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Forwarded Newspaper Articles Concerning The Barnwell Site
These newspaper articles are forwarded for information of radsafe/radwaste
subscribers.
Charles Smith
Applied Radwaste Management Inc.
arminc01@aol.com http://armnet.com/armonline
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
In a message dated 98-07-20 13:08:42 EDT, cnsirep@wmi.com writes:
<< @WMI on 07/20/98 12:03 PM
Published Sunday, July 19, 1998, in The State, Page 1A
Barnwell revives plan to sell future space
By ANDREW MEADOWS, Staff Writer
Chem-Nuclear is reviving the idea of selling its customers, primarily
electric utilities, future space in its Barnwell low-level radioactive
waste facility.
The revival comes as the company is struggling to meet its financial
obligations to the state of South Carolina to operate the facility.
Chem-Nuclear isn?t saying much about the utility talks. However,
officials believe the futures plan will yield at least the $67 million a
year that the company currently pays the state in fees.
A similar futures plan, which was supposed to create a $1 billion
education fund for the state, stalled earlier this year.
Any new proposal will require legislative approval, a process that will
reopen the often rancorous debate over whether the site should stay
open.
?When we finish discussion with the generators it could require
legislative approval,? said David Ebenhack, Chem-Nuclear?s vice
president of community relations. ?If it does, then clearly we would
discuss it with the Legislature.?
The utility negotiations follow a dramatic drop in the waste shipped to
Barnwell since 1995, when the General Assembly levied a
$235-a-cubic-foot fee on waste buried at the site. The fee, backed by
Gov. David Beasley, allowed Barnwell to continue operating past Dec. 31,
1995, the date it was scheduled to close.
The fee prompted utilities, which produce about 75 percent of the waste
shipped to Chem-Nuclear, to seek cheaper alternatives. Minimizing the
production of waste and compacting waste have helped utilities,
including SCE&G and Duke Energy, reduce the volume of low-level waste
they produce by up to 90 percent over the past 10 years, according to
the companies.
Some utilities also started shipping radioactive waste to a landfill in
Clive, Utah. Others decided to store the waste on-site at their nuclear
power reactors. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows a utility to
store low-level waste on-site indefinitely.
In 1995, Barnwell?s supporters contended the $235-a-cubic-foot fee would
generate $140 million a year for the state, money to be spent on
scholarships and school construction. Instead, the dropoff in the amount
of waste shipped to Barnwell has resulted in reducing those fees to $67
million a year.
Said Chem-Nuclear?s Ebenhack, ?If there is an economic incentive people
will come up with an alternative, and they certainly have.?
?Only game in town.? This current round of negotiations is the second
time in the past year that Chem-Nuclear has had to ask utilities for
financial aid. Earlier this year, utilities helped Chem-Nuclear make up
an $8.5 million shortfall in the $23 million the company is required to
pay the state to operate the facility.
The money that utilities ponied up was voluntary. But Chem-Nuclear now
has imposed a mandatory ?access fee? to cover the state payments.
At one point, Chem-Nuclear?s parent company, Oak Brook, Ill.-based Waste
Management, contemplated shuttering the Barnwell landfill. However,
Chem-Nuclear says the Barnwell site remains profitable despite its
inability to cover the tax payments to the state.
The drop in waste shipments to Barnwell has forced Waste Management
officials to drop their profitability expectations for Barnwell.
However, company officials won?t disclose those expectations. And
Chem-Nuclear, a subsidiary of stockholder-owned Waste Management, isn?t
required to disclose its finances.
Tom Dabrowski, head of Waste Management?s nuclear division, said the tax
shortfall was presented to utilities as another cost that had to be
covered. The utilities understand Chem-Nuclear has to meet profitability
levels, he added.
?Fortunately, they understand this is a business,? Dabrowski said.
But Carolina Power & Light, which operates the Robinson nuclear reactor
in Hartsville, made a ?business decision? not to help make up
Chem-Nuclear?s tax shortfall, said Mike Hughes, a CP&L spokesman.
Hughes refused to elaborate.
CP&L operates two nuclear facilities in North Carolina in addition to
Robinson.
Now, as part of the futures program, Chem-Nuclear wants electric
utilities to assess their waste needs for years to come and pay now for
those needs.
?Are they happy about having to pay Barnwell extra? No. But on the other
hand the industry needs Barnwell,? said Steve Unglesbee, a spokesman for
the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry?s trade group. ?They
are the only game in town.?
