"Dear Arjun*"

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Dear Arjun:
What are clean-up standards and why don't we have them yet?

Clean-up standards are very old and diverse, having evolved through the ages. Often progress in technology and increase of resources has resulted in improved standards for cleanliness, but not always. Take for example corporal cleanliness standards at the court of Louis the XIV in France. They were dismal and resulted in rather unpleasant aromas. Rather than being distracted from the pursuit of pleasure by taking a bath, the aristocracy created an agency called the NRC agency, (New Regulatory Cleanliness Agency) and charged it with finding a solution to the persistent foul emanations. This was the beginning of the flourishing and world renown French perfumery industry which took care of the odors but left the dirt behind. After the French Revolution, which really cleaned up the royalty, the NRC moved to the United States where it did not do much for almost 200 years. It was reincarnated in 1974 as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Today the NRC is faced with a clean-up problem far more challenging than royal body odors. It is responsible for overseeing the decommissioning of the facilities of its licensees. This includes clean-up of residual radioactive contamination at sites which have processed source material (such as natural uranium, natural thoriun, depleted uranium), byproduct material (fission products and uranium tailings) and special nuclear material (uranium-233, enriched uranium in the isotope 233 or 235, and plutonium) during their operation. It is required to leave behind the attitude that what does not smell cannot hurt because the mandate of the NRC is to ensure "protection of health and safety and the environment related to the possession and use of source, byproduct, and special nuclear material."

So far the NRC had regulations only for the cleaning up of uranium mill tailings which are spelled out in the Appendix A of 10 CFR part 40 and in 40 CFR part 192 (the EPA - Environmental Protection Agency - standards) and until now decommissioning for other facilities has been governed by a patchwork of guidelines and standards.(1) We don't have clean-up standards yet because they have been a low official priority.

To remedy this problem, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has come up with a set of proposed generic radiological criteria for decommissioning to which the companies that own the sites will have to comply in order to see their licenses terminated. Since the NRC is working in cooperation with the EPA, it is likely that the rules applying to NRC licensees will also apply to other sites to be covered by the EPA rules to be issued later. These EPA rules will apply to the clean-up of the Department of Energy nuclear weapons complex.

The stated goal of the NRC is to: "reduce the residual radioactivity at the site so that it is indistinguishable from the background." If this goal could be met consistently, by the rules, it would be acceptable. But, in reality such a goal can only be achieved in some cases and the proposed rules allow considerable residual contamination. The rules contain a number of weaknesses, omissions, and loopholes which have the potential to undermine the improvement of these new proposed regulations.

The proposed rules

• Exposure limit The maximum dose to the average member of the critical group for release of a site to the public for unrestricted use is 15 millirem per year. For comparison the natural background dose at sea level in the United States excluding indoor radon is about 90 millirem per year.(2)
• ALARA requirement The licensee is expected to clean-up the site to a level "As Low As is Reasonably Achievable" below the dose limit of 15 millirem per year. The suggested ALARA dose is 3 millirem per year, but this suggestion is not a part of the proposed rules, and thus not enforceable.
• Future remedial actions The NRC allows for additional remediation if it is found that the technical basis on which the criteria protecting health, safety and the environment are found to be not adequate anymore and/or additional significant contamination is found which would have the potential to put the public at substantial radiological risks.
• Community involvement The public affected by the decommissioning of a site will be notified through various channels such as local and state governments, newspapers, and federal register of the status of the decommissioning. For the case of termination of license with restricted land use (see below), the licensee will convene a Site Specific Advisory Board (SSAB) composed of the affected parties which will advise the licensee regarding decommissioning.

Loophole in the proposed rules

• Termination of licenses for sites which are released for restricted use The NRC will consider termination of a license for a site where residual radioactivity implies doses higher than 15 millirem per year if the licensee will demonstrate that complying with the 15 millirem per year unrestricted use limit is not feasible or "prohibitively expensive" and if site use restrictions and controls will reduce the dose to the average member of the critical group to 15 millirem per year. The NRC would allow residual radioactivity that could result in doses up to 100 millirem per year "even if restrictions applied in the termination were no longer effective in limiting the possible scenarios or pathways of exposure." This exemption would apply for sites where the licensee can show that doing a better job would be too expensive, technologically impossible, or result in net public and environmental harm. The licensee will need to provide "sufficient financial assurance to enable a third party to assume and carry out responsibilities for any necessary control and maintenance of the site". The "third party" would be, for example, the State, the Federal government, the EPA, or the DOE; in other words, the taxpayer. No criteria are set forth in what "sufficient" financial assurance would be.

The omissions and weaknesses in the proposed rules

• Risk minimization The NRC excludes non-radioactive hazardous materials from its regulations on the basis that these will be regulated by the EPA. However this leaves the possibility for the NRC to allow a company to walk away from a site leaving extensive chemical contamination. This also ignores the fact that often the migration of radionuclides can be enhanced or hindered by chemical contamination which can be both hazardous as well as non-hazardous. For these reasons the clean-up of radioactive as well as non-radioactive hazardous materials should occur at the same time.
• Exposure limits The exposure limit of 15 millirem per year with a suggested ALARA of 3 millirem per year are still 50% higher than the corresponding British limits of 10 millirem and 2 millirem
• SDMP (Site Decommissioning Management Plan) sites Those sites whose decommissioning plans have been approved or are pending approval will not be bound by the new rules.
• Release of documents The proposed rules do not require the owner of a facility to make public all documents which would pertain to contamination, and exposures accidental as well as non-accidental, which has occurred during the operation of a plant.
• Integration of risks The rules do not integrate risks from past operations or waste disposal with risks from residual contamination.
• Community funds The proposed rules do not require funds to be made available to communities to monitor residual radioactivity make the findings known to the public.
• Compliance with drinking water standards The proposed rules do not require strict compliance with the EPA's "National Primary Drinking Water Standards" (40 CFR part 141). Compliance with these standards would require the maximum levels of contamination for radionulcides in ground and surface water to be the same as those for drinking water.

* (written by not-so-ghost-writer, Annie Makhijani)

Institute for Energy and Environmental Research

Comments to Outreach Coordinator: ieer@ieer.org
Takoma Park, Maryland, USA

Last updated: August, 1996

Endnotes

2. SDA, volume 4, Number 1, centerfold table entitled: "Typical Estimated Annual Effective Dose Equivalent from Natural Sources.