Thirteen "low-level" radioactive waste disposal facilities (LLRWDFs) are currently planned to be built as regional dumps for 10 compacts (groups of states) and 2 unaffiliated states. One initial dump is supposed to be built in each compact (usually in the state which produces the most waste).[1]
These disposal facilities were supposed to be completed by 1986 to replace the 3 existing dumps, according to the federal Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act of 1980 (LLRWPA)[2]. This act of Congress made the states responsible for providing for the disposal of commercially generated within their borders and some federally generated low-level radioactive wastes, or LLRW. This act encouraged states to join compacts to dispose of this waste on a regional basis. One of the incentives to do so was that, by 1986, states hosting a nuclear waste dump could exclude "low-level" waste that was not generated within their compact. This was until the enactment of the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1985 (LLRWPAA)[3]. The LLRWPAA allowed for out-of-compact waste to enter a compact's dump under "emergency conditions." Also, in that act, the deadline for operation of these dumps was postponed 7 years until 1993. Of course, this wasn't met, either.
As it stands at the end of 1994, no new commercial nuclear waste dumps have been built since the original 6 sites (4 of which are now closed; all of which are leaking) [4]. At the present rate, no dump is expected to be operational until at least 1996-1997, when California, Texas, and perhaps North Carolina are expected to be online. No other facilities are expected to be operational until at least 1998-2000. Given the various delays and lawsuits, it is doubtful that any of these sites will really be operational by these dates, either.
Immense public relations campaigns and misinformation campaigns have focused around the issue of these radioactive waste dumps. The nuclear power utilities, being the major generators of LLRW, have been the primary movers behind the siting projects. About the only things that remain consistent are the inconsistencies. From West Valley, New York to Ward Valley, California, the proponents keep expressing that "low-level" means low hazard and that this supposedly innocuous waste is merely "trash" and is predominantly medical in origin. This is simply not true.
Statistics provided by the Appalachian Compact Commission, the agency in charge of the low-level program in the 4-state Appalachian Compact (PA, MD, WV, and DE), show that LLRW composition is predominantly from nuclear power plants, not medical waste. On average, from 1986 to 1993, nuclear power plant waste comprised 90% of LLRW sent to disposal by radioactivity, whereas medical waste comprised of 0.0039%. In 1993, the radioactivity of medical waste sent for disposal had dropped over 12 times the amounts disposed of in previous years. In 1993, the activity of medical LLRW had dropped to 0.00039% of the LLRW waste stream, 10 times less than the average for the 8 year period from 1986-1993. [5]
National pro-nuclear power lobbying groups like U. S. Council for Energy Awareness (USCEA), now called the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), and Organizations United for Responsible Low-Level Radioactive Waste Solutions (OUR LLRW Solutions) mislead the public into thinking that medical radioactive waste is the real reason that we need nuclear waste dumps. This has the effect of drawing the issue away from that of nuclear power and leads people to believe that if they don't accept the industry's"solution," then Aunt Sally can't get her cancer "treatments." A news article on the PR Newswire on October 27, 1993 which mentions Organizations United, also speaks of a lab at California State University where the low-level waste was described as "mostly discarded rubber gloves, petri dishes, and vials." [6]
This image is promoted by local pro-nuclear lobbying groups and other nuclear proponents, such as the Appalachian Compact Users of Radioactive Isotopes (ACURI) and Penn State University's Public Education on Low-Level Radiation (PELLRAD) program. In an article where David Ryan, director of Penn State's PELLRAD program made a presentation to people in Upper Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the article states that low-level waste is, "not highly radioactive, such as filters, rags and protective clothing." Nowhere did the article describe the "low-level" waste as control rods, reactor cores, highly irradiated concrete, piping, filters, sludges, resins and other contaminated reactor components. [7]