Ebenhack echoed that thought when asked what leverage Chem-Nuclear has
with electric companies.
Said Ebenhack, ?Where else are they going to put it??
Although the Clive, Utah, site operated by Envirocare Inc. has taken an
increased amount of Type A, low-level waste, Barnwell is the one of two
nuclear landfills that accept more radioactive Type B and Type C waste.
The other landfill that takes B and C waste is in Richland, Wash.
However, it accepts waste from only eight states in the Northwest.
Utilities always can store their waste on-site. Both Duke and SCE&G have
contingency plans to store low-level waste on-site at their reactors.
But the companies say they would rather work out an economical
alternative with Chem-Nuclear.
?We prefer to have the Barnwell site open,? said Gary Taylor, SCE&G?s
vice president of nuclear operations.
Past and future.
Some nuclear watchers blame Gov. David Beasley and the
General Assembly for making Barnwell the only alternative for low-level
waste.
Marvin Resnikoff, a senior associate with Radioactive Waste Management
Associates, said the decision by the Legislature and Beasley to keep
Barnwell open killed a regional low-level waste disposal plan enacted by
Congress in 1980.
Under that law, eight regional compacts were charged with developing
low-level landfills to take nuclear waste.
However, as long as Barnwell remains open, the regional compacts had no
incentive to build landfills, Resnikoff said.
Before buying into Chem-Nuclear?s futures plan, SCE&G?s Taylor said, his
company wants to be sure the landfill will be open for the next 20 to 30
years. That?s when SCE&G will have to make a decision whether to keep
its V.C. Summer nuclear reactor in Jenkinsville open.
SCE&G owns two-thirds of that reactor. The state of South Carolina,
through state-owned Santee Cooper, owns the other third.
Dozens of utilities nationwide are facing the same quandary as SCE&G as
the electric industry heads toward deregulation.
If SCE&G decides to close Summer, the utility will need somewhere to put
its immense components, which will be dismantled.
Chem-Nuclear wants the utility to buy space now in Barnwell to bury
those components. The 27-year-old Barnwell facility has 6 million cubic
feet of space left for storage of waste. That?s enough space for another
25 years of operation, the company estimates.
If successful, Chem-Nuclear?s futures plan should give the state at
least the $67 million a year it?s been averaging under the current fee
structure, said company spokesman Ebenhack.
That, he said, would guarantee a ?steady revenue stream? to South
Carolina for education and give Chem-Nuclear?s customers ?stability.?
1999 legislative battleground?
Any new fee plan devised by Chem-Nuclear
and accepted by the utilities will have to win legislative approval.
Chem-Nuclear?s foes already anticipate a request next year to
restructure the fees the state assesses the company.
The battle is sure to be vitriolic. Chem-Nuclear and SCE&G are two of
the state?s saaviest corporate lobbyists. And Barnwell?s opponents are
many and loud.
?Oh yeah, they?ll come to the General Assembly next year,? said state
Rep. Bob Sheheen, D-Camden, a Barnwell opponent.
?They always come back the year after an election.?
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
Published Sunday, July 19, 1998, in The State.
Legislature shouldn't bail out Chem-Nuclear
We've heard it all before.
The state will lose vital tax revenues, and we'll all be exposed to a
dangerous proliferation of unregulated mini-nuclear storage facilities
unless the Legislature bails out Chem-Nuclear.
First we extended the deadline to close the state-owned
radioactive-waste landfill the company operates in Barnwell. That action
was propelled by a combination of worry over what S.C. businesses would
do with their nuclear waste and the lure of the almighty dollars the
facility sends to Columbia.
Then, in 1995, we walked away from two decades of state and federal
policy -- and our only chance of ever getting out of the nuclear-waste
business -- with an ill-conceived plan to pull out of a regional compact
and open the Barnwell site to the nation. In return, Chem-Nuclear, Gov.
David Beasley and the Legislature promised the state would receive $140
million a year to build schools and send poor and moderate-income
students to college.
The money never materialized. From the start, the state's
$235-per-cubic-foot burial fee scared off customers. Those who weren't
scared were smart: They compacted their nuclear trash, taking advantage
of the Legislature's ignorance. The tax is based on volume instead of
radioactivity. And the result of that is grim; projections last year
indicated the facility would take 60 percent more radioactivity before
it fills up than initially expected.
