Rival Studies Intensify Debate on Dump Site

Radioactive material that would be deposited in the proposed Ward Valley low-level nuclear waste dump near the Colorado River would come largely from nuclear reactors and could be far more toxic than previously portrayed, according to a study by the Congressional Research Service.

The study contradicts long-standing assertions by the state of California, which has licensed the dump, that 80% of the radioactive material going to Ward Valley would be relatively benign waste from hospitals, university laboratories and biotech companies.

The study is one of two very different reports on the Ward Valley site released this week in Washington. The second one, by the U.S. General Accounting Office, reflects the views of its Republican sponsors that an ongoing safety analysis by the Clinton administration of the proposed dump site in the eastern Mojave Desert is unnecessary.

Debate over the dueling studies is likely to come to a head next week at a Senate hearing on a bill introduced by Alaska Republican Frank Murkowski that would require the immediate transfer of the federally owned dump site to the state. Passage of the bill would allow Gov. Pete Wilson to begin building the waste facility before the Clinton administration has completed its review of the suitability of the site.

“While radioactive waste is being stored at various inappropriate sites around California because Ward Valley isn’t open, the administration is going through a process not likely to enlighten policymakers on the right course,” said a Murkowski spokesman.

In contrast, the study by the Congressional Research Service was requested by a Democratic opponent of the dump, California Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is working to defeat the bill that would expedite the opening of the dump.

“Now we know that Ward Valley isn’t really for doctors’ gloves and professors’ vials. It is really for storing waste from nuclear power plants, including radioactive pipes, filters and other components,” Boxer said in a statement Tuesday. “Radioactive waste is far ‘hotter,’ longer-lived, and dangerous than the generally short-lived materials used in medicine.”

The Congressional Research Service study, Boxer said, “reconfirms the need for extra caution with this project.”

It concludes that 60% to 90% of the waste destined for Ward Valley would come from nuclear reactors.

The state-approved license application submitted by U.S. Ecology, the company chosen to operate the facility, said four-fifths of the radioactivity going to the site would come from medical, academic and biotechnical waste.

Some but not all reactor waste is much more long-lived and toxic than the radioactive residue from biomedical sources.

For example, cesium-137 and strontium-90, both reactor waste products and potential carcinogens, are much more hazardous than tritium--the most common form of non-reactor waste scheduled for Ward Valley.

Nevertheless, officials of U.S. Ecology’s parent company, American Ecology, said Tuesday that Boxer was jumping to conclusions in saying that more reactor waste meant that Ward Valley was going to be a “hotter” dump than indicated by the license application.

“She’s being overly broad. Long- and short-lived isotopes can come from reactors and other sources,” said Joe Nagel, chief operating officer of American Ecology. “You have to look at the specific nature of the isotopes, not make assumptions based on where they come from.”

Even as a low-level radioactive waste dump, Ward Valley is supposed to be able to safely accommodate the same radionuclides present in high-level waste. The state approved the site in 1993, concluding that burying the waste in unlined trenches in the desert would be safe.

The Clinton administration postponed the transfer of the site to the state and initiated its own investigation of the suitability of the location after government scientists found evidence of substantial leakage at a similar desert dump in Beatty, Nev., operated by American Ecology.

The concern is that leaks in the form of water-borne radioactive waste particles could make their way down to the water table and eventually to the Colorado River, 20 miles east of Ward Valley. The just-released GAO report blamed the leakage, which has penetrated several hundred feet into the ground, on illegal dumping of liquid waste and said the problem would not occur at Ward Valley if the ban on liquid waste is maintained.

The Clinton administration, however, has not ruled out the possibility that the leakage at Beatty was also caused by rainfall.

The administration is basing its concern on a 1996 Beatty study by the U.S. Geological Survey that concluded that “liquid transport may have been enhanced by precipitation and runoff into open trenches.”

If rainfall contributed to the leaks, officials say, there is no reason that rain could not have the same effect at Ward Valley, where soil and weather conditions are similar.

“The failure of the low-level Beatty waste facility is of great concern because Beatty has been consistently cited as an analog for Ward Valley,” said Boxer and Rep. George Miller (D-Pleasant Hill) in a joint letter responding to the GAO report.