Despite the problems in the U.S. regulations, current law requires the states and regions to move forward with siting and building new disposal facilities.
Regional Compacts for Commercial Waste
Following the closure of three of the six commercial "low-level" radioactive waste dumps in the 1970s, the states where the three still-operating sites were located began to lobby for a greater distribution of the "low-level" waste disposal burden. A number of packaging and transportation incidents involving "low-level" waste in 1979 highlighted the responsibility that these three sites were shouldering for the rest of the country. These incidents caused the governors of Nevada and Washington to close temporarily their states' disposal sites, and the governor of South Carolina to institute a 50 percent volume reduction at the Barnwell site.113
This precipitated a "low-level" waste disposal crisis which forced the issue onto the agenda of the U.S. Congress. The result was the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act of 1980 (LLRWPA). 114 This act, together with much more detailed amendments to it in 1985,115 forms the basis for low-level radioactive waste disposal plans in the U.S. today.
These laws established that each state was responsible for assuring adequate disposal capacity for the commercial low-level radioactive waste that was generated within its borders. However, since far fewer than 50 separate disposal sites are needed, the laws also encouraged the formation of voluntary regional state compacts. Each compact could then site one disposal facility in a compact member state for the use of the whole compact.
Thus far, nine compacts involving 42 states have formed. With the exception of the Northwest compact, these are in various stages of siting new disposal facilities.116 The remaining eight states are either planning to site their own individual disposal facilities, or hope to join an existing compact. The status of compacts and individual states as of late 1990 is indicated in Figure 7.117(Figure 7 not available on-line.) The situation has changed slighty since then. In July of l991, Michigan was ejected from the Midwest compact, and now is unaffiliated; Ohio has become the designated host state for the Midwest compact.
In order to enforce the siting and construction of new disposal sites, the law contains a number of milestones, along with associated incentives and penalties for those states that meet or fail to meet them.118 The incentives and penalties become increasingly stronger as each milestone is reached. The bottom-line enforcement mechanism is the requirement that a state assume ownership and possession of all wastes generated within its borders if provisions for the disposal of this waste have not been made by the final deadline of January 1996 (there is an initial deadline of January 1993). Furthermore, according to law, such a state "shall be liable for all damages directly or indirectly incurred by [the waste generators] as a consequence of the failure of the State to take possession of the waste."119
DOE Military Wastes
Military low-level wastes routinely generated within the DOE nuclear weapons complex are buried, as mentioned previously, according to the DOE's own internal rules. Although roughly parallel to the NRC's regulations, they are in some respects less stringent.
Although these practices are cause for concern, some of the DOE's future plans for waste disposal are even more troubling, and appear to verge on contradicting the apparent meaning of current law. For example, as we have discussed, federal law clearly defines "high-level radioactive waste" (which is required to be disposed of in a repository) as including "liquid wastes resulting from ... reprocessing irradiated fuel."120 Nonetheless, the DOE plans to separate some of the radioactivity in Hanford's high-level liquid reprocessing wastes and convert it into a solid grout form. The DOE considers this grout to be "low-level" waste, which they intend to bury in shallow vaults.
The quantities of radionuclides planned to be grouted at Hanford as of early 1989 were enormous, and included:121
For comparison, the entire grout campaign at Savannah River envisages a grout discharge campaign whose accumulation peaks at about 115,000 curies.122 For further comparison, according to current DOE records, the cumulative total radioactive inventory of all radionuclides in all AEC/DOE low-level radioactive waste disposed at all active DOE disposal sites in the U.S. through 1989 amounts to about 14 million decay-corrected curies.123
Thus, the Hanford grant campaign, if actually undertaken, may bury twice as much radioactivity as now remains in all major DOE low-level waste sites from decades of operation. This is a huge amount of radioactivity that by any reasonable standards should be considered repository-destined long-lived waste. That such a proposal could be seriously considered shows again the danger in the present lack of standards, and the need for ones which are clear and identifiable.
Recent experiments with grout are showing the danger of this approach. Organic chemicals which were added to the high-level waste as part of past waste treatment operations at Hanford are causing problems in the formation of the grout, which is a cement-like mixture. Organic chemical breakdown is leading to the evolution of hydrogen gas from the grout, and Hanford personnel have had to put pipes into the experimental grout mixtures to vent the hydrogen gas. This indicates there may be a serious potential for rapid cracking and disintegration of the grouted waste form. Further, the experiments show that the organic chemicals and nitrate compounds in particular are highly susceptible to leaching out of the grout, posing a groundwater pollution problem, especially from the nitrates.124
High Costs, High Risks
The approach embodied by federal law for commercial low-level wastes forces taxpayers at the state level to take on liabilities in an area where corporate and federal governmental failures have led to considerable problems. It has resulted in a politically unstable, costly, and environmentally risky program -- especially as far as the longer-lived components of the wastes are concerned.
