Ward Valley Nuclear Dump
* Bravo to The Times for its sensible proposal (editorial, Dec. 27) calling for separating the highly toxic, long-lived nuclear power plant wastes from the genuinely low-level wastes from medicine.
In her letter (Jan. 6), Dr. Carol Marcus, criticizing this proposal, fails to disclose that she is an active board member of Calrad Forum, the primary nuclear industry lobbying organization pushing for Ward Valley. She now claims The Times’ idea of separating the nuclear power and medical wastes won’t work. Yet this is what she wrote in her famous letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, only a portion of which was quoted in your editorial.
“Nuclear power utility employees have been told by their corporate leaders to remain silent and unseen and let the biomedical and academic sectors ‘sell’ a (radioactive waste) site . . . Numerous times the anti-nuclear environmentalist coalition came to various physician members of the Calrad Forum Board of Directors trying to make a ‘deal.’ We could build our (waste) site if we excluded waste from nuclear power plants. This could actually have been economically feasible in our Compact . . . Due to the cowardice of the nuclear industry . . . the nuclear medicine community considered taking up the environmentalists’ offer and ‘ditching’ nuclear power in Sept., 1991. The docs decided not to abandon their fellow nucleons, and slogged on.”
So now we know what has long been suspected: The nuclear power industry is hiding behind the white coats of medicine, trying to sell Ward Valley. Furthermore, the alternative of separating the genuinely low-level medical wastes from the highly toxic reactor wastes like plutonium is recognized as feasible, at least privately, by even the most vehement Ward Valley advocates, but they choose to turn down this viable alternative because of their ideological commitment to nuclear power.
RICHARD SAXON MD
L.A. Physicians for Social Responsibility
* Your editorial (Dec. 27) on the segment of radioactive waste currently called “low-level” in this country (by definition of the federal government) is an insightful analysis of the problem. You also printed a letter (Jan. 6) challenging your proposal from Carol Marcus which contained some important errors:
1. There is, as noted in your editorial, a basic distinction between biomedical and nuclear power reactor “low-level” radioactive waste. The former is truly low-level; some of the latter is intensely radioactive and potentially lethal.
2. Production of medical radionuclides is increasingly from clyclotrons and linear accelerators, which produce essentially no radioactive waste.
3. The radionuclides made in nuclear reactors for medical use in the U.S. come from Canada and to a much lesser extent from research reactors owned by the Department of Energy, none of which are in California, but in any event their waste would not go to commercial disposal sites such as Ward Valley.
4. Storage to decay is a sensible alternative for short-lived medical wastes. It has always been the solution for hospitals and offices performing standard patient nuclear medicine examinations, since over 90% of the studies use radionuclides which decay to zero in less than one week.
The environmental impact statement for the Ward Valley site is replete with errors, including failure to adequately evaluate and prevent the possible contamination of our water supply. There is a serious public health risk if Ward Valley were to open as planned, receiving large quantities of highly toxic materials such as plutonium from nuclear power facilities.
EARL BUDIN MD
Associate Clinical Professor of Radiology
UCLA Medical Center