The misinformation groups such as USCEA (now NEI), Organizations United, ACURI and PELLRAD leave behind a host of articles and reports in the media which serve to placate and distract people from the truth about LLRW. Countless other articles make LLRW out to be innocuous medical waste. Here is a sampling of such articles: In the Reuters Business Report on July 13, 1994, they refer to LLRW as, "items such as contaminated beakers, dirty hospital gloves and used syringes" [8] when referring wastes entering the most contaminated site in the U.S.: Hanford, Washington. Another article appeared in the Financial Times on August 6th, 1994, describing low-level waste as, "clothing and other lightly contaminated equipment." [9]
The truth is that "Low-Level" Radioactive Waste is not medical in any statistically meaningful amount, but is overwhelmingly nuclear power plant waste. LLRW is not defined by radioactivity or health effects. LLRW is only defined by where it comes from. More precisely, it is defined by where it doesn't come from. LLRW is defined as ALL radioactive waste not classified as irradiated fuel rods from nuclear power plants, "high-level" radioactive waste from weapons production, or uranium mill tailings. The following is the definition from the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1985:
Low-level Radioactive Waste.The term 'low-level radioactive waste' means radioactive material that --
(A) is not high-level radioactive waste, spent nuclear fuel, or byproduct material (as defined in section 11e.(2) of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2014(e)(2))); and
(B) the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, consistent with existing law and in accordance with paragraph (A), classifies as low-level radioactive waste.[10]
EPA's definition defines it a little more thoroughly:
Low-Level Waste (LLW) - Radioactive waste that is not classified as high-level waste, transuranic waste, spent nuclear fuel, or byproduct material as defined in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Commercial LLW is subdivided into Class A, Class B, Class C, and Greater-Than-Class-C (GTCC) wastes based on the NRC regulations that govern their disposal. As the concentrations of radionuclides increase from Class A to GTCC, the wastes are considered more hazardous and warrant increasingly stringent disposal methods. DOE Order 5820.2A further specifies that test specimens of fissionable material irradiated for research and development only, and not for the production of power or plutonium, may be classified as low-level waste provided the concentration of transuranic elements is less than 100 nCi/g. [11]
Although the majority of the volume of LLRW is Class A low-activity trash (the "booties and gloves" type of waste), the overwhelming majority (93.7% in Pennsylvania [12]) of the radioactivity of "low-level" radioactive waste is highly-radioactive Class C waste, such as:
Irradiated components and piping that are in continual contact with highly radioactive water for the 20 to 30 years the reactor operates, becoming activated themselves.
Control rods from the reactor core which come in direct contact with fuel rods (controlling the reaction by covering them), absorbing their radiation.
Resins, sludges, filters, and evaporator bottoms from cleansing the water in the reactor vessel and in the fuel pool which contains the highly-irradiated "spent" fuel rods (high-level waste). This equipment accumulates highly radioactive particulates from leaky fuel rods.
The entire nuclear power plants when they are decommissioned (closed down and dismantled). A typical 1,000 megawatt reactor building floor contains over 13,000 tons of contaminated concrete and over 1,400 tons of contaminated reinforcing steel bar. [13]
It is not sufficient to assume that LLW is really limited to what its definition says it is (or isn't, for that matter). Among the things that are supposedly not allowed in LLW are transuranics. Transuranics, or TRU, are materials which are contaminated with elements that have atomic numbers greater than that of Uranium, which is 92. This includes Plutonium bomb-making material), Americium, Neptunium, Curium, and some others. TRU is, by definition, material that is contaminated by these elements in amounts greater than 10 nanoCuries per gram (nCi/g). Low-Level Waste is allowed to include TRU in amounts up to 100 nCi/g. [14]
The regulations that govern how much transuranic waste is allowed in a "low-level" dump allow the waste to be measured in a way which can allow its handlers to play with the numbers. Any amount of Plutonium can make its way into a "low-level" site if it is diluted enough. In talking about transuranic content, the regulations state that, "[t]he concentration of a radionuclide may be averaged over the volume of the waste." [15] All one has to do is average it over a larger volume to get the proper concentration one needs to meet the NRC's regulations.