In 1996, Chem-Nuclear sent the state $92 million. In 1997, it was $77
million. That drop led legislators to demand the company make up the
difference if the 30 percent portion of the fee that pays for
scholarships didn't total at least $22 million. (That goes up to $24
million in 1999.)
Volume was down so much that the company couldn't meet the minimum it
had signed off on just five months earlier. So Chem-Nuclear floated a
plan last fall to essentially sell space in the landfill on the futures
market. The company would guarantee the state a $1 billion education
trust fund in return for a legislative guarantee that the landfill would
remain open. Remarkably, the governor and the Legislature showed no
interest, and the company instead convinced utilities to kick in the
extra $8.5 million it needed to meet its 1998 obligation.
Now Chem-Nuclear says it will probably be $10 million short next year.
So it's negotiating with waste generators in hopes of coming up with
another legislative proposal. Any plan is likely to involve lowering the
$235 fee and guaranteeing companies space into the next century -- a
guarantee almost certain to lead eventually to expansion of the
landfill.
Senate Finance Chairman John Drummond has indicated he might be willing
to lower the tax. But the Senate has always been in Chem-Nuclear's
pocket. The real test is the reaction of the company's new allies, Gov.
Beasley and the House.
So far, reaction has been chilly. Gary Karr, the governor's spokesman,
calls fee reductions and guarantees "nonstarters" for the governor.
(Democratic challenger Jim Hodges opposes even the concessions the state
has already made.)
House Speaker David Wilkins predicts the Legislature won't be interested
in any deals. And Ways and Means Chairman Henry Brown said it would suit
him fine if Chem-Nuclear had to bail out of Barnwell. "The state
probably would take it over to serve in-state uses," he said.
That's the first sensible suggestion we've heard since problems first
developed with the plan to rotate nuclear storage duties through the
region. If the goal is to make sure S.C. companies don't let nuclear
waste pile up on their property, then the most the state should be
willing to do is provide a disposal facility for those companies. There
is no reason we should prop up Chem-Nuclear's attempts to salvage its
bottom line by attracting waste from other states.
By raising the burial tax in 1995 and adding minimum funding
requirements in 1997, the state established the price for Chem-Nuclear
to do business in South Carolina. The last thing the Legislature needs
to do is lower the price or make any guarantees. If Chem-Nuclear can't
pay the price it agreed to, it doesn't need to be here.
>>
- Subject: 4th Distribution of Newspaper Articles Concerning The Barnwell Site
- From: Mark_Lewis@wastemanagement.com
- Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1998 12:03:10 -0500
From: Mark Lewis@WMI on 07/20/98 12:03 PM
Published Sunday, July 19, 1998, in The State, Page 1A
Barnwell revives plan to sell future space
By ANDREW MEADOWS, Staff Writer
Chem-Nuclear is reviving the idea of selling its customers, primarily
electric utilities, future space in its Barnwell low-level radioactive
waste facility.
The revival comes as the company is struggling to meet its financial
obligations to the state of South Carolina to operate the facility.
Chem-Nuclear isn?t saying much about the utility talks. However,
officials believe the futures plan will yield at least the $67 million a
year that the company currently pays the state in fees.
A similar futures plan, which was supposed to create a $1 billion
education fund for the state, stalled earlier this year.
Any new proposal will require legislative approval, a process that will
reopen the often rancorous debate over whether the site should stay
open.
?When we finish discussion with the generators it could require
legislative approval,? said David Ebenhack, Chem-Nuclear?s vice
president of community relations. ?If it does, then clearly we would
discuss it with the Legislature.?
The utility negotiations follow a dramatic drop in the waste shipped to
Barnwell since 1995, when the General Assembly levied a
$235-a-cubic-foot fee on waste buried at the site. The fee, backed by
Gov. David Beasley, allowed Barnwell to continue operating past Dec. 31,
1995, the date it was scheduled to close.
The fee prompted utilities, which produce about 75 percent of the waste
shipped to Chem-Nuclear, to seek cheaper alternatives. Minimizing the
production of waste and compacting waste have helped utilities,
including SCE&G and Duke Energy, reduce the volume of low-level waste
they produce by up to 90 percent over the past 10 years, according to
the companies.
Some utilities also started shipping radioactive waste to a landfill in
Clive, Utah. Others decided to store the waste on-site at their nuclear
power reactors. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows a utility to
store low-level waste on-site indefinitely.
