Disposing of Nuclear Waste

* Your Ward Valley editorial (“Unnecessary Alliance Confuses the Issue,” Dec. 27) seeking to differentiate biomedical low-level radioactive waste (LLRW) from nuclear power plant LLRW reflects a basic lack of scientific understanding of this issue.

As you used my quotation to mistakenly support your viewpoint, I would appreciate the opportunity for a response.

If the medical community felt that aboveground, temporary waste-holding facilities were all that the biomedical LLRW generators needed, we would have opted for this solution when anti-nuclear power groups began blocking Ward Valley. The fact is, the biomedical community produces the full spectrum of LLRW, from short-lived, relatively benign waste that may be decayed to harmlessness in a short time to long-lived radioactive waste that needs burial for 500 years.

Nearly all radionuclides used in medicine come from nuclear reactors. These reactors produce the same types of LLRW as nuclear power reactors.

The concept of separating biomedical waste from nuclear power plant waste, aside from being illegal and scientifically foolish, has a more ominous aspect--it is a ruse. Citizens who know we need a LLRW site for important biomedical LLRW are being told that this “good” LLRW will be taken care of separately. They are then free to oppose Ward Valley because they will “only” damage nuclear power. Wrong. The truth is that the biomedical community and the other non-nuclear power plant LLRW producers, over 2,000 of us, need Ward Valley as licensed, and this fantasy of a temporary, aboveground holding facility will not solve our problem and will never exist.

Your editorial mentioned that some biomedical institutions are building temporary, aboveground holding facilities and reducing their LLRW production to zero. Wrong. They are decaying out some of the radionuclides with half-lives up to 90 days in these facilities, but the truth is that large quantities of LLRW are being dumped into the sewer after dilution to meet sewage disposal limits.

Have we made radioactive waste “disappear”? Of course not. We have substituted the careful containment of undiluted LLRW in well-managed LLRW sites for a thin smear of radioactive material covering the country. No one knows how much there is or whether it will cause problems for us or for future generations. Is “flush and forget” the sensible alternative to Ward Valley? That’s up to all of us, isn’t it?

CAROL S. MARCUS Ph.D., MD

Harbor-UCLA Medical Center