Tainted Scrap Finds Few Takers
A million tons of radioactive scrap metal may find a new shelf-life in products ranging from soup cans and wristwatches to automobiles and artificial hips.
It would be a mammoth recycling project for a legacy of the Nuclear Age. Under a proposal being considered by the Bush administration, the federal government is seeking new uses for lightly contaminated metal as it cleans up its obsolete weapon plants and research labs.
Recycling the scrap, mostly steel, could save the government more than $1 billion, according to Department of Energy projections. Otherwise, it would have to be buried in dumps designed for radioactive refuse or converted into containers for nuclear waste.
But the plan is opposed by metal industry groups, which fear the wrath of public opinion, as well as by environmentalists, who fear potential harm to public health.
Government officials insist that the metal would expose people to only minute doses of radiation, perhaps less than 1% of the amount they encounter in their everyday lives.
“I don’t question their science,” said Bill Heenan, president of the Pittsburgh-based Steel Recycling Institute. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s contaminated in the eyes of the consumer. Perception is reality. There’s no middle ground here.”
Poll numbers don’t bode well for radioactive recyclables. A 1999 study found that 61% of 1,000 respondents opposed reusing contaminated steel in consumer products. That sentiment remained even if government scientists assured people that the metal was safe.
Environmental groups, meanwhile, say that the danger is real. They warn that radioactive metal, no matter how slightly contaminated, could increase the risk of cancer and birth defects.
The American steel industry recycles about 70 million tons of scrap each year. It makes new steel from melted-down cans, cars, appliances and construction materials. Such reuse generated more than $5.5 billion in revenue last year, according to the Steel Recycling Institute. The recycled metal ends up in an array of consumer products.
For years, the Energy Department had quietly released to recyclers and landfills tiny amounts of contaminated material, including metal, from nuclear weapon factories and research labs. But debate over the practice has flared in the last two years as the government steps up large-scale decommissioning of nuclear plants.
“Very little has gotten out before now,” said Daniel Hirsch, president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a Los Angeles-based nuclear watchdog group. “But we’re talking about opening the floodgates.”
During cleanup of the Oak Ridge uranium-enrichment plant in Tennessee, the escalating controversy prompted the Energy Department last year to suspend the release of scrap metal. Then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said the department would establish a policy to ensure that recyclable metal shows no “detectable” radioactivity.
Under President Bush, the Energy Department has continued studying alternatives to disposing of tainted metal. Options include releasing it to recyclers, extending the ban or tightening standards for acceptable radioactivity levels.
Energy Department officials maintain that the old standards were safe. To regulate radioactivity, the agency long relied on 1974 limits that allowed a broad range of contamination, depending on the radioactive element involved.
In general, the maximum potential dose allowed for various elements was roughly 1 millirem, a measure of radiation, a year. The average person is exposed to about 360 millirems annually from natural sources such as cosmic rays, and medical procedures such as X-rays, the department estimates.
“We’re not aware of any health or environmental effects from what we were doing before,” said Terry Plummer, an Energy Department planner reviewing the policy. “But we want to review the alternatives with full public participation.”
Environmentalists argue that radioactivity wreaks its deadly damage slowly, through repeated exposure to small doses over many years. Some say that the government’s old policy actually permitted exposure to doses of up to 100 millirems a year, for each of hundreds of radioactive elements.
That’s enough to produce one fatal cancer case per 287 people exposed, said Diane D’Arrigo of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a Washington-based environmental group.
Even if the government decides to offer the radioactive metal to recyclers, it likely would find few takers. Most major steel mills and scrap recyclers feature detection devices designed to stop contaminated scrap from reaching the furnace. If radioactive steel finds its way in, the contamination can cost millions of dollars to repair.
And then there is Big Steel’s image of unswerving reliability--no small matter in an industry already crippled by waves of foreign imports and global oversupply.
“When people think of steel, they think of safety and strength,” Heenan said. “We take that very seriously.”
The Energy Department has hosted several public meetings to gather input on its recycling proposal. It plans more sessions, including some in the Los Angeles area, in early October.
For now, scrap metal is piling up at government installations as demolition crews wait for the go-ahead.
At Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory, which once conducted nuclear research and tested reactors in the Simi Hills west of Los Angeles, the suspect metal consists of a smattering of corrugated steel buildings, now abandoned and rust-streaked. They sit on 90 acres of parched, craggy hillsides that the Department of Energy has kept fenced off for cleanup since 1995.
About 35 years ago, buried in a vault five stories beneath Building 059, researchers tested a nuclear reactor about the size of a garbage can. Low-level radiation lingers underground, but scientists have determined the sagging building itself to be clean, at least in terms of the government’s prior standards.
The yearlong ban on recycling has frustrated Rocketdyne’s efforts to mop up contaminants and close the site by 2006, said Majelle Lee, a Rocketdyne manager overseeing the cleanup.
“We’re kind of stuck in a holding pattern,” Lee said as she surveyed the aging steel buildings.
But others are in no rush, instead calling for a complete review of the government’s handling of radioactive metal.
“I have serious concerns about levels being altered without a full review of associated risks,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said through a spokesman. “We need to have more protection of the public health and safety, not less.”
