From dumping ground to national sacrifice?
We need to talk and talk now, very seriously, about what happens next with low-level waste at Barnwell. Sometimes, when "a billion dollars" is dangled, thought stops.Chem-Nuclear wants to sell space far into the future at its nuclear waste storage facility. Barnwell remained open past its original lifetime through a terrible deal struck by Gov. David Beasley and the Legislature in which a tax would fund education. Now the company fears hard times. It hasn't made the money expected, and last year the Legislature responded by setting a minimum the facility must pay the state.
To increase its take and protect its future, Chem-Nuclear is asking utilities and other industries to buy now for later storage needs. It's also dangling the promise of more than $1 billion in education funds if the Legislature guarantees Barnwell can remain open for another two decades or until its licensed capacity is filled.
Early in the next century, dozens of nuclear power plants will be decommissioned. Nuclear power plants create more than half the volume and almost all the radioactivity of low-level waste. If Chem-Nuclear's idea takes hold, this is where their parts would come when they dismantle. They would come here because this could be the only choice. Once there were three commercial disposal sites, but the Beatty, Nev., site closed to low-level waste and the Richland, Wash., site won't accept waste from outside the Northwest and Rocky Mountains. Washington can do that because it stayed in the compact arrangement that we have so foolishly abandoned.
Now let's consider what could come. Low-level nuclear waste from power plants can include rods that regulate and stop nuclear reactions, irradiated reactor hardware and pipes, water-purification filters and wastes from reactor clean-up systems. We're talking objects small, large or gargantuan. In May, Barnwell received Yankee Rowe from Massachusetts, a 365-ton reactor vessel. Before that, it took in four steam generators from New Jersey.
Now let's consider what can be in low-level waste from reactors: tritium, with a hazardous life of 120 to 240 years; strontium-90, with a hazardous life of 280 to 560 years; nickel-59, with a hazardous life of 760,000 to 1.5 million years; iodine-29, with a hazardous life of 160 million to 320 million years.
The "good" news: Most low-level waste decays to what's called background radioactivity within a few hundred years (Class A within 100, Class B within 300, Class C within 500 years). Barnwell does not take waste rated greater than Class C. Granted, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires that radiation releases at a disposal site not exceed 75 millirem. The average American is exposed to about 360 millirem each year. Granted, in the last 25 years of transporting radioactive material, none of the four accidents occurring involved large radioactive releases or caused injury.
But let's complicate matters. When Yankee Rowe was dismantled, its most radioactive internal material was removed before the vessel was shipped to Barnwell. But that was difficult, resulting in unacceptable worker and site exposure. As a result, in Portland, a power company wants to ship its entire vessel intact to the Washington state storage site, leaving within the highly radioactive material, but filling the container with a material such as concrete or gravel.
Waiting in the wings are Maine Yankee and Connecticut Yankee, reactors that could come to Barnwell, perhaps intact if the state of Washington sets a precedent. While the internal material rates as greater than Class C (with a vengeance), the vessel and stabilizing material would "average" to a lower level.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission hasn't ruled on whether this is acceptable. Their question would be whether Barnwell's ground burial would meet "performance objectives," which include public safety for 500 years, says Joe Gilliland with the NRC. "We are in the early phase of decommissioning of America's nuclear industry, and you learn as you go," he says.
We know enough already to know this is not a good idea, says Debby Katz with Citizens Awareness Network. CAN believes Yankee Rowe should not have been cut apart nor shipped to Barnwell. Unhappy as CAN was with Yankee Rowe in their town, their position is that nuclear waste should be stored on-site until radioactivity has deteriorated to a manageable level.
"Barnwell could get 25 reactors, a giant waste stream," says Ms. Katz. "South Carolina has the potential to become a national sacrifice."
Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear physicist and president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, agrees. "It is much better to defer decommisioning. Most low-level waste decays in the first five decades. The cost of decommissioning goes down, and we have time to develop technology."
Between South Carolina and this potential mess stand several barriers: NRC; the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control, which could say no even if NRC says yes; and Chem-Nuclear itself, which can refuse shipments.
And, we would hope, a very thoughtful debate on the consequences.
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