Charlotte Observer
16 February 2000

N.C. backs off plans for nuclear waste site

By BRUCE HENDERSON

Despite pouring $120 million and 14 years of political heartburn into the project, North Carolina doesn't need a place to get rid of its radioactive rubbish after all, a state panel says.

A committee of the Radiation Protection Commission, which held a hearing Tuesday night at UNCCharlotte, proposes that private industry - not the state - handle the disposal of low-level nuclear waste.

The plan responds to the legislature's request last summer for guidance on handling the waste. It was based largely on a survey of the power companies and other low-level sources.

The proposal says a central disposal site, the state's goal since 1986, isn't needed as long as waste producers can still dispose of lightly contaminated trash or compact it to reduce volume. That assessment would be updated every three years.

The state's low-level wastes are now stored at the dozens of nuclear power plants, hospitals, universities and industries that generate them. Some experts say it's unwise to scatter radioactive waste among so many sites.

But "people who have participated in this process have indicated they agree" with the no-site proposal, said committee Chairman James Watson, a UNC Chapel Hill professor. And the proposal leaves some loose ends.

Power companies say they still need a long-term disposal site. Skeptics say the state is burying its head in the sand. And a regional compact wants back the $90 million it invested in the never-built N.C. facility.

"It seems to me a little inconsistent for a state group to now say we don't need a (central) facility, while during the time we were trying to develop one we had such rigid rules imposed on us," said Warren Corgan, chairman of the N.C. Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management Authority, which had advocated a disposal site in Wake County.

"I guess you could interpret it as saying all those sites don't pose a risk to the health and safety of the N.C. people."

The authority faced years of questions from N.C. regulators about the Wake County site. The authority's five-member staff is now closing down the site.

Low-level wastes range from lightly contaminated rags to reactor wastes that will remain radioactive for thousands of years. Tending them is as politically desirable as importing rabid ferrets.

The regional compacts that formed among states since the 1980s to dispose of the wastes aren't working, the radiation committee says. The 10 compacts have spent nearly $600 million without opening a disposal site.

The new plan acknowledges the need for a long-term solution for more highly radioactive wastes.

The nation's only disposal site for those wastes, in Barnwell, S.C., is closed to North Carolina. S.C. Gov. Jim Hodges this week proposed limiting Barnwell to wastes only from South Carolina, Connecticut and New Jersey.

Duke Power and Carolina Power & Light say they can safely store low-level wastes at their nuclear plants for decades yet. Neither company takes a position on whether a central disposal site should be in North Carolina, but both make it clear they want out of the waste business.

"We're not looking for storage, we're looking for disposal," said Duke's Tom Shiel.

Added CP&L's Mike Hughes: "Most utilities at some point will run out of storage capacity."

Critics say the plan passes the buck in hopes a disposal site materializes elsewhere.

"That's simply getting them off the hook," said Jess Riley, a longtime nuclear activist from Charlotte. "I don't think (another site) is going to happen, because other states are ducking this as much as North Carolina."

If the full radiation commission approves, the no-site proposal will go to the legislature by May.

One advocacy group that opposed the Wake County facility agrees with the commission recommendation. "We think this is a private-industry problem," said Jim Warren of the Waste Awareness and Reduction Network. "It's a market problem and ought to be handled by the market, with regulation from the state, without dumping it on taxpayers."

North Carolina entered the search for a disposal site in 1986, when the eight-state Southeast Compact Commission named it to build a replacement for Barnwell. Work eventually focused on Wake County, but state regulators questioned whether the was suitable.

South Carolina, furious at long delays, left the compact.

In 1997 the Southeast Compact, which paid $90 million of the N.C. site's $120 million development costs, cut off funding. Power companies provided most of that money.

Last summer N.C. legislators voted to leave the compact, which now wants its money back and seems likely to sue. The compact commission set a July 10 deadline.

"We're still waiting for that big check to be delivered," said executive director Kathryn Haynes.