=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #183
—May 30, 1990—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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COMING YOUR WAY: RADIOACTIVE GARBAGE.
Many of us have spent so much time fighting hazardous chemicals,
leaking landfills, and municipal incinerators that we have not
had time to focus on another serious problem that will soon
affect us all: growing stockpiles of so-called “low-level”
radioactive wastes that have to be put somewhere. These wastes
are created by nuclear power plants (which split uranium atoms to
make electricity) and by medical labs and hospitals (for
diagnosis and therapy, for example). Over two-thirds of the
volume and over 80% of the radioactivity in the nation’s
low-level radwaste today come from nuclear power plants; by the
year 2020, 80% of the volume and 97% of the radioactivity will
come from nuclear power plants (because, by then, old nuclear
plants will be dismantled and will themselves become part of the
waste stream). Low-level radwaste is currently being sent to the
nation’s three operating radwaste landfills (at Beatty, Nevada,
Richland, Washington, and Barnwell, South Carolina). Beatty and
Barnwell will fill up and be closed by 1993. Washington state
plans to restrict Richland’s intake to locally-produced
radwastes. Where will the stuff go after 1993?
The government has two answers to this question. One answer is an
effort to site 16 new low-level radioactive wastes landfills in
New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Texas, Pennsylvania, Nebraska,
Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Connecticut, Washington state,
Nevada, Colorado, South Carolina, North Carolina, and California.
The federal government’s other answer is to press ahead with a
plan to simply declare 1/3 of the nation’s “low-level”
radioactive waste “below regulatory concern” (BRC) and thus to
remove these materials from the “radioactive waste” category
entirely. Then these BRC radwastes will be allowed to go wherever
municipal trash is going today. If your community has a dump, BRC
radioactive materials will be allowed into your dump; if you
incinerate, you’ll be allowed to incinerate radioactive
materials; since liquid wastes are now entering your town sewer,
you’ll be able to have radioactive liquids (for example, from
laboratory drains) entering your sewage treatment plant and if
you then compost your sewage sludge, you’ll be allowed to have
radioactivity in your compost; if you recycle, you’ll be able to
recycle radioactive materials which may then be remanufactured
into radioactive household products such as appliances or kitchen
utensils.
Why would our government declare millions of cubic feet of
radioactive materials “below regulatory concern?” The reason is
simple: economics. Nuclear power is brought to you by a
partnership between Uncle Sam and big companies like Westinghouse
and G.E. Since these companies still hope to sell the American
public more nuclear power plants (it’s potentially a partial
answer to the greenhouse global warming problem; another possible
solution is solar energy, but solar suffers from a fatal
disadvantage: Westinghouse and G.E. can’t sell sunlight), the
Bush administration is trying to reduce the costs of nuclear
energy by declaring large quantities of radioactive wastes “below
regulatory concern” so they can be dumped cheaply. It’s just one
more way that Uncle Sam can subsidize the nuclear power industry,
to reward industrial friends who may later make substantial
campaign contributions.
BRC would be a major gift to the nuclear industry. As the
nation’s nuclear power plants approach the end of their useful
lifetimes (about 25 years), they must be dismantled piece by
piece and put somewhere. All the radioactive pipes, tubes, tanks,
tools, instruments, gauges, filters, and so forth will vastly
increase the nation’s stockpile of “low-level” radioactive
wastes. If all these wastes have to be handled with special care
and buried in special vaults under ground (or above ground) at
$40 per cubic foot (or more), the total costs of nuclear energy
will increase substantially. At today’s prices, the BRC program
would save the nuclear power industry an estimated billion
dollars over the next 20 years. And when the government gets
around to cleaning up the nation’s enormous, contaminated nuclear
weapons sites (such as Fernald, Ohio, Rocky Flats, Colorado, and
Hanford, Washington–see RHWN #124), a BRC program could reduce
cleanup costs by many billions of dollars.
The key problem with the BRC proposal is that it seems certain to
increase exposure of the general public to radiation. Why is this
bad?
To begin with, medical doctors who use radiation for diagnosis or
therapy agreed on ethical standards long ago. Medical views of
radiation are based on the assumption that any amount of
radiation causes some harm and some risk of serious consequences
(such as genetic damage or cancer). Medical ethics dictate that a
person should not be exposed to any radiation unless that person
derives a benefit from the exposure. Secondly, the general public
has a right to know, a right to be informed before they are
exposed to any hazards such as radiation. The BRC program will
result in people being exposed without their knowing it, and the
exposed indivduals will very likely not have received any
benefits from the sources of the exposures. Thus the BRC program
violates medical ethics.
The federal government ignores these ethical standards and simply
says that existing exposure limits for radiation are safe enough
to protect the public. The current regulations are intended to
allow the development of one fatal cancer in every group of
100,000 exposed individuals. The government’s position seems to
be that it’s OK to risk killing one out of every 100,000
Americans in order to reduce costs for the nuclear power
industry. Thomas Cochran, a physicist with Natural Resources
Defense Council (NRDC), says that, according to the government’s
logic, “it is ‘BRC’ to randomly fire a bullet into a crowded
Manhattan street on the basis that the individual risk to a
person in New York City is less than one in several million.” In
short, it just doesn’t make sense, and isn’t ethical, to expose
the general public to additional radiation if it can be avoided.
Furthermore, there is a great deal of new evidence (which we will
discuss later in this series) indicating that radiation is five
to 10 times more dangerous than was believed when current
exposure limits were set. Radiation–particularly at low levels
of exposure–is now thought to be much more dangerous to humans
than was previously believed. Lastly, since the government does
not intend to monitor solid waste to see if permissible radiation
levels are being exceeded (by accident or more likely by
unscrupulous waste haulers), the BRC program appears to be
opening the door for abuses and violations that will further
endanger the public and which cannot be controlled.
The term “low-level” does not accurately describe the hazards
from some “low-level” radwastes. For example, “low-level” wastes
may contain dangerous amounts of nickel-63 (a radioactive form of
the metal, nickel), which has a half-life of about 100 years and
will therefore remain radioactive for about 1000 years. The
well-known nuclear physicist, Theodore Taylor, says he used to
think the problem of radwaste disposal was “politically difficult
because of the NIMBY [not in my back yard] syndrome, but that
technically it was probably solvable. Well,” he says, “I don’t
think that anymore. I don’t see any evidence of a solution that
we can say with certainty will get rid of this stuff safely.”
What can you do? 1) Inform yourself. For example, get: Scott
Saleska, “Low-Level Radioactive Waste: Gamma Rays in the
Garbage,” BULLETIN OF THE ATOMIC SCIENTISTS (April, 1990), pgs.
19-25. For a good (though somewhat out-of-date), detailed review
of the problems of radioactive waste, get Ronnie Lipschutz,
RADIOACTIVE WASTE (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1980). 2) Keep in
touch with Nuclear Information Resource Service (NIRS), 1616 P
Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036; (202) 328-0002, and the
Radioactive Waste Campaign, 625 Broadway, 2nd floor, New York, NY
10012; (212) 473-7390.
3) Get involved in your state’s plan to deal with radioactive
wastes. Your involvement is the key.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: radioactive waste; brs; llw; nickel-63;
nuclear power plants; nv, wa, sc; landfilling; brc; nirs; scott
saleska;