LLW status according to AP: a fair story

[Jim Muckerheide <muckerheide@mediaone.net>]

Nothing to show for millions spent toward nuclear waste disposal

The Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. (July 5, 1997 12:38 p.m. EDT) -- It's the same story
everywhere -- regional compacts Congress created 17 years ago to bury
low-level radioactive waste have spent hundreds of millions of dollars
with virtually nothing to show.

Not one of the 10 multi-state compacts has opened a new dump in that
time. And none of the five states that opted to go it alone plans to
build one.

'We don't even have a hole in the ground. We don't have diddly!" fumes a
frustrated Charles Hawkins, a Virginia state senator and a member of the
Southeast Compact Commission.

The seven states in the Southeast compact were to have opened a dump in
North Carolina four years ago; the most recently revised target date is
2001. Opponents and regulators worry that the chosen site lies too near
water and radioactivity could leach into drinking supplies.

Indeed, radiation remains a potent not-in-my-backyard rallying point
throughout the country, with critics often linking the dump sites to the
Chernobyl and Three Mile Island nuclear plant disasters rather than the
disposal of laboratory rags or disassembled nuclear reactors.

Hawkins, however, suggests the real problem is a lack of political will
to find a way, and a place, to dispose of this waste.

Together, the compacts have already spent $400 million -- on research,
planning and site acquisition -- without a single new repository up and
running. The Northwest compact uses 100 acres on the vast Hanford,
Wash., nuclear reservation, but only four others have even chosen sites.

The estimated cost to complete the projects has climbed past $1 billion,
way over the amount projected when Congress created the system in 1980.

An early estimate for the Southeast compact's dump, for example, was
less than $100 million, but estimates to complete the project now stand
at $216 million. Estimates for the five-state Central compact now
approach $154 million, up from the original estimate of $31 million.

Meantime, most low-level wastes are being temporarily stored wherever
they are generated, or shipped to the three existing repositories:
private dumps in South Carolina and Utah and a corner of the federal
reservation in Hanford.

There is no federal oversight of the cumbersome compact process because
Congress wanted states to solve their own waste problems.

"The problem from the start was there was no set time frame for
anything," Hawkins says. "It was driven by the politics of the day, and
the first rule of politics is you never make a decision until you
have to."

The Midwest compact made a decision last month -- to opt out of the
entire dump idea and look for another disposal solution. It reasoned
that less radioactive waste was being produced and the dumps in Utah and
South Carolina could handle what there was.

The decision comes seven weeks after Ohio Gov. George Voinovich signed a
bill to delay site selection until March 1999. Political opponents had
noted that conveniently shifted the decision past
the November 1998 election, when Voinovich is expected to run for U.S.
Senate.

While politics are undoubtedly involved in some of the maneuvering, most
opposition to the dumps stems from environmental and radiation fears and
ballooning costs.

In California, Indians say a proposed site near Needles is on sacred
ground; others worry it's too close to the Colorado River.

Illinois residents are demanding the Legislature grant them veto rights
over dump sites.

In Nebraska, some citizens want to drop out before costs, already $79
million, climb higher. Cattle rancher Jim Selle lives 3 miles from the
proposed dump site at Butte, in north-central Nebraska, and
says funds spent to date are "the biggest waste of ratepayers' money."

"The only thing on (the site) is a trailer, a few monitoring wells and
some weeds," he says. "They have a couple of guards running around with
their little four-wheelers."

Selle also asserts promoters lied to residents by not telling them a
low-level dump would accept every type of radioactive waste except spent
fuel rods.

"They tried to make everybody believe it was hospital waste," he says.
"I guess they felt like it would be more palatable if they lied about it
and made it sound like a cancer patient wouldn't get treatment if it
wasn't built."

North Carolina's dump is proving to be the most expensive in the nation
because of repeated challenges by state regulators.

The chosen site, just south of Raleigh, is next-door to a nuclear power
plant and "we thought would generate less negative public reaction,"
says Dr. Richard Hodes of Tampa, Fla., a retired
anesthesiologist and chairman of the Southeast compact.

Then the problems with water were discovered.

"It was possible to do it for less if we didn't have to deal with the
public reaction at the same time," Hodes says. "It's relatively simple
from a technical standpoint. The engineers have assured us they could
build it in Times Square and not hurt anybody."

Progress has been similarly slow in Pennsylvania, where 76 percent of
the state's land has been eliminated from consideration as a dump site.
Gov. Tom Ridge last year called for volunteers. To date, no community
has stepped forward to offer itself as a dump host.

The target date for the dump is 2002 or beyond.

"It's a political as well as a public education problem, a public
perception problem," said Marc Tenan, executive director of the
Appalachian Compact Commission, which includes Pennsylvania,
Delaware, Maryland and West Virginia.

Tenan says local politicians like the idea of jobs being created by a
dump. But they aren't sure how to counter constituents' fears.

"You hear 'radiation' and it scares a lot of people," Tenan says.