Associated Press, 10/25/98 13:32
Dean: No radioactive waste site in Vermont
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - Efforts will continue to find a site in Texas to ship Vermont's low-level radioactive waste, despite the rejection of one location by a state panel there, Gov. Howard Dean says.Dean rejected calls by some anti-nuclear activists that Vermont should take care of its own waste, storing it above-ground at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernont.
"We have much too much moisture in the ground and too much rain," Dean said. "This is not a big issue. Texas has the responsibility to site this (nuclear waste dump) and they will."
Vermont's low-level radioactive waste comes mainly from Vermont Yankee, and consists of materials other than the more highly radioactive spent fuel rods the plant generates. A small part of the state's waste comes from medical facilities.
"Nuclear waste dumps are a terrible way to store waste - all burial sites leak," said Lea Terhune, head of the Vermont Sierra Club. "What Vermont Sierra Club supports is storing the waste above ground, in a secure facility at Vermont Yankee."
Thursday, members of the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission rejected a plan to build the dump near Sierra Blanca, a poor, largely Hispanic town about 16 miles from the Mexican border. Activists in Texas and in Maine and Vermont said the town had been chosen because it lacked political clout.
The Texas commission said a geologic fault under the proposed dump made it unsafe, and social and economic concerns had not been adequately addressed. Maine and Vermont both planned to ship their waste to the dump under an agreement signed in 1993 and approved by Congress earlier this fall.
More than 90 percent of Vermont's waste comes from Vermont Yankee. The nuclear plant creates about 150 cubic yards of radioactive waste each year and budgets about $1.5 million to store it or ship it to a site near Barnwell, S.C., said Rob Williams, a spokesman for the plant.
When Vermont Yankee is decommissioned, about 8,300 cubic yards will have to be treated as low-level waste, he said.
Public Service Department Commissioner Richard Sedano said, however, that the state had studied the Vermont Yankee location and decided it was not the place to store waste.
Before the Texas agreement, Vermont had its own Low-level Radioactive Waste Authority, which spent more than $3 million in three years designing a dump and trying to find a community that would host it.
The Vermont Yankee site was ruled out because of wetlands and its location on the Connecticut River. Three Vermont towns expressed some interest in hosting the dump but eventually decided they did not want it. The state abandoned its search for a site in Vermont after it signed the agreement with Maine and Texas.