In 1995, Barnwell?s supporters contended the $235-a-cubic-foot fee would
generate $140 million a year for the state, money to be spent on
scholarships and school construction. Instead, the dropoff in the amount
of waste shipped to Barnwell has resulted in reducing those fees to $67
million a year.
Said Chem-Nuclear?s Ebenhack, ?If there is an economic incentive people
will come up with an alternative, and they certainly have.?
?Only game in town.? This current round of negotiations is the second
time in the past year that Chem-Nuclear has had to ask utilities for
financial aid. Earlier this year, utilities helped Chem-Nuclear make up
an $8.5 million shortfall in the $23 million the company is required to
pay the state to operate the facility.
The money that utilities ponied up was voluntary. But Chem-Nuclear now
has imposed a mandatory ?access fee? to cover the state payments.
At one point, Chem-Nuclear?s parent company, Oak Brook, Ill.-based Waste
Management, contemplated shuttering the Barnwell landfill. However,
Chem-Nuclear says the Barnwell site remains profitable despite its
inability to cover the tax payments to the state.
The drop in waste shipments to Barnwell has forced Waste Management
officials to drop their profitability expectations for Barnwell.
However, company officials won?t disclose those expectations. And
Chem-Nuclear, a subsidiary of stockholder-owned Waste Management, isn?t
required to disclose its finances.
Tom Dabrowski, head of Waste Management?s nuclear division, said the tax
shortfall was presented to utilities as another cost that had to be
covered. The utilities understand Chem-Nuclear has to meet profitability
levels, he added.
?Fortunately, they understand this is a business,? Dabrowski said.
But Carolina Power & Light, which operates the Robinson nuclear reactor
in Hartsville, made a ?business decision? not to help make up
Chem-Nuclear?s tax shortfall, said Mike Hughes, a CP&L spokesman.
Hughes refused to elaborate.
CP&L operates two nuclear facilities in North Carolina in addition to
Robinson.
Now, as part of the futures program, Chem-Nuclear wants electric
utilities to assess their waste needs for years to come and pay now for
those needs.
?Are they happy about having to pay Barnwell extra? No. But on the other
hand the industry needs Barnwell,? said Steve Unglesbee, a spokesman for
the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry?s trade group. ?They
are the only game in town.?
Ebenhack echoed that thought when asked what leverage Chem-Nuclear has
with electric companies.
Said Ebenhack, ?Where else are they going to put it??
Although the Clive, Utah, site operated by Envirocare Inc. has taken an
increased amount of Type A, low-level waste, Barnwell is the one of two
nuclear landfills that accept more radioactive Type B and Type C waste.
The other landfill that takes B and C waste is in Richland, Wash.
However, it accepts waste from only eight states in the Northwest.
Utilities always can store their waste on-site. Both Duke and SCE&G have
contingency plans to store low-level waste on-site at their reactors.
But the companies say they would rather work out an economical
alternative with Chem-Nuclear.
?We prefer to have the Barnwell site open,? said Gary Taylor, SCE&G?s
vice president of nuclear operations.
Past and future.
Some nuclear watchers blame Gov. David Beasley and the
General Assembly for making Barnwell the only alternative for low-level
waste.
Marvin Resnikoff, a senior associate with Radioactive Waste Management
Associates, said the decision by the Legislature and Beasley to keep
Barnwell open killed a regional low-level waste disposal plan enacted by
Congress in 1980.
Under that law, eight regional compacts were charged with developing
low-level landfills to take nuclear waste.
However, as long as Barnwell remains open, the regional compacts had no
incentive to build landfills, Resnikoff said.
Before buying into Chem-Nuclear?s futures plan, SCE&G?s Taylor said, his
company wants to be sure the landfill will be open for the next 20 to 30
years. That?s when SCE&G will have to make a decision whether to keep
its V.C. Summer nuclear reactor in Jenkinsville open.
SCE&G owns two-thirds of that reactor. The state of South Carolina,
through state-owned Santee Cooper, owns the other third.
Dozens of utilities nationwide are facing the same quandary as SCE&G as
the electric industry heads toward deregulation.
If SCE&G decides to close Summer, the utility will need somewhere to put
its immense components, which will be dismantled.
Chem-Nuclear wants the utility to buy space now in Barnwell to bury
those components. The 27-year-old Barnwell facility has 6 million cubic
feet of space left for storage of waste. That?s enough space for another
25 years of operation, the company estimates.
If successful, Chem-Nuclear?s futures plan should give the state at
least the $67 million a year it?s been averaging under the current fee
structure, said company spokesman Ebenhack.
