Nuclear Waste Dump Shuts Doors to All but 8 States : Environment: California is left with no disposal site, increasing pressure for approval of Ward Valley facility.

One of only two low-level nuclear waste dumps in the nation will close to most outsiders at the end of June, a move that will leave California and 30 other states with no sanctioned disposal site.

The decision by the South Carolina Legislature to limit access to that state’s facility at Barnwell will mean that hospitals, biomedical companies and other industries--often in heavily populated areas--must store their own nuclear waste.

Being shut out of the South Carolina dump will also increase the pressure on California to build the proposed Ward Valley disposal facility in the eastern Mojave Desert, a controversial project currently tied up in litigation and the focus of bitter opposition for a decade by anti-nuclear and environmental organizations.

South Carolina officials gave no reason for their decision on Thursday to limit access to the Barnwell dump to eight southeastern states.

Both sides in the fight over Ward Valley reacted to the decision with alarm Friday.

“The impact of (closing) Barnwell is tremendous,” said Michael Dieden, political director for Americans for a Safe Future, one of several groups opposed to Ward Valley. “It places a great need on California to come up with an alternative to Ward Valley.”

“I think we have been jolted out of the mind-set in California that we can always ship our problems elsewhere,” said Alan Pasternal, technical director for the California Radioactive Materials Management Forum, which represents firms that produce or use radioactive materials. “The decision simply emphasizes the need to get on with the job of siting Ward Valley.”

Closure of the South Carolina dump to all but the eight states means that “65% of all radioactive waste in the nation will have to be stored at the point of generation,” said Holmes Brown, a spokesman for the Low-Level Waste Forum, an organization of state officials who work on nuclear waste issues. In California alone, about 120,000 cubic feet of contaminated waste is produced each year. About 30% of that had been going to South Carolina.

Nuclear waste generators in California have been storing most of their waste on their own property since the closure of a Nevada waste dump in 1993. But many companies and hospitals working with radioactive materials have warned that they have limited storage capacity. If Ward Valley or an alternative site is not opened soon, they say, a storage crunch could lead to cutbacks in important research and an escalation in the cost of nuclear medicine.

The proximity of many of the facilities to large urban areas also is a cause for worry.

“Hospitals and biotech companies completely surrounded by residential neighborhoods certainly aren’t the best places to be storing this stuff,” said Donald Womeldorf, director of the Southwestern Low-Level Radioactive Waste Commission, which represents the four states--California, Arizona, North Dakota and South Dakota--that would have access to Ward Valley if the dump eventually is opened.

The perils of keeping nuclear waste on site instead of burying it in a licensed dump were underscored by the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake, which damaged storage facilities at three hospitals, according to Cathleen Kaufman, head of radiation management for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.

There were no reports of contamination after the earthquake. But at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the loss of storage space because of earthquake damage may put a crimp in medical research.

“I have put researchers on notice that after the first of the year they may find the use of radioactive materials restricted,” said Donna Early, the hospital’s director of radiation and environmental safety.

Early said that studies of drugs being developed to dissolve blood clots in heart patients already had been suspended because the hospital had no place to store contaminated tissue from laboratory animals. In the past, Early said, the hospital had shipped the tissue to a waste dump in Washington, which cut off California’s access last year.

In addition to the South Carolina facility, the dump in Richland, Wash., is the only facility in the country that accepts low-level waste. The Washington dump, however, will only serve 11 western states.

The two dumps are classified as “low-level” to distinguish them from facilities designed to accept spent fuel rods and other debris from nuclear power plants contaminated with highly toxic, long-lasting substances such as plutonium that can remain dangerous for many thousands of years. But even low-level dumps can accept some long-lasting radioactive materials.

Opponents of Ward Valley have contended that, given that longevity of some low-level materials and the porous nature of the underlying geology, highly toxic waste could leach into the Colorado River, about 20 miles away. Although the Ward Valley project has been licensed by the state, formidable obstacles remain before it can be built.

The 1,000-acre dump site is owned by the federal government, and the Clinton Administration has indicated it will not transfer the land to the state until all safety issues have been resolved. In April, a Superior Court judge in Los Angeles ruled in a lawsuit brought to block the dump that state officials had not adequately responded to concerns about the possibility of Colorado River contamination.

Under a 1980 law, California and other states assumed responsibility from the federal government for disposing of low-level nuclear waste. Regional compacts were formed with the idea that each would be served by existing dumps in Nevada, South Carolina and Washington or by one of four new ones, including Ward Valley, that were supposed to have been in operation by now.

Until the new dumps opened, the three states with existing dumps agreed to accept waste from states outside their compacts. Those arrangements, however, were not popular with public officials in the those states, who feared they would become permanent repositories for the nation’s nuclear waste.

Nevada subsequently closed its dump to all users.