For example, when Governor James Blanchard of Michigan halted siting activities and threatened to pull out of the compact in early 1989, he alarmed compact members and observers of the compact process across the nation. Michigan's action illustrates the instability of the current situation. The possibility that a state may suddenly pull itself out of a compact continues to pose the threat of a domino effect which could destroy the basis of the low-level waste disposal law. One state low-level waste official, remarking on Michigan Governor Blanchard's threat to pull out of the Midwest compact, said "he was in danger of bringing down a real house of cards."125
Although the Michigan situation appeared to be resolved for a time, the state's continued reluctance to move forward on siting a disposal facility caused the state to be recently ejected from the Midwest compact. Host state responsibilities for the Midwest compact have shifted to Ohio, and Michigan is currently on its own, and is trying to negotiate to locate a disposal site which will take its waste. Whether Ohio will be successful in siting a facility, and whether the Midwest compact will remain intact is at this point an open question.126
Another serious concern is the economics of waste disposal. If more radioactive waste becomes deregulated (as the NRC plans), and as volume reduction techniques are applied to reactor waste to reduce costs and meet federal volume limits, and as the number of disposal sites proliferates, the commercial disposal of radioactive waste may become less economically viable. Current plans to build up to 12 new disposal sites may result in underutilized sites and soaring disposal costs. Richard Slember, vice-president of Westinghouse's energy systems business unit, remarked that "[t]he country doesn't need a dozen low-level waste sites; it needs three or four good ones."127 Although the compact legislation was intended to encourage states to join together to prevent a proliferation of sites, the arrangements are politically sensitive and difficult to negotiate.
The average cost for disposal of low-level waste has dramatically increased in the past 20 years. In 1975, for example, unit disposal costs for most Class A low-level waste were about $1 per cubic foot.128 By comparison, current base disposal charges at the Barnwell site in South Carolina are about $41 per cubic foot,129 and at the Beatty, Nevada site, unit charges range from $32 to $55 per cubic foot, depending on the radiation levels at the surface of the disposal package.130
Expected future cost ranges are huge -- from $30 to $40 per cubic foot for a high-capacity (e.g. 230,000 cubic feet per year) conventional shallow-land burial site to $600 to $700 or more per cubic foot for a low-capacity (10,000 cubic feet per year) disposal site utilizing vaults or modular concrete canisters for storage.131 (By comparison, Barnwell, the largest of the current three sites, accepted about 1.1 million cubic feet of waste in 1989, and Beatty, Nevada, the smallest, accepted 116,000 cubic feet.)132
The estimated total development costs for 11 new disposal sites currently under development around the country approaches $700 million. This does not include any estimate for development of proposed new disposal sites for the Rocky Mountain Compact and for the state of Massachusetts.133
The bottom line, however, is that, regardless of what the costs turn out to be, the current approach for significant quantities of low-level waste disposal is fundamentally inadequate. Failures may not occur as quickly as they have in the past, but, as the NRC's own regulations admit, that may not make any difference to the future generations who will be left to contend with the long-lived wastes whose hazard will far outlast the regulatory time frame. In that respect, it is similar in spirit to the now defunct EPA standards for high-level waste which limited radiation doses for only 10,000 years for threats which extend to a million or more years.
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Last Updated October, 1996
113. Jordan 1984, p. 7
114. LLRWPA 1980.
115. LLRWPAA 1986.
116. The Northwest compact, consisting of Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, and Utah, will continue to use the existing Richland commercial disposal facility at Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The other two disposal facilities, at Barnwell, South Carolina and Beatty, Nevada, plan to close at the end of 1992, necessitating the construction of new sites for their compacts.
117. DOE 1990c, p. vi.
118. These incentives and penalties include surcharges and rebates on waste disposed outside the compact, and the threat of a cut-off of access to disposal at existing disposal sites.
119. LLRWPAA 1986, at Section 5(d)(2)(C).
120. NRC 1988b (10 CFR 60.2).
121. Wodrich 1989, pp. 4,8.
122. A peak of 116,000 curies is projected to occur in 2006 (DOE 1990d, p. 113). (Grout at Savannah River is generally referred to as "saltstone.")
123. DOE 1990d, Table 4.1, p. 105. The sites included (as listed on DOE 1990d, p. 107) where low-level waste defense wastes are buried are: Hanford, Savannah River, Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, Oak Ridge (including sites for the National Lab, the Gaseous Diffusion Plant, and Y-12 plant), Fernald, Pantex, Nevada Test Site, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Paducah, Portsmouth, Sandia National Labs, and Brookhaven National Labs.
124. This issue was discussed in some detail at the meeting of the DOE's Technical Advisory Panel on Hanford High-Level Waste tank, in Chicago on September 5, 1991. Arjun Makhijani, personal notes.
125. Nucleonics 1989a, p. 4.
126. Davis 1991, p. C-1.
127. Nucleonics 1989b, p. 9.
128. OTA 1989, p. 144.
129. Chem-Nuclear 1991.
130. US Ecology 1990.
131. OTA 1989, Table 6-6, p. 145.
132. DOE 1990b, p. A-2.
133. Appalachian Compact Users of Radioactive Isotopes (ACURI), excerpt including "Estimated Development Costs for States and Compacts", undated, but apparently later than January 28, 1991.