That, he said, would guarantee a ?steady revenue stream? to South
Carolina for education and give Chem-Nuclear?s customers ?stability.?
1999 legislative battleground?
Any new fee plan devised by Chem-Nuclear
and accepted by the utilities will have to win legislative approval.
Chem-Nuclear?s foes already anticipate a request next year to
restructure the fees the state assesses the company.
The battle is sure to be vitriolic. Chem-Nuclear and SCE&G are two of
the state?s saaviest corporate lobbyists. And Barnwell?s opponents are
many and loud.
?Oh yeah, they?ll come to the General Assembly next year,? said state
Rep. Bob Sheheen, D-Camden, a Barnwell opponent.
?They always come back the year after an election.?
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
Published Sunday, July 19, 1998, in The State.
Legislature shouldn't bail out Chem-Nuclear
We've heard it all before.
The state will lose vital tax revenues, and we'll all be exposed to a
dangerous proliferation of unregulated mini-nuclear storage facilities
unless the Legislature bails out Chem-Nuclear.
First we extended the deadline to close the state-owned
radioactive-waste landfill the company operates in Barnwell. That action
was propelled by a combination of worry over what S.C. businesses would
do with their nuclear waste and the lure of the almighty dollars the
facility sends to Columbia.
Then, in 1995, we walked away from two decades of state and federal
policy -- and our only chance of ever getting out of the nuclear-waste
business -- with an ill-conceived plan to pull out of a regional compact
and open the Barnwell site to the nation. In return, Chem-Nuclear, Gov.
David Beasley and the Legislature promised the state would receive $140
million a year to build schools and send poor and moderate-income
students to college.
The money never materialized. From the start, the state's
$235-per-cubic-foot burial fee scared off customers. Those who weren't
scared were smart: They compacted their nuclear trash, taking advantage
of the Legislature's ignorance. The tax is based on volume instead of
radioactivity. And the result of that is grim; projections last year
indicated the facility would take 60 percent more radioactivity before
it fills up than initially expected.
In 1996, Chem-Nuclear sent the state $92 million. In 1997, it was $77
million. That drop led legislators to demand the company make up the
difference if the 30 percent portion of the fee that pays for
scholarships didn't total at least $22 million. (That goes up to $24
million in 1999.)
Volume was down so much that the company couldn't meet the minimum it
had signed off on just five months earlier. So Chem-Nuclear floated a
plan last fall to essentially sell space in the landfill on the futures
market. The company would guarantee the state a $1 billion education
trust fund in return for a legislative guarantee that the landfill would
remain open. Remarkably, the governor and the Legislature showed no
interest, and the company instead convinced utilities to kick in the
extra $8.5 million it needed to meet its 1998 obligation.
Now Chem-Nuclear says it will probably be $10 million short next year.
So it's negotiating with waste generators in hopes of coming up with
another legislative proposal. Any plan is likely to involve lowering the
$235 fee and guaranteeing companies space into the next century -- a
guarantee almost certain to lead eventually to expansion of the
landfill.
Senate Finance Chairman John Drummond has indicated he might be willing
to lower the tax. But the Senate has always been in Chem-Nuclear's
pocket. The real test is the reaction of the company's new allies, Gov.
Beasley and the House.
So far, reaction has been chilly. Gary Karr, the governor's spokesman,
calls fee reductions and guarantees "nonstarters" for the governor.
(Democratic challenger Jim Hodges opposes even the concessions the state
has already made.)
House Speaker David Wilkins predicts the Legislature won't be interested
in any deals. And Ways and Means Chairman Henry Brown said it would suit
him fine if Chem-Nuclear had to bail out of Barnwell. "The state
probably would take it over to serve in-state uses," he said.
That's the first sensible suggestion we've heard since problems first
developed with the plan to rotate nuclear storage duties through the
region. If the goal is to make sure S.C. companies don't let nuclear
waste pile up on their property, then the most the state should be
willing to do is provide a disposal facility for those companies. There
is no reason we should prop up Chem-Nuclear's attempts to salvage its
bottom line by attracting waste from other states.
By raising the burial tax in 1995 and adding minimum funding
requirements in 1997, the state established the price for Chem-Nuclear
to do business in South Carolina. The last thing the Legislature needs
to do is lower the price or make any guarantees. If Chem-Nuclear can't
pay the price it agreed to, it doesn't need to be here.