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Hal Hol 1i ster Division of Operational and .Environmental Safety The Northern Marshall Islands Advisory Group met on October 3-4, 1978 t o consider the issue o f planting coconuts on Enewetak Atoll, recommend cleanup guidance for subsurface contamination, discuss the Enjebi experimental farm, review preliminary results of the plowing experiment and be briefed by Tommy McCraw on the status of the Northern Marshall Islands Survey. The Advisory Group offers the enclosed comments. The discussion of these and other topics aqain identified the apparent lack of integration of the efforts at Enewetak and in the other Marshall Islands as the ma.ior concern o f the Advisory Group_. We are i n complete asreement that all DOE activities at Enewetak as well as a t Bikini and a t a l l other northern Marshall Islands should be combined and integrrar under a sinqle DOE administrator with overall nianaqenlent resgonsibil ity and authority. We have no criticism o f individuals who are involved i n the Marshall Islands effort because they obviously are dedicated to their projects. However, the importance and magnitude of the Marshall Islands proqram requires that these individual projects be part o f an overall fx ami nation of each project such as the Enewetak cleanup, the Northern Marshalls Survey, the Bikini Health Studies, the experimental work a t the Enjebi garden plot, the work a t the Enewetak marine laboratory, the University o f Washington studies, and the work of the Nevada Operations Office probably would yield few criticisms. assurance that adequate information will be available to support the technical and political decisions t o be made. issues are being individually addressed, the broad and l o n g term aspects could be neqlected. attention t o the transuranics a t Enewetak with little effort expended on 90Sr and 137Cs and the lack of a plan to do a thorough dose assessnient rogram plan administered by a well defined management structure. However, this would pr_ovide no We are concerned that while immediate A n example of our reason for concern is the singular
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9a fter the cleanup. the incorporation of radionuclides i n food stuffs, considerable advance Other concerns arose a t the October 3-4 meeting which are n o t mentioned on the attached. we are interested in know in q about DOE ' S plans to obtain the data, especially on 90Sr a n d i;J/Cs, needed to complete a dose assessment on the islands that have been cleaned up. We were informed that no intercalibration o f the radionuclide analysis conducted by the ERSP laboratory on Enewetak had been done o r was planned. We believe this essential t o the credibility of the analytical effort. Since a thorough dose assessment requires data on' I will call you with further comments and Most are related to the management topic. For example, The Advisory Group continues t o believe thata review meeting for all Northern Marshall Islands projects would be profitable. Planninq f o t such a meeting should be initiated soon ifit is t o be held early i n 1 note t h a t there is concern among some of the Advisory Group members t h a t we are being asked t o give guidance on specific technical matters f o r which we have inadequate information and insufficient time and resources t o gather and evaluate the available data. For example, we believe we are much more effective i n reviewing position papers on technical issues (dose assessment paper by Robison and Noshkin), oolicy issues (the Deal letter to Admiral Monroe regarding coconut plan :-:tg), we have little First hand knowledge of the data and their limitations. Furthermore, I '-3jieve we could offer more positive advice on the Aomon Crypt ai-...! 3ri subsurface contamination i f we could review plans proposed by the Joint Task Group, the DOE and contractor staff at action plans and t o support their plan for review by the Advisory Group or by anyone else. i'hese people have the necessary technical d a t a to develop Before the next meeting of the Advisory Group we would l i k e t o resolve From this l i s t we can easily develop an agenda t./=I, ..>several action items t h a t remain from previous meetings. a tabulation of these. f o r our next meeting. identified by the DOE staff or the JTG. We would also expect t o deal with any new issues & Environment, Health and Safety Research Program Enclosure: Comments and Recommendations.. .
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Chester R. Richmond, ORNL John A. Auxier, ORNL John W. Hetly, LASL Bruce W. Wachholz, DOE