAL: At least that seems to be it. e,shm up in LASL work. 1'11 give you copies of the correspondence. DEAL: There's a letter here that we asked Los Alamo3vho's been doing the vork for us. K e n Baker bas been following this f o r .things occur, we turn the problem over t o the LASL people. They've written a letter about it. When w e begin t o see these STANNARD: . Well, that's very interesting because the uranium-235 a n d -233 business keeps popping up in more different ways.. A n d one of the westions 1'd like t o ask an "ole-tiner" like you is why wasr't mre work done on UZ3' and U233 at the time? We have.really only one pretty good biological experiment. That vas Miriam Finkells comparison between those uranium isotopes and radium, and o f course plutonium and polonium were in the same exper-t. There w a s work done on fistribution. Like mamiurn behaves like radium; it doesn't behave like plutonium. The n-factor, i f you're going t o use the old systm of calculating maxircpPn allamble concentration, should be one and not five. Our W F c&ttee FRS all ready t o care out with this when a guy named Walfor6 up a t fikw York m out with scme different nirmbers for the absorption of uranium

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em, the gut that scared thm,so the17 didn't want to p u t it o u t as i t vas.. But I still say that everything looks a s though uranium behaves iike radium a t lov levels. a Feat big chunk by gavage is almost W teri al. DEAL: - Yea, yes. ,I don ' tknov why they didn ' t do more. I think Whatever happens vhen you give i t vas maybe because everybody got so intrigued vith that were caning out every couple of m n t h s that they can ' t worry about some of these others. We've got ta STANNARD : That may bethe whole explanation. all the neu isotopes move into the ve knov about uranium,and it shouldn ' t be that much different." that could well have been the thinking in those days I ' m afraid. of talking to people and trying to get personal vignettes, so letme ask again vh ether there are some things you think disappointed if &book like this came out and it didn ' t discuss. That's the only thing I can figure because wesay, "Well, Yes, could vel1 have been. I've been doing a l o t you would he .t fiat my charge is primarily research. I ' m going to ciiscuss the reasons the research was done and the ways in w h i c h the research bore on decisions that &iscuss the research, who &id it, and what they found. today, and we just covered some of these, plutonium a t rhe test site But that isn ' t the prinwy charge. M y primry charTe is t o I think you can ' t,ignore the stuff that ' s going on and all the other stuff. hw how yau c m do it, but it seems to me Eke * a t ' s I think you've got to bring thar out.Idon ' t

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the one way'you link your'book from history to current day. DEAL: And i f you can, i t ' san eat trick,if you can pull it off you'll have a bestseller, I'm sure.I think you have to bring out all that stuff.The test site is going t o be in this before wo're through vith it. STANNARD: This means learning a great deal more about the tests themselves,both Nevada and Pacific, than I've been able to get a hold of. Fortunately, I still have my "Q" clearance. w= can help you with. Excuse 1~y2just a minute, do you h m Art Shanes ? You've gotto have It, but whatever you want to know, We're diuging into it very much the last few weeks. STANNARD: Good tosee you! Okay for an ole fella. ab=& and I've redly got a fulltinvt job there. But the NCRP's got me on tw other full time jobs. STANNARD: Well,I started the NCRP work before the book came That's because you never learn to say no. albng,and nov Ifeel obliged t o do it. i r ' s current. And the book is history. Except asJoe was just saying,. some of the things we're now regarding as history are becoming very

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-1 Walkse was d m there. STANNARD: I think N C R P is about to have a new lease on life so I also he ud gd reports on that last I.1cEip rnzetmg. to speak. I think they got kind of In the doldrums vhen they were out o n their own and decide what's best for the United States, and this may not always be the same as ICRP recommendations. A lot of things we're working on are dfferent. ICEP reports have been. W ' r e even taking issue with We think we'll try t o be a lot mre practical, too, than the last I've been trying to get for one of my chapters s a info m tion on what the tests told bianedically. a couple peole who could help you with this. tmames: Gene Cronkite. You know Gene. That would be very useful if you can do it. There's 1'11 give you some STANNARD: You betcha. DE3.L: You know Vic bni. N m you hme t o also talk t o Payne Harris. You know Payne Harris. STANNARD: Yes. Where is h e now? DEAL: Payne is very active these days, He's practicing medicine in Sante Fe. And I think Payne has made a fortune between h i s medicine

