Видео: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=9CSkwyHlfDk

Russell: My name is Russell Hardy and I'm the director here at the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center.I have a PhD in Higher Ed administration and a MA and BA in business administration.I just play a scientist on TV, I'm not really a scientist.

O: What is the mission of your organization?

R: So Carlsbad Environmental and Research Center (CEMRC we call it) is part of New Mexico State Univ. and we're funded by the Dept. of Energy to conduct an independent environmental monitoring program of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. And the WIPP is the nation's only underground repository for defense related transuranic waste.

 O: How long have you provided your monitoring?

R: We've been providing independent environmental monitoring for 15years.

 O: Do you have any prognosis of the changes, of the impacts of the nuclear facility?

R: Prior to Feb. 14, 2014, there was no visible impact of the WIPP site on the local environment.Since Feb. 14, 2014, we've seen minor traces of Americium 241, Plutonium 239, 240, and Plutonium 238 in the environment outside the WIPP site.

 O: Is it dangerous?

R: From what we've seen, the levels are very low. The DOE has calculated a dose rate, based on what we've found at our sampling site, if you were there for an 8-hour period, and took the entire dose, it'd be the equivalent of 3 to 5 millirem of exposure, so less than a chest X-ray. And of course it's 28 miles in the middle of nowhere, so you would have had to been at the right place at the right time.

 O: You have a long history of monitoring.Could you explain what are the key problems for the monitoring?

R: Well, one of the problems we face is the drive out there.It's 28 miles one way so wear and tear on our people and equipment to go out and collect samples.We monitor air, water, soil, and surface water and sediments from local reservoirs.So it's very labor intensive to collect those samples.Then once we get them back to try to get them processed, digested, separated, and counted in a timely basis. That's another difficult problem that we face. It typically takes us 7 to 10 days from the time we collect a sample until we have results. So it's not a very quick process.

O: Who is the consumer of the information of your lab?

R: Our primary stakeholders are the citizens of Carlsbad and southeast New Mexico. Everything that we produce goes on our website and it is free access.

 O: But how to translate, or to interpret information from the scientific language for people who have no background?

R: And that's very difficult to take scientific units of measurement, the scientific notation, and becqerel per cubic meter/per liter/per whatever and to communicate that to the public is very difficult. Especially when we are measuring activity, and the public wants to know dose, how will it impact me.Going from activity to dose is very difficult.

 O: But they already give impact of environmental, the radiation, not only one component that impacts the environment and health conditions.Do you have possibilities to compare this radioactive factor and another factor?Maybe chemical contamination or contamination of the water?What is the most important, number one issue for the environment and people in this area?

R: Right, so, because the way the WIPP site is designed, it's 2,000 feet underground, the waste is placed in salt chambers that are mined out of Permian-age (?) salt deposits that are 250 million years old, so really there's no pathway for water, for the waste to get to water, because there's no water above, below, or around where the waste is placed. So the primary path is air. And because there's four shafts that go into the ground, that's our major focus, on the air within the repository as well as the air outside of the repository. Now we do sample water, both drinking water and surface water, but the chances of those being impacted by WIPP are very thin because of the distance between where the WIPP site is and those water bodies are located.

 O: The problem for the US and Russia, the decommissioning process of the old nuclear reactors, in the US you have more than 100 nuclear reactors, in Russia, just 33 and many reactors and their construction. What is your vision, how is it important, how to provide the monitoring during the decommissioning because it is a new situation for the nuclear power plants. My question is, how reasonable is it to organize such monitoring?Because it's very important to have it independent from the nuclear industry.

R: I agree that you need to have an independent entity that is also doing the monitoring. As we've seen with this event, the DOE has their own monitoring program, we as an independent have ours, and then the state, New Mexico Environmental Department, is doing their own, as well as the EPA, the federal environmental protection agency.But what we've found is that because of the ties with the federal government, many of the citizens don't trust the information that is coming from DOE, the state environmental partner, or the EPA.So they really rely on the independents to say, yes, these folks are telling the truth, that what they're finding is low level, and is not an impact to the human health or to the environment.So I wholeheartedly agree that you need an independent voice, and someone who can actually say what they find without repercussion.

 O: What is your vision, is it reasonable to monitor food, fish, vegetables? Is it reasonable to provide money for this component?

R:Yes, especially depending on where the site is located, and how close it is in proximity to food sources, whether it is a dairy or vegetable farm, a body of water where people are fishing and eating that fish.I think it's important to include those as part of the mix.For the WIPP site, because it's kind of out in the middle of nowhere, there's mesquite brush, there's native vegetation, but there's really no crops being grown, there are a few jack rabbits and deer, but for the most part there are no edible food sources around there.I don't think it makes much sense in our case, but certainly in a more populated area it would.

