NUCLEAR GUARDIANSHIP FORUM, On The Responsible Care of Radioactive Materials
Issue # 3, Spring 1994, p. 11.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interview with Mary Olson
Politics of Nuclear Waste
Mary Olson is a staff member of
Nuclear Information and Resources Service (NIRS) in Washington, DC
by Francis and Joanna Macy
Ninety-five percent of the total global radioactivity of nuclear waste is
from nuclear power plants. What is happening with the United States' share?
The Forum asks an expert.
Nuclear Information Resources Service (NIRS) follows closely
government policy and actions on nuclear waste. As we understand
the situation, the government is obliged by law to take possession
and manage irradiated fuel rods from nuclear power plants by 1998,
but in 1995 it has no place to put them. Is this a crisis?
The law says in general terms that the Federal Government is going
to provide for the disposal of high- level waste. The only place
the 1998 date appears is in contracts which the Department of
Energy has signed over the years when they supply the fresh unused
fuel to the utilities. And in those contracts, 1998 has been
specified as an agreement; the date is not in the law.
The government is committed by contract to remove high-level waste
-- so-called spent fuel rods -- by 1998.
Yes. These contracts gave the utilities with nuclear power plants
the illusion that they were going to be sending used fuel rods off
to the government for reprocessing, and it was going to be a true
cycle. That was an illusion. It didn't work. So that's where they
are, all of them: the nuclear industry, the DOE, all these guys
are dealing with the fact that the power plants' cooling pools are
getting full of extremely hot fuel assemblies from reactors.
Many utilities have gotten government permission to consolidate or
re-rack the fuel assemblies more closely. Is that a danger?
Yes. They are re-racking more closely. Criticality in fuel pools
-- when you get a self-sustaining chain reaction going -- is a
real threat. It could be pretty messy. They made a little
miscalculation in the Millstone Plant in Connecticut and
acknowledged that they were a lot closer to criticality than they
thought they were. Meltdown of a fuel pool would be an
unprecedented catastrophe.
------------------------------------
I think the utilities want out...
they know that this stuff
is just going to keep costing,
costing and costing.
------------------------------------
I spent two days in a systems architecture workshop with the
Department of Energy, which has one scenario for waste management
called: "The Just In Time Scenario". The idea is that the federal
government would start picking up the used fuel rods according to
which pool is the most full. They literally refer to this approach
as the "Just In Time" scenario where they show up with their
little truck and load the fuel up "just in time" to avoid an
accident.
Is anyone worried about the 1998 deadline?
We have about a dozen plants that are going to be up past their
noses with overloaded pools by that point.
Utilities are faced with the necessity of either installing their
own dry casks, to store irradiated fuel rods after years in the
cooling pools, or installing dry casks which the DOE supplies to
them, which they like moderately better. But mainly they want the
waste out the gate. They get almost rabid about the "out the gate"
question.
Because waste is no longer their responsibility once it leaves the
power plant site?
Right. So, we now have a second question about ownership of used
fuel. When does title transfer occur or does title transfer occur
at all?
One of the quandaries that was waded through in the DOE workshop
was: when and how does DOE accept the waste? Is it the day DOE
takes title for it? Is it the day it physically moves it? Can it
take title on the site and not physically remove it? Can it
physically remove it and not take title for it? Why should the
government take title for it? Why should taxpayers have the title?
Why should rate payers have the title?
Do the contracts have the term "assume title for the waste"?
No. The title transfer point is not yet determined, and some
people say it wouldn't happen until the waste is actually in the
repository. Other people propose that it happen with each reactor
site becoming a new DOE nuclear waste site. This was floated out
as a possibility. We would have some seventy new DOE sites.
Are some utilities proposing this?
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners
decided to establish a Radioactive Waste Program Office because
they were getting nervous about all this. They held a series of
stakeholder meetings, bringing together utility people with
government representatives. Judith Johnsrud was the only
non-industry, non-government person who was on the panel and she
went with great trepidation because a lot of us were saying,
"Boycott! Boycott!" But I'm glad she did, because this was the
place where she first heard, and I first heard, the idea that they
might simply leave the used fuel where it was at nuclear power
plants and declare the location DOE sites, as the way to get
utilities off the hook. I think this is mainly a threat from
utilities to try to motivate DOE to solve their problem.
What do the utilities with nuclear reactors and nuclear waste
want?
I think the utilities want out. Not only because they don't want
the liability for radioactive accidents and waste, but also
because they know that this stuff is just going to keep costing,
costing and costing. And they want out.
What is your vision, Mary, for a responsible way of managing the
spent fuel rods?
This is the place where I always get very circumspect and quiet.
And I will tell you why.
Many activists portray the "waste problem" as the only barrier
between the first generation of nuclear power plants and the next.
So they are unwilling to talk about solutions to the waste problem
and are accused of brinksmanship. My response is: it was not we
who started the brinkmanship. It was the people who made this
material without knowing what to do with the lethal waste.
When Congress asked the Department of Energy to write a report on
how they are going to handle the next generation of waste, if they
actually build a next generation of reactors, the DOE came up with
a couple of scenarios. One is the Advanced Liquid Metal Reactor
(ALMR) . Some people think it is a good idea because it allegedly
makes waste that is less long-lived.
Can it reduce waste, or does the DOE intend to have people think
that the waste will be taken care of whereas in fact it will not?
Right. It is a total con! Plus it makes an even greater low-level
waste problem. It just doesn't do the job. It only effects two
percent of the fuel waste.