California, in its proposed LLRW dump site at Ward Valley, has had a rude awakening when they found out that the quantity of Plutonium which would enter the dump was really 7,000 times higher than people were told. California U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer testified before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, revealing the documents omitted from reports to the public by the California Department of Health Services. In her testimony, she reports that, "[o]ver 100 pounds of plutonium-239 alone, with a half-life of 24,000 years, is estimated in the EIS [Environmental Impact Statement] to go to Ward Valley; quantities as small as a millionth of a gram will cause cancer with virtual certainty." She goes on to say, later in her testimony, that, "[t]he amount of Plutonium-239, for example, is increased over 7,000-fold, from 0.45 curies to 3,500 curies." [16]
As if to confirm environmentalists' concerns, the nuclear industry has started to made the concentration averaging loophole a reality. The fourth category of the A, B, C Class system of "low-level" waste is called "Greater Than Class C," or GTCC. This highly radioactive waste, while classified as "low-level," is designated by Congress not to be disposed of in "low-level" waste dumps, but is the Department of Energy's responsibility for disposal. Since there are no plans to build special facilities for GTCC disposal, DOE is considering options for disposal of this waste. The industry expects there to be 1000 to 6000 cubic meters of this high activity waste by the year 2035, when existing reactor operating licenses may expire should the industry get 20 year license extentions. This represents 90 million curies of waste that isn't slated for the high-level waste repository planned for Yucca Mountain or any of the "low-level" waste dumps. In recent discussions, the DOE has considered putting this waste in the corners of the Yucca Mountain high-level waste repository (an unlikely plan, given the delays, technical difficulties and capacity at the proposed site). [17] The Yankee Rowe reactor, which was decommissioned illegally (a decomissioning plan was never filed) is holding on to 1.5 to 2 cubic meters of GTCC waste. They are considering "concentration averaging" and "blending" to dilute the activity down to class C waste which could then be disposed of as "low-level" waste, although containing the same amount of radioactivity.
Besides the spectre of transuranic Plutonium or GTCC waste in a shallow land burial facility, there is also a remote possibility that even fuel rods can become part of the "low-level" waste stream. Around July of 1990, a fuel rod in the Vermont Yankee reactor was gashed and fuel pellets spilled out. The company insists that the pellets were not found in the filters, but that they adhered to the outside of the rods. Whether or not actual pellets made their way into the LLW disposed from that reactor is not known. What is known is that only the intact fuel rods get stored and saved in fuel pools to be disposed of as high-level waste. Any spilled pellets from a fuel rod would become LLW. The particulates from the gashed fuel rod may have ended up in the filters and would have been treated as "low-level" waste. [18] It is conceivable that, with the incredible price of disposing of high-level "spent" fuel rods, a power plant owner may "accidentally" crush their fuel rods and have most of the pellets get thrown out with the LLW stream. The waste would have to be in a fuel rod to be considered high-level if the NRC so chooses. Actually, the NRC has regulatory authority to declare any nuclear waste to be high-level. It seldom chooses to do so.
Military weaponry waste is another waste stream which is not supposed to be permitted in a commercial LLW dump. There are, however, ways in which military waste may, inadvertently or not, end up where it shouldn't be. Commercial treatment and "decontamination" facilities for radioactive materials generate more waste in the process of "decontamination." For instance, a treatment plant may decontaminate by spraying the materials with high pressure water or sand, creating a new, contaminated waste stream. Since this new waste was generated by commercial treatment in a compact, this waste could be considered waste which the compact is responsible for disposing of. If the Department of Energy sends weapons waste to a commercial facility in the Appalachian compact for treatment, some, perhaps most, of the radioactivity may become the host state's liability. At a LLW meeting in Amelia Island, Florida, in June, 1993, a DOE official was asked whether it would be legal for DOE to ship radioactive material to a commercial treatment facility and whose waste it would be. He confirmed that the waste generated would be the compact's waste. [19] This has not yet been subjected to litigation and is a major uncertainty, particularly in view of the Department of Energy's intent to "recycle" as much radioactive waste as it can. For example, NRC now allows the use of Cesium-137 for food irradiation, and DOE has a program for the development of industrial and other uses of Strontium (in batteries) and other radioactive wastes.