 O: But what do you think, who is reasonable to be like, just a minute to formulate in English, who will adopt the monitoring program for the region?Would it be a state department or some other organization, but not nuclear industry.

R: Right, the way our program got developed, the idea was that the federal government would bring the waste to New Mexico, the citizens basically said we want our own monitoring entity. We wanted it tied to the university system, because tenured professors have the right, I guess, or the ability to speak out and say no, this is not right, or you know, they're covering something up. And so they felt that having it housed with a university would provide that free speech, that protection, for the independent organization to stand up and say this is what we found, this is what we believe, regardless of what the other entities are saying.

 O: Do you have any statistics of the health of the people who live around the nuclear facilities, and the radioactive condition?Do you have any correlation between the level of the contamination and the level of the health condition?

R: Yes, we do. The great thing about our program is that we started our environmental monitoring and also our counting of public citizens before waste was ever put in the WIPP site.So we had a background to compare to before any waste was ever brought.Like I said, up until Feb. 14, 2014, we had never seen any increase in that background.Obviously now we have seen an increase in our air monitoring. Our soil tests, our surface water tests, are still at background.But air is slightly above. Because of the distance between the WIPP site and where we're located, we won't see any change in the people, we most likely won't see an increase in the background of the citizens we've counted, we're just now going through that data.

 O: I want to ask Nat to assist me.If you were given a blank check and the assignment of monitoring the decommissioning process of a nearby nuclear power plant, what would be your recommendation?The main priorities?

R: I think that first you've got to spend some money on the public relations aspect, you've got to get the community support, that they believe in and trust the entity that's going to be doing the monitoring. Then you've got to invest in the technology for the sample collection, whether it's land, air, water, soil, vegetation, as well as the instrumentation, in order to do that monitoring. And then you got to have good people in order to carry out those skills. I think it's a multi-prong approach.You've got to invest on the front end of establishing the trust and the respect, but then also have the people and the equipment in place in order to be able to conduct that activity.And it needs to be funded for many years so that even when the site is decommissioned and gone, that you're continuing to ensure that that background stays the same.

 O: Thank you.I have no other questions.

Andrei:What form of delivery of information to the public do you find most effective?

R: I find the face to face presentations the easiest.We've put all of our data on line, but unless people have an understanding of scientific notation, and the general scientific principles, they're not going to understand it.So face-to-face dialogue ....

 O: Do you have such contact?

R: We do.Before the incident, I would give maybe three or four presentations a year.Since this incident, we've been doing weekly town hall visits, where we have a town hall and invite people to come. They're also broadcast online. And we answer direct questions.We present information we have at the time and then we open it up to questions and try to answer their questions as best we can.It's been a very transparent process.

 O: Do you have any publications in the newspaper?

R: Yes, newspaper, radio, television, I've been interviewed at all. After the event, I was being interviewed daily.Now it's once every three or four weeks?

A: How are students involved?

R: We have very little student participation here, there's a college next door, but it's a two-year college.Since what we're doing requires MA and PhD level preparation, we're not really suited to do many student interactions.

 O: How is most important to the public in terms of environmental information?

R: I think because we had 15 years without an accident, and now we've had a marked event, the public is demanding information and they want credible information. They want information that they can trust.At least in my perspective, this event has helped improve the perception and the value of having an independent monitor?

 O: What are the main changes in your monitoring program after this accident?

R: We are expanding our number of ambient air monitoring stations. We have three. We're moving to six. We're doubling our air. We also are investing in the ability to count children in our whole body count.Prior to this point it's been only adults.And so we're developing a new phantom that we can calibrate our system to a smaller chest size so that we can get better results counting children.Because we had a lot of citizens who said I want to make sure my child didn't breathe in something. Parents will say, I'm OK with breathing in plutonium, but not my children.Those are the positive aspects that have come out of this.

Nat: Do you find you have a partnership with Texas?

R: I guess it depends on where you are.In Eddy County in southeast New Mexico, I think overall people are comfortable with taking other people's wastes.But if you go up to northern New Mexico, there's a big anti-sentiment, that no, we don't want to be the nation's garbage can, we don't want to take everyone's waste. And I think that's the same thing that happened in Nevada with Yucca Mountain.

 O: Yes, it's a very different situation. Why?

R: It's my understanding that the main opposition in Nevada came from Las Vegas, that the small communities outside of Las Vegas, where the repository would actually be located, were pro.Las Vegas was against, and the smaller communities were for the housing of waste there.But because you have more population, they outvoted them and put a stop to it. We see the same thing. The rural areas of New Mexico are for WIPP.But the two major population centers, Albuquerque and Santa Fe, are against.So I think it has to do with where the bulk of the people are.And there's really no direct benefit. The money comes here, it doesn't go up north.