Selected chapters from:
High-Level Dollars, Low-Level Sense:
Preface
by: Arjun Makhijani and Scott Saleska
by: Arjun Makhijani and Scott Saleska
The management of nuclear waste, which contains materials that remain hazardous for up to millions of years, is one of the most vexing, contentious, and costly environmental issues of our time. Nuclear waste management has been plagued with failures, poor science, and unanticipated environmental events -- such as rapid migration of radioactive contaminants from the soil into groundwater -- which have made a mockery of many a computer model.
The scene is also littered with institutional and regulatory failures and absurdities. In the United States today, nuclear wastes are classified, not so much according to the threat they pose to human health or the environment, but according to the process which produced the waste. For example, a catchall category called "low-level" waste contains some components which are more radioactive than some "high-level" waste. Some wastes have health criteria which govern their disposal. Other wastes do not. Some wastes are designated as suitable for shallow-land burial. Other wastes of comparable danger are designated for disposal in a deep underground repository. There are no adequate programs to address whole categories of other wastes of comparable danger, notably soil contaminated with plutonium and other long-lived radioactive elements, which may, by default, be left lying around endangering public health and the environment for thousands of years.
This welter of problems, along with concern for future generations and environmental degradation in general, has given rise to vigorous public opposition to nuclear waste disposal sites wherever they have been proposed in recent years. Such opposition does not derive simply from a "not in my backyard" syndrome. That syndrome does play a role and it is understandable in view of the long-lived nature of the threat. People's fears, however, also stem from the problems which have arisen from the basic conflicts of interest in the institutions -- notably the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- which have regulated nuclear waste disposal. These institutions have an agenda -- sometimes stated, and sometimes only implicit of producing nuclear weapons and promoting nuclear power. For more than a decade, the executive branch of the U.S. government has also explicitly and vigorously pursued that same agenda, coloring the actions of the institutions which operate under it. Under present institutional arrangements, these goals have been in basic conflict with providing sufficient time and resources to protect future generations as best we can from a considerable threat to the environment which our activities have created in the form of long-lived nuclear waste.
From these conflicts of interest have arisen failures which have been costly both to the environment and to the public purse. We undertook this work in order to discuss the failures in all areas of nuclear waste disposal, focusing especially on the problem of classifying nuclear wastes in a manner that corresponds to the threats that they pose. This has enabled us to propose a unified approach to the management of the problems that cuts across current waste categories. We also can see clearly the need to minimize generation of long-lived radioactive wastes.
Proponents of quick land-based disposal of nuclear waste often resort to scare tactics in order to push new disposal sites on the public. These range from an avowed need for more nuclear power plants to threats that huge portions of medical care system may shut down because there are no new disposal sites. This is a perceived urgency which does not arise from any technical problem. There are ways to provide for interim storage of nuclear wastes which pose far smaller threats than quick land-based disposal and hurried transportation. There are also ways to minimize use of long-lived radioisotopes, especially in medicine, and the medical community has begun taking steps over the last many years in that direction. The perceived urgency arises more from artificial deadlines that Congress and governmental agencies have created, largely in response to pressure from industry to quickly dispose of the wastes. Such artificial deadlines can and should be changed, so that the environment, public health and the public purse may be better protected.
A few years ago, parts of the chemical industry were given to painting similar scare scenarios about chlorofluorocarbons, which are destroying the earth's protective layer of stratospheric ozone. It was stated that we may have to give up refrigerators and computers and automobile air conditioners if CFCs were reduced by even 50 percent by the year 1998. The threat to the ozone layer from these compounds has proved to be so severe, however, that it has clearly become necessary to phase out these chemicals altogether, and other ozone-depleting chemicals besides. Today, under pressure from an international treaty which requires the total phase-out of these chemicals by the year 2000, as well as more stringent local laws, many industries now find that they can get rid of them well before 1995! Moreover, many of them are saving money as they do it.
Careful consideration of alternative energy sources, energy conservation, the use of short-lived radionuclides in medicine and research, and the end of the Cold War may enable a phase-out of the generation of long-lived radioactive wastes except for some minor medical and research uses. While such considerations are beyond the scope of this book, we urge that this matter be taken up as a matter of high priority in public policy, even as we hope to put the attempts to address the problems of the long-lived radioactive wastes which already exist on a sounder technical and institutional footing. That is the subject of this enquiry. These issues must be addressed both out of concern for the protection of public health and the environment and as a matter of financial prudence.
This study was funded in part by the Nuclear Waste Projects Office of the State of Nevada, which operates in part under Department of Energy contract DE-FG-08-85-NV10461. The rest of the funds for its preparation came from general support funds provided to the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) by the Public Welfare Foundation and from IEER's own institutional funds and from a gift of Dr. Gopi B. Makhijani.
We would like to thank Steve Frishman of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Projects Office; Victor Gilinsky, former commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center; Charles Hollister, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Kemp Houk of Don't Waste U.S.; Judy Treichel, of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force; and Kitty Tucker of the Health and Energy Institute for reviewing this study. Their many and insightful comments enabled us to publish a greatly improved final product. We are especially indebted to Don Hancock for his suggestion that we be more comprehensive in our approach to the problem of radioactive waste, and for the many detailed and constructive suggestions that he made towards that end.
During the research phase of this project we were greatly and ably assisted by the efforts of former IEER staff member Deborah Landau, to whom we owe a debt of thanks. We are also greatly indebted to David Dembo of The Apex Press, who worked with us during the final stages to convert the manuscript into a published book.
Those acknowledged here do not necessarily in any way endorse the findings, conclusions, or recommendations of this study, the responsibility for which lies solely with us. We also, of course, take full responsibility for any errors.
Arjun Makhijani
Scott Saleska
Takoma Park, Maryland
October 1991
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