This issue of radioactive "materials" entering a compact state and later being declared "waste" by the licensee is a major issue which has not been addressed in the laws or regulations and has yet to be hammered out in the courts. The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act of 1980 created the incentives for states to join compacts. One of these incentives was that a state that has joined a compact could exclude out-of-compact waste from its regional disposal site, but a state that decides to "go it alone" can't. This law does not address what happens if a power utility moves its contaminated equipment to another plant it owns in another compact. The "generator" is still the same corporate entity, but, when the licensee has no further use for the equipment and declares it to be waste, that waste may become the recipient state's responsibility. A waste generator may be allowed to store its "materials" in another compact until it decides theyare "waste" and can then dispose of them. By the same token, a generator in a state or compact with no operating dump, can send the waste to a treatment plant in another compact and have some of that waste stream (that which is generated in the "decontamination" process) become the liability of another state.
This is now more true for treatment by incineration than by decontamination, but compacts are now negotiating agreements to return such waste (or ash) to the place of origin. Even if the compacts manage to close this loophole, it will be hard to determine which waste belongs to whom. With regards to incinerator ash, it will be nearly impossible to assign the corresponding volume and radioactivity of ash to the proper generator.
The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Amendments Act of 1985 also added another loophole which would allow out-of-compact waste to enter a compact. This loophole was added after most of the compacts have been formed. The LLRWPAA enacted regulations entitled, "Criteria and Procedures for Emergency Access to Non-Federal and Regional Low-Level Waste Disposal Facilities." This emergency access provision allows the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to override the exclusionary powers of compacts whenever the NRC decides an emergency exists. [20]
In a subsection entitled "Specific exemptions," the regulations state, "The [Nuclear Regulatory] Commission may, upon application of any interested person or upon its own initiative, grant an exemption from the requirements of the regulations in this part that it determines is authorized by law and will not endanger life or property or the common defense and security and is otherwise in the public interest." [21]
This allows the NRC to play God with nuclear waste disposal. The word, "person" is defined so as to include corporations. The definition states, "Person means any individual, corporation... who is [a] licensed generator of LLRW..." [22] The semantics here are literal. Corporations were given human rights in 1886 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that no state shall deprive a corporation "of life, liberty or property without due process of law." [23]
The definition of "endangering life or property" is a very subjective thing when it comes to nuclear waste. NRC strongly prefers disposal to storage, as they have stated many times in recent internal documents. [24] The waste generators also prefer this because it means that they are off the hook; the liability is transferred to the state (taxpayers) once it is "disposed" of. This means that the NRC may decide that on-site storage, in itself, endangers life or property. If so, the waste generators throughout he country could dispose of their wastes in the first couple of waste sites to open, without waiting for their own state or compact sites to be developed. This could easily result in there being a handful of sites that become the nation's dumping grounds without the power to exclude waste from outside their compact.
The terms "defense and security" apply in that LLW remains a security issue, even though the regulations were written during the Cold War. The facilities are vulnerable to sabotage or terrorist attack which can result in air and water contamination. Substantial amounts of Plutonium have been projected for the California site at Ward Valley. The Department of Energy is now proposing to recycle Plutonium recovered from dismantled nuclear weapons by creating Mixed Oxide Fuels for use in existing Light Water Reactors. Additional Plutonium in reactor fuels will increase the amount of Plutonium in "low-level" waste. Plutonium is considered to be the most toxic substance known to man. Traditionally, "national security" has been used to eliminate public accountability and to keep information classified and out of the public's hands.
NRC's definition of "public interest" is absolutely warped. Their concept of public involvement is not to listen to people, but to go out and "educate" (read: brainwash) us so that we agree with them. They don't even understand the difference between public-interest groups and special-interest groups. They attack public-interest groups by calling them special-interest groups.
The emergency access provision allows a loophole large enough that one can drive nuclear waste trains through it. For example, if Illinois' nuclear power plants need to dispose of their wastes or are decommissioned and they haven't built a dump in their compact, then the generators can apply for permission to send it to Pennsylvania. If the NRC decides that the generator is basing the request on the grounds of a serious and immediate threat to the public health and safety or the common defense and security, then it can go there.
