The Tritium Chocolate Cake

Arizona Guardsmen seize a radioactive factory

For months, radioactive tritium had been leaking from the American Atomics Corp. factory in central Tucson, Ariz. The plant, which used the substance for luminous signs and watch dials, had shut down in July after state investigators found a tritium-tainted chocolate cake in a nearby kitchen that supplied lunches to 40,000 city schoolchildren. Radiation levels higher than normal were also found in the urine of local residents and in the water of a parochial school swimming pool. Rather than fight to retain its license, American Atomics decided to leave the state. Said Company President Peter Biehl: "It's quite clear that people don't want us in Arizona."

The company was still obliged to clean up its mess by Oct. 19. But the decontamination process was slow, and much time was spent in bickering with state officials over the amount of tritium lost. The company asked for a 13-month extension. A delay was permissible, but the danger uncertain. What to do? For Democratic Governor Bruce Babbitt, 41, the answer was obvious and unprecedented: declare a state of emergency and call in the National Guard.

So four Guardsmen invaded the factory last week, their drab fatigues covered by yellow plastic suits, gloves and shoe covers. Under the direction of officials from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy and the state's own atomic energy commission, the Guardsmen sealed some $500,000 worth of tritium into 55-gal. drums. To the infiltrators the plant appeared "sloppier and worse than anticipated," Babbitt said. Company officials retorted that the hubbub was "like a Nazi camp in there." They called Babbitt's action "absolutely crazy" and accused him of having chosen "to throw law to the wind."

Babbitt--the state's former attorney general who stumbled into the governorship under a provision of the state constitution last year after Governor Raul Castro took an ambassador's post and his successor, State Secretary Wesley Bolin, died in office--shrugged off the company's reaction. Said Babbitt, who has since won election in his own right: "There is an extremely serious situation down there, and the management of that company has proven its inability to take care of the situation."

At week's end the plan was to cart off the tritium to the Navajo Army depot, a federal munitions dump near Flagstaff, Ariz. There it could be processed for sale, fed at a safe rate into the atmosphere or dumped at a nuclear waste site. But when a Flagstaff judge issued a restraining order against the transport, its destination became dubious.

Another question lingered: Was the leaking truly dangerous? Though radioactive, tritium is a hydrogen isotope emitting only low-energy beta particles that cannot penetrate uncut skin. If ingested, tritium may mix with body chemicals, but no biological damage has ever been proven. That ambiguity did not trouble state officials. "If a person breathes in tritium, it doesn't have to be strong to do harm," contends Ken Geiser, acting director of the Arizona atomic energy commission.

On the basis of that chocolate cake, he says, "I ran up the red flag."

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