Nuclear Waste Decline May Cut Dump Need

A steady, 16-year decline in the quantity of low-level radioactive waste disposed of in the United States is prompting officials in several states to question the need for a new generation of commercial nuclear waste dumps, the first of which would be in Ward Valley in the Mojave Desert in eastern California.

The volume of radioactive waste going to disposal sites today is a fraction of what it was in 1980, when the law calling for states to cooperate in the construction of about a dozen new dumps was passed. In California, even proponents of the Ward Valley dump acknowledge that the amount of waste shipped out of state for disposal has dropped by at least 75%.

Nevertheless, Gov. Pete Wilson and U.S. Senate Republicans, with financial backing from the nuclear power industry, are fighting in federal court and in Congress to get the Ward Valley dump up and running after more than a decade of debate and delay.

But the debate to date has focused on safety issues, not the demand for more disposal space. The Clinton administration plans to conduct safety tests early next year to determine whether the desert site is leakproof--tests Wilson contends are not needed.

Meanwhile, technological advances in incineration, compaction and recycling of radioactive materials have reduced the sheer bulk of the radioactive waste that needs to be buried in safe places.

The downward trend has prompted officials to withdraw or reassess their support for new dumps in Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas, all scheduled to be built after Ward Valley.

“New disposal facilities are not needed and would not be financially viable,” concludes a report, summing up much of the current skepticism, recently submitted to the National Conference of State Legislators.

The report says that the construction of new low-level facilities would threaten the profitability of at least one of the existing dumps, which already is struggling to find enough new waste to stay in business.

A somewhat misleading term, “low-level waste” is a category that includes the most toxic, long-lived radioactive contamination, with the exception of certain types of military waste or spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants.

The new report by University of Nebraska economics professor F. Gregory Hayden, who represents Nebraska on one of the interstate compacts set up to build dumps, has been embraced by opponents of Ward Valley.

These include environmentalists, politicians and Indian tribes who live close to the 1,000-acre site near Needles. Up to now, the critics have based their opposition on fears that the dump would poison the water table, imperil wildlife and possibly pollute the nearby Colorado River.

Proponents of the Ward Valley dump, however, say that the report is suspect because it was commissioned by Nebraska officials who have long been opposed to a dump in their state.

In Washington, reaction to the report has tended to break along partisan lines.

Rep. George Miller (D-Pleasant Hill) said Hayden’s findings make it clear that the Ward Valley dump is not needed. “We have one-10th the waste we anticipated,” Miller said.

In a recent letter to Department of Energy Secretary Federico Pena, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California similarly referred to the report as “startling” and requested that Pena evaluate its conclusion that Ward Valley is not needed because “there is more than adequate excess capacity in existing sites for decades to come.”

Feinstein has played a key role in blocking Republican efforts to open Ward Valley before the Clinton administration conducts its tests.

An official in the Wilson administration acknowledged Tuesday that the nation’s three existing commercial low-level radioactive dumps can handle all of the waste now generated.

But he said it would be folly to rely solely on those facilities. One is open only to 11 states and another has leaked radioactive material. Two have drawn political fire from groups that would like to shut them down.

“The argument is not about disposal capacity and never has been,” said Carl Lischeske, manager of the low-level waste program for the state’s Department of Health Services.

“There was plenty of capacity back in 1980. The problem was the same as it is now, politics. The handful of states with facilities didn’t want to become the recipients of the nation’s waste stream.

“The politics are just as volatile today as they were in 1980,” Lischeske said.

For years, California sent its radioactive waste to dumps in Richland, Wash., Beatty, Nev., and Barnwell, S.C. In 1993, however, the Richland facility stopped accepting waste from all but 11 states. About the same time, the Beatty dump closed, forcing California waste exporters to rely on the South Carolina facility and on a newer location in Utah, which cannot accept all forms of low-level waste generated in California.

Underscoring how vulnerable these facilities are to shifting political winds, South Carolina officials closed Barnwell to most outsiders for a year.

While supporters of Ward Valley agree with Hayden that there has been a sharp drop in the amount of waste being shipped, they say that part of the reason is a decision by some waste generators to stockpile radioactive debris rather than pay to send it cross-country--especially to Barnwell, which has a history of leaking. Some waste producers fear that they could be liable in the event the facility starts leaking again.

For several years, the Wilson administration has argued that the shortage of dumps has forced hospitals, universities and biotechnology firms that use radioactive material to stockpile the waste in closets and storerooms vulnerable to earthquakes and fires.

Hayden’s report disputes the assertion that producers of radioactive waste are holding on to it. “The argument made that waste is being stockpiled in hundreds of urban locations for want of disposal capacity is readily disproven,” he wrote.

He cites government figures showing that while the size of waste shipments, measured in cubic feet, is smaller than in the past, the total amount of radioactivity in them--which is calculated in curies--is staying the same.

That suggests that waste producers are shipping just as much waste as always, he said, but are taking advantage of new technology that compacts it to a fraction of its original size--and thus saves space in the dumps.

“The amount of waste shipped to Barnwell, Beatty and Richland from 1989 to 1992, as measured in radioactivity--38,266 curies--is virtually identical to the amount shipped in the subsequent four years,” he said. “Generators are thus not holding back any substantial amount of waste out of some supposed concern about the Barnwell facility or for any other reason.”

But Alan Pasternak, technical director of the California Radioactive Materials Forum, took issue with Hayden on Tuesday. Pasternak said calculations by his association show that the amount of curies shipped from California has fallen by close to 30% since the state was forced to rely mainly on the South Carolina dump.

An advocate of Ward Valley, the Cal Rad Forum, as it is known, represents companies and institutions that manufacture or use radioactive materials.

“It is true that declining waste shipments are due to advances in compaction and incineration,” Pasternak said. “But they’re also due to the fact that people are holding onto waste. And that is a situation that will only be alleviated when Ward Valley is open.”

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The Decrease

The amount of low-level radioactive waste taken to U.S. commercial disposal sites has been dropping sharply.

Volume in millions of cubic feet

‘80: 3,770,406

‘96: 422,013

Note: A Utah facility that opened in 1990 is not included but it’s volume does not affect the trend.

Source: U.S. Department of Energy