Although the regulations state that emergency access may not exceed 180 days, a generator may decide to use this window to send all of the waste from decommissioning and waste which has been stored onsite to another compact. [25] The NRC also left open an opportunity to expand this window. In a section titled, "Extension of emergency access." This says that the NRC can extend the time limit as long as they decide that the original arguments are met (public health threat...) and that the generator and the State have shown that they have tried not to have to do this. There is no maximum time limit set forth here. [26]
The person requesting emergency access must specify the minimum volumeof waste to be disposed of, but not the maximum. No maximum volume or radioactivity is defined. The regulations do stipulate that the NRC will exclude a site from taking waste under emergency access if the waste exceeds 20% of the total volume of LLRW accepted for disposal at the dump during the previous year. However, it does nothing to keep a generator from requesting emergency access under 2 or more corporate identities or to keep a generator from using more than one site to dispose of its waste. [27]
Nuclear waste from the entire world also has ways of potentially entering into U.S. LLRW disposal facilities. Foreign corporations who own facilities here can move their materials around. Alaron, an LLRW compactor and "treatment" facility in Western Pennsylvania, is owned by the Swiss. They are allowed to take waste from anywhere in the world for decontamination. The U.S. also makes deals with foreign nations to take back the waste from the reactors that American corporations sell overseas.
To make matters worse, free trade agreements have the potential to override U.S. sovereignty and invalidate U.S. laws. International panels of lawyers for multinational corporations will have the authority to override a nation's laws if they deem those laws a barrier to trade. In an article in LDC Debt Report / Latin American Markets, on Oct. 7, 1991, the implications of free trade agreements are set forth: "A ruling that strikes down the U.S. ban on Mexican tuna imports has widespread implications for other U.S. environmental and health laws that collide with international trade agreements...." [28] The Financial Times ran an article expressing Canada's discomfort with the NAFTA agreement. In the December 9, 1992 article, it read, "The Canadians are also nervous that many Mexican officials will find it difficult to adjust to the disciplines required by a detailed international trade agreement, especially one which overrides domestic laws." [29] Provision 1904 - 9. of NAFTA says, "[t]he decision of a panel under this Article shall be binding on the involved Parties with respect tothe particular matter between the Parties that is before the panel." [30] This panel would rule over the laws of the countries in the free trade agreement.
Under NAFTA, Canada and Mexico have the right to challenge local,state, and federal laws as trade barriers. Disputes will be handled by an appointed board of trade lawyers, unaccountable to the American people. No appeal is allowed through the U.S. judiciary system. Fines levied, if any, will be upon the country, not upon the company responsible for the violation. In other words, the taxpayer will pay. [31]
GATT, including 123 countries, as opposed to NAFTA's 3, would be many times worse. It would put incredible power in the World Trade Organization and all countries laws would gradually roll back to the lowest common denominator.
As more and more ways are found to allow nuclear waste to have anoutlet to go to, there will be no incentive to stop creating it in the first place. The easier it is to send it "away" to be another state's burden, the fewer waste sites will get built, and will, therefore, be much larger sites. Moreover, the nuclear industry favors fewer sites to take advantage of "economies of scale." The liability issues are far from resolved. Should a host state become party to national and international waste, only the state taxpayers would be liable for the cleanup of environmental consequences. It is the local residents who would bear the burden of medical costs resulting from health damages related to radiation releases from the waste site. In the past 2 to 3 years, there has been a lot of talk in national forums about the consolidation of sites. The Office of Technology Assessment has issued a report saying that they predict that there won't be as many sites built as are planned. Instead of about 13 sites, there will probably be about 3 to 5. The NRC has proposed discussing with the National Governor's Association about the "consolidation of sites." The NGA has stated in a letter to Senator Robert Kerry of Nebraska (another host state), "...consolidation in the number of planned repositories is likely to occur," but the Governors "...see no obstacles to such consolidation in the current law as the states are free to associate in compacts by mutualagreement." [32] Federal law also allows Congress to withdraw its consent to LLRW compacts every 5 years. [33] As Ivan Selin, head of the NRC has said in a meeting in the spring of 1994, "the states will know when there are enough." In January, 1995, he publicly stated that a mere 2 to 3 sites would be sufficient, nationally. [34] As it stands, the first few locations that are unfortunate enough to open nuclear waste dumps will become the dumping grounds for untold types of radioactive wastes from untold places and for a very long time to come.