No leaking radiation from Alaska island nuclear site: Study

Environmental samples tested in 2016 show no subsurface migration of radioactive material, said Jason Nguyen with the US Department of Energy. Samples tested in 2011 also showed no ``excessive risk'' was found, he said.

nuclear testing, alaska nuclear, cancer, alaska radioactive material, alaska radiation, amchitka island radiation free, amchitka island nuclear, world news, indian express news — This file photo from June of 1971 shows a buckled cement pad that was damaged from the 1 megaton nuclear blast “Milrow”, detonated 4,000 feet underground in 1969, Amchitka Island, Alaska the site of nuclear bomb testing in the 1960s and 1970s. (AP Photo, file)

The latest round of testing on Alaska’s remote Amchitka Island found no radioactive material has leaked from locations where the federal government conducted underground nuclear tests there decades ago, a federal official said Tuesday.

Environmental samples tested in 2016 show no subsurface migration of radioactive material, said Jason Nguyen with the US Department of Energy. Samples tested in 2011 also showed no “excessive risk” was found, he said. The department funds sample testing conducted on the island every five years.

“Our preliminary results for 2016 are showing that that conclusion still holds,” Nguyen said as he moderated a panel discussion Tuesday at an environmental forum in Anchorage. A final report on that study is expected later this year.

Nguyen, the department’s site manager for Amchitka work, also said a 2014 earthquake with a magnitude 7.9 damaged the caps of three drilling mud pits on the now-uninhabited island. But he said none of the diesel-fuel filled mud was exposed. The damage has not yet been repaired.

Three nuclear tests were conducted between 1965 and 1971 on Amchitka, located in the Aleutian Islands chain 1,340 miles southwest of Anchorage. The island was occupied by Aleuts for thousands of years. But they were long gone by the time the US military built a base there during World War II as a strategic defence post, said Bruce Wright, the science adviser for the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, a tribal organization for Alaska’s Aleuts including those on the closest occupied location, Adak Island, 200 miles east of Amchitka. Wright was among the speakers at Tuesday’s gathering.

Wright’s group is a partner with the Department of Energy in the periodic sampling tests, including the latest studies.