Page 30 of Eruption
They went past massive air coolers with fans six feet in diameter. But John MacGregor could still feel the heat radiating from the depths ahead.
They were now walking on a metal deck covered in thick foam. On either side were stacked metal lockers, each four feet square and padlocked. Up ahead, pale blue light reflected off the ceiling.
MacGregor said, “What is this place?”
“Storage facility.”
“And what are you storing?”
Briggs opened a heavy grate door. It creaked open. “Look.”
On both sides of the walk were row after row of cylindrical glass canisters, each glowing a deep, unreal blue. The canisters were identical: five feet high and capped at either end by a heavy foam block.
“Technically,” Briggs said, “this material is gel-matrixed compound HL-512. It’s high-level radwaste, stored in lead-glass canisters.”
“You’re telling me this is radioactive waste?”
“Of a kind.”
MacGregor looked at the glowing canisters stretching away into the distance. He could feel his chest constrict, like a fist closing. “How much have you got here?”
“Six hundred and forty-three canisters,” Briggs said. “All together, about thirty-two thousand pounds of material. And we can’t risk lava coming anywhere close to it.”
No kidding.MacGregor frowned. “Where’d the canisters come from?”
“Possibly from the Hanford Site in Washington State, the original plutonium production facility for the U.S. nuclear weapons program. Before that, maybe from Fort Detrick, U.S. Army Environmental Command, in Maryland.”
MacGregor said, “You’re telling me you’re not certain who sent it here?”
Briggs nodded. “And we don’t know where it was from originally.”
Mac felt as dizzy as he had inside the crater. “So you have six hundred forty-three canisters of radioactive waste and you don’t know where it came from?”
“That’s correct.”
Mac bent to look at the nearest canister. The glass was about an inch thick. Behind the glass there seemed to be a liquid containing suspended particles. Up close, he saw that the glass was not clear but covered with a spidery network of fine white lines. The foam bases were dusty. There was a thick layer of dust on the floor.
“How long has this stuff been here?” he said.
“Since 1978.”
They walked down the cave past the rows of canisters. “Back in the 1950s,” Briggs said, “it was standard procedure to dispose of radioactive waste by dumping it in the ocean. We did it until 1976; the Russians did it until 1991. Everybody did it. By 1977, the material had been sent to the Hanford Site in Washington State. When Hanford’s facilities became too crowded, the stuff was shipped to Hawai‘i to be encased in concrete blocks and deep-sixed in the ocean. We don’t know who put a stop to that, but somebody did. The canisters were kept in a Honolulu warehouse, but nobody liked having them so close to a large population center. Finally,” Briggs continued, “they told us to store the waste on one of the outer islands until a new disposal plan could be agreed on.”
Briggs’s shoulders rose and fell in what appeared to be resignation. “So in 1978 or so, it came here to the Big Island. In 1982, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was passed, and in 1987, the Department of Energy designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the national disposal site. But Washington decided that thisparticular material could not withstand a trip stateside, which is why the canisters are still here.”
“Wait—there wasn’t a protest?” MacGregor asked.
Briggs smiled behind his glass faceplate. “There wasn’t a protest because nobody knew it was here.”
“And nobody found out?”
“It was the 1970s,” Briggs said as if that explained everything. “Another world back then. Until 1959, Hawai‘i wasn’t even a state. It was a trust territory. The military’s strong presence on all the islands continued, and this corner of Hawai‘i was basically one big military base, so it wasn’t a problem to put it here. And here it has remained ever since.”
“And the military never tried to remove it?”
“Of course we tried,” Briggs snapped, sounding defensive. “The army wanted to get rid of it. But the Senate Appropriations subcommittee wouldn’t authorize funding, and we couldn’t make a public fuss because the state of Hawai‘i wanted it kept secret. Sometime in the 1980s, state officials learned this stuff was here, and they wanted it gone, but they didn’t want any headlines. You know, ‘Radioactive Waste Removed from Hawaiian Island Site.’ That would be bad for tourism.”
“Jesus,” Mac said. “Youthink?”