It reduces the radioactivity by two percent?
It will take only about two percent of the radionuclides and
render them shorter lived, leaving 98 percent, including much of
the long-lived radionuclides untouched, and producing significant
quantities of so-called low-level waste.
You say "so-called low-level waste". Low-level is a misnomer,
isn't it?
Yes. Right now it is an institutional classification system. [see
U.S. Waste Categories, page 13] This means classifying waste on
the basis of its source not it's danger as the names imply. So
whether it's a whole fuel rod, pieces of a fuel rod or a dissolved
fuel rod it's essentially is high-level waste.
What changes are you proposing in the classification system?
To change things instantly to include the longevity of the hazard
in determining high from low. It's not the only factor.
Intensively radioactive but short-lived materials that will not be
radioactive several months from now are still a problem. (I know
that because of what happened to me.) But protecting the planet
from materials that will no longer be radioactive in several
months is a different level of issue and ought to be regulated in
a different manner.
------------------------------------
States that are continuing to build
these so-called low-level dumps
are basically doing it as volunteers
to nuclear industry. They don't
have to under existing law.
------------------------------------
The federal government made states responsible for so-called
low-level waste, but the compact system has broken down.
The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act is the law that says
that the states are responsible for the low-level waste generated
within their borders. But states are not given clear authority to
regulate how much of this material is produced. Thus it is a total
bail out for commercial companies, that can turn responsibilities
for their lethal and environmentally catastrophic waste over to
the tax payer. In fact, the take-title provision of the low-level
waste law was thrown out by the Supreme Court in 1992 as
unconstitutional. The federal government does have preemptive
authority over a state government where there are two laws that
disagree, but where there are no state laws, the federal
government has no right to tell the state: Thou shalt do this.
States that are continuing to build these so-called low-level
dumps are basically doing it as volunteers to nuclear industry.
They wouldn't have to under existing law. Now there are 14
proposed dumps for low-level waste in this country. A key reason
to oppose such facilities is that of the six that ever operated,
three were forcibly closed because they were such catastrophes.
They are at Maxey Flats in Kentucky, Sheffield in Illinois, and
West Valley in New York. And a fourth, at Beatty, Nevada, was
closed legislatively. We are concerned about those still
operating.
There is plenty of documentation about this. The simple fact is
that when you bury this stuff, it doesn't stay put. We have a
dynamic living system of a planet and the radioactive material
cycles around. There is less information about how it moves in the
desert. But there is no reason to think that it is going to stay
put there, either.
Isn't there some information about what happens in the desert?
The most eloquent piece of evidence is this: when somebody took
samples of the water beneath Ward Valley, California's proposed
desert dump site, they found tritium in it. Since the radioactive
waste dump is not opened yet, the only way for tritium, with a
12.3 year half-life to be there is from fallout from atmospheric
bomb testing or some other surface source. There is just no way
tritium would still be radioactive from the formation of the
earth. The most likely sources are atmospheric bomb testing. So
this shows that radioactivity moves, even beneath the desert.
There is a lot of evidence to show that with the whole cycle of
flooding and rapid rainfall, the water either penetrates very deep
and very fast, or evaporates. So in the desert there is the
possibility of dispersal of radioactive materials through
evaporation as well as through leaching. There is evidence that
animals and insects at Hanford have been spreading radioactive
materials as vectors. There are plenty of ways radioactive
elements can move in a dynamic, biologically active system which
is what the whole planet is.
What has happened to the effort to declare some radioactive waste
"below regulatory concern"?
You see, the facilities of the nuclear age are aging. As the
nuclear power utilities and government are having to deal with
issues of decommissioning and dismantling contaminated facilities,
they would love to be able to cut down the total amount of
material that they have to treat as radioactive waste. So the
approach of relabeling as "Below Regulatory Concern" (BRC) much
waste was designed to enable them to cut overnight by one third
the total amount of so-called low-level waste in this country.
This is acting like a Caesar -- to declare by the stroke of a pen
that one third of the waste stream is no longer radioactive.
Plutonium and hot materials from reactors are included in that
stream to be diluted and dispersed through the normal waste
system.
How could such a lethal substance as plutonium be below regulatory
concern?
They just simply declare that certain waste streams will, on
paper, deliver an annual average dose of less than ten millirem a
year and are therefore harmless.
So if it didn't include much plutonium it could be below
regulatory concern?
Sure. It just means that they can dilute radioactive materials
with non-radioactive waste down to below ten millirem per unit of
volume. It is all self-reporting. It is all in units that cannot
be measured. And it's all in the name of reducing the amount of
material that would have to go to a regulated nuclear waste dump.
Instead the diluted material would be sent to ordinary landfills
and incinerators. It could end up in construction and consumer
products.
How did you oppose the BRC approach?
We managed, with a huge grassroots effort nationwide -- including
14 states that passed laws requiring continued regulation of
radioactive materials -- to get a provision in and through
Congress in the National Energy Policy Act that was signed by
George Bush in the fall of 1992 that included (a) revocation of
BRC policies and (b) a statement that states could have standards
on deregulated waste that are stricter than federal standards.
Congratulations to you and the many collaborating grassroots
groups who successfully campaigned against the BRC approach to
handling nuclear waste.
------------------------------------------------------------------
For further information contact Nuclear Information and Resources
Service, 1424 16th Street NW, #404, Washington, DC 20036, USA.
tel: 202-328-0002.
Francis and Joanna Macy are founding members of the Nuclear
Guardianship Project.