Half of EPA's radiation warning system in California defective

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) radiation sensor network in California has critical defects, leaving Californians and the nation with delayed access to information during a nuclear accident.

The defective sensors are part of EPA’s RadNet detection system which was created to provide an active warning system that would alert scientists and public health officials of any elevated levels of radiation so they can warn the public or take other protective measures.

According to Mike Bandrowski, the manager of the EPA’s radiation program, half of California’s twelve sensors have been sending data with “anomalies” to the EPA’s main laboratory in Montgomery, Alabama.

The faulty data results in delays of up to several hours of updating the RadNet database.

Three of the sensors are located close by to the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant which sits within a few miles of two volatile fault lines in an earthquake prone region. Furthermore, at the start of Japan’s nuclear crisis, the EPA’s website indicated that only half of the system’s radiation sensors were functioning properly, while the other half produced data that was “undergoing quality review.”

Dan Hirsch, a lecturer on nuclear policy at UC Santa Cruz and the president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, an anti-nuclear group, says the malfunctioning sensors poses a serious public health risk.

“The unreliability of the EPA monitoring effort revealed by this event raises troubling questions about whether Californians would receive timely warning to evacuate, or take other protective actions, in case of a nuclear accident here,” Hirsch said.

EPA officials say that even with the sensors not working properly, there is no concern about the recent Japanese nuclear crisis as the large plume of radioactive contaminants can be detected with sensors located up and down the length of the west coast of the United States.

Without the real-time warnings provided by RadNet, state and local officials are left wholly dependent upon nuclear power plant operators to alert them immediately to any possible accidents that could result in a radiation leak.

David McIntyre, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), says, “I believe the utilities monitor the sensors; they’re good about reporting things.”

But the incidents in Japan have revealed that nuclear plant operators are not always forthcoming with data. Tokyo Electric Power Co., which runs the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has been sharply criticized for not providing government officials with accurate data in a timely fashion as the crisis first began to unfold.

“There’s a natural reluctance to reporting something embarrassing,” said Arjun Makhijani, the president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

Far from being the only radiation sensor network in the United States, there are several other detectors operated by local, federal, and international bodies.

The California Department of Public Health has two sensors at each of the state’s two nuclear plants, but the data is not collected frequently, only every forty-eight hours.

The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty Organization also has four sensors in the United States as part of its global network designed to detect any radiation from nuclear weapons tests.

The organization has one sensor in Sacramento and was the first facility to detect traces of radiation from Japan in California.

While updated regularly, the system is not specifically designed to alert the public of any major disasters that would require evacuations.

Bandrowski sought to tamp down fears. He said that even with the faulty data, RadNet’s sensors are still functioning, collecting data, and sending it to EPA’s main facility every hour. He explained that the delays result from some “glitches” in the data that require a staff member to manually review it before it can be added to the database.

“That’s the nature of satellite transmissions, there’s always going to be glitches.”