Sunday, February 06, 2000
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Opinion

Radioactive Trash Likely Bound for Utah

By JOHN C. KUEHNER
PLAIN DEALER REPORTER

South Carolina no longer wants radioactive trash from Ohio’s hospitals, laboratories and nuclear power plants. Or from 38 other states.

Legislation to be introduced next week would bar such radiation-contaminated waste from all states except New Jersey and Connecticut, said John Clark, energy adviser to Gov. Jim Hodges.

Radioactive trash from 39 states is now shipped and buried at a 235-acre landfill in Barnwell, S.C. But Hodges has pushed to end his state’s role as the nation’s nuclear dump and says he has the legislative support to succeed.

"What we’re saying is, you take care of your waste," Clark said. "It’s your waste, you figure it out. You take care of yours, we’ll take care of ours."

Such a change would not pose much of a problem for Ohio’s 33 businesses and universities that send contaminated gloves, test tubes, clothing and other trash to the site for burial in special concrete casks. Several generators contacted Friday said they would ship the waste to a 550-acre landfill outside Salt Lake City, Utah, the only site that has unrestricted access.

"The Utah site has demonstrated its ability to safely handle this waste," said Todd Schneider, spokesman for the Perry nuclear power plant, Ohio’s No.1 producer of low-level nuclear waste.

But this proposal by South Carolina could force Ohio to again address finding a regional site to dispose of low-level nuclear waste produced in the Midwest, said Stuart Kline, director of environmental health and safety for the Cleveland Clinic. Ohio and five nearby states - Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin - abandoned a plan to build a radioactive disposal site in Ohio in 1995 after South Carolina legislators allowed access to the Barnwell site.

The Barnwell site had refused out-of-state waste from 1994 to 1995.

"If South Carolina carries out its intentions, we would certainly have to re-examine the whole question," said Pejavar Rao, the radiation safety officer for University Hospitals in Cleveland. "The reason we dropped the proposal was because South Carolina was willing to take the waste. If they aren’t, there would be pressure building up to reopen the question."

The proposed legislation would allow all waste producers to ship their waste to the Barnwell site for one year starting July 1, Clark said. Over the next four years, the amount would be reduced gradually until it reached zero, he said.

South Carolina wants to preserve space at Barnwell for its waste and radioactive trash from New Jersey and Connecticut, Clark said.

"If we did nothing here, the facility would fill up in 10 to 15 years," he said.

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