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to help t o try to -amble saw of the true problmts. &'s der contract with the Dept. of bf ense in tkle exposure of the trodps. What he's really doing I s helping them run down the information on it. get a handle on w h a t the problems in Utah, southern Utah, are. come up vith the only practical suggestion than I've heard from anyone He's also been talking to us about hov w e migt.: 8 0 far as to hov to maybe tackle part a vay to d o it, 'it's a typical Payne, he knows a lot about vhat came out of wasn't too far away from that stuff. of the problem. If ve can find the tests. Chet Ric=hnmxS So those are people vho could tell you what vas learned. I think Qronkite and H m i s and Bond would be the mst likely to give you infoxnation. for a long time until they began t o go to pot. decent, real'listing of what went on out there a t the test s i t e and I was a consultant t o the Nevada p.pplie3 Ecolcq Group &mit =son is sai2 t o have taken samples all sequestered them somevhere up arkund Seattle. trying to get those things. DEAL: No. Tney're not there anymore; been working on it for years.' over anci taken them with him How I don't see any point - i n ' IIEAI.: . Yes, And I understarxi that mst of the other stuff that Kennit h& is nwin Kevada. But whether an wy will make any sense out of it or not is another question. STANNARD: ' Well, it's going.to be very Sard. The radiochemistry is a big that would be mre perthat. I think there'd przjnbly be other ways t o get the information

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That's r i g h t . 1 ?on't know how much YOU know about the specific beginning to ask our advisory committe about i t when ve Cissolved the advisory Well, I'J like to knov a little more because they vere just .. committee. I haven ' t really been involved in it since. W have been here part O f an operational problem as opp sd to the Right. Let me tell p0u.a little bit about the specifics. research side of the house. md, of course, has folld then medically for years. Ard you knm the We're folloving the Bikini people. NOW Bob medical picture vhich you can get from Bob Conard. Ifyou.haven ' t gotten it,he ' s vr it ten a 25 year eummary vh ich is very effective. are seeing thyroid problems uf th the people even in the l cu ~d ose area Uj elan ? , Rongelap and Uti rik. I've forgotten the Bikini people came on board that the internal cesium, the total internal Anyway, we hq an to notice about the time the dose of the people, w a s goin? up. d to red,I don' t have the nwlber a t my f inqertip, but they had like a hundred -le or so living on the island, mixed populations. They were kind of vor kers. of cesium which would be the body burden. W.e f i r s t year we saw out of the nunicer We had one o r two people that had three micro curies So w e flagged the Interior Dept. the next year, we had another situation where the rise w a s greater. The average was up by I think maybe a facto:: of ten. m: The Health Physics group a t Brookhaven. We be- to see increases apain. Then in 1978, w e rade another series,md that time the Interior -?le made an all-out effort There w=re a couple of people.

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to try to bri rg io imported foods and so forth. Ey this time, locally $ . '.. grown foods vere beconiing available. Coconuts were beginning t o come in. They held M y cow.tins groups agh. This tine we found, I think the number was 13 out of 100, one of then1 havins a t least three times the better take then off the island, and that ' s what precipitate6 *.e actions last August. I think the reason a l o t of people say, "Ch, you knm, And a t that stage, the interior people decided they it hasn't an unsafe situation1' so forth. mere ' s a lot of . because you want to find out what the cesium level is in it. have a sup=market to 90 t o buy the fd. nake any sense a t all. The s-le dose-limiting practices don't work. W e did not have Iileasures of strontium w h i c h we knew was canin5 oEt. hause it's obvious that Eikini atoll was not soin2 t o be a place they They took them …