Most low-level radioactive waste generated in the U.S. during the past 40 years has been disposed of by shallow land burial, 89 in which wastes are stored in drums or other containers and typically buried in trenches at depths ranging from 3 to 40 feet. So far, three of the six commercial disposal sites in the U.S. have been closed, and are ex¬periencing environmental problems. At each of the three sites (located at West Valley, New York; Maxey Flats, Kentucky; and Sheffield, Illinois), water has leaked into the burial trenches and in some cases caused extensive movement of radionuclides into the surrounding environment. Rather than being maintenance-free stabilized landfills, as was intended, these sites have ended up requiring active maintenance and remedial activities within ten years of closure.90
The problems at Maxey Flats, which was first opened in 1962, provide an instructive example. A 1974 report by the state of Kentucky found that radioactive materials, including plutonium, had moved hundreds of feet from where they had been buried. Although the operator of the site, U.S. Ecology (formerly the Nuclear Engineering Company, or NECO), had claimed that significant subsurface migration of plutonium was not possible, a 1975 report by the EPA found plutonium in core drilling samples, monitoring wells, and drainage streams. The EPA report noted that although Maxey Flats had been "expected to retain the buried plutonium for its hazardous lifetime," the plutonium had actually migrated from the site "in less than ten years."91
The state finally closed Maxey Flats in 1977, and the site, which has since been placed on the Superfund National Priorities List by the EPA, is currently undergoing an expensive remediation program. In addition to the $15 million already spent on remediation activities at the site, official estimates of what the total remediation effort will require range from $34 million to $70 million in 1989 dollars (discounted at an annual rate of 4 percent).92 When the clean-up is finally done and all the costs accounted for, final disposal costs for the wastes at Maxey Flats may well be roughly 10 to 50 times greater than the original fee charged to bury them there.93
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89. Although the DOE estimates that some 90,000 containers of low-level radioactive waste were dumped at sea in the 1950s and 1960s. (DOE 1990d, p. 109.)
90. For more details on problems at existing sites, see Resnikoff 1987, Chapter 2, pp. 33-44.
91. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Preliminary Data on the Occurence of Transuranium Nuclides in the Environment at the Waste Burial Site, Maxey Flats, Kentucky, EPA-520/3-74-021, Washington, DC: EPA Office of Radiation Programs, February 1975, as cited in Resnikoff 1987, p. 35; and Lipshutz 1980, p. 132.
92. Maxey Flats Steering Committee, Feasibility Study Report, Table 4-5, April 1991 (obtained courtesy Marvin Resnikoff, Radioactive Waste Management Associates, New York, New York). Current expenditure estimate of $15 million provided by personal communication from Marvin Resnikoff (May 1991).
93. According to DOE 1990d, p. 114, about 4.78 million cubic feet of LLW have been disposed of at Maxey Flats. Total clean-up costs cited in text are $50 to $85 million (adding the $35 to $70 million discounted costs directly to the $15 million already spent). Resnikoff 1987, p. 36, cites an estimate of $121 million. This gives net disposal costs ranging from $10 to $25 per cubic foot of waste disposed. Disposal costs in 1975 were $1 per cubic foot (OTA 1989). Presumably, disposal costs were significantly lower when Maxey Flats started operation in 1962; we assume $0.50 to $1 per cubic foot which results in a disposal cost escalation factor ranging from 10 to 50.