President Kadak addresses LLRW Decisionmakers' Forum
Low Level Radioactive Waste Disposal
What Should We Do Now?
Andrew C. Kadak, Ph.D.
Kadak Associates, Inc.
President, American Nuclear Society
LLRW Decisionmakers' Forum & Technical Symposium
January 21, 2000
What Should We Do Now?
Andrew C. Kadak, Ph.D.
Kadak Associates, Inc.
President, American Nuclear Society
LLRW Decisionmakers' Forum & Technical Symposium
January 21, 2000
Everyone knows that we are approaching a critical situation for all generators and users of low level radioactive materials. In 1980, largely as a result of the pressures exerted by the states that operated low level waste disposal facilities that included Nevada, Washington and South Carolina, the Low-Level Waste Policy Act [1] was enacted to share the burden of low level waste disposal with those states that generated it. The law was a sound piece of legislation that gave the responsibility to the states that hosted generators and users of radioactive materials to find their own solutions. It provided encouragement to organize in compacts or agreements that would allow states to exclude wastes from states outside the compacts after January 1, 1986 further enhancing the states' rights to control the material ending up in their states. These agreements were meant to provide a solution to those states that were the host of the disposal sites to eventually be free of that responsibility.
By 1985, when it became apparent that the states would not be able to meet the deadline imposed, Congress refused to pass legislation that would approve the compacts to allow them to prohibit waste from coming into their states. In 1985 Congress passed an amendment to the 1980 Act [2] to give states more time, provide detailed milestone schedules, and surcharges to encourage performance and the power to deny access to existing facilities if milestones were not met. Congress also included an important take title provision that would place the burden of low level waste squarely on the states should they not meet the deadline. Congress to its credit produced an incentive based system, with milestones, and accountability. In November 1986, Holmes Brown of the National Governors Association wrote in the "The Low-Level Waste Handbook" [3]:
"The Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act represents a significant achievement for states, demonstrating that they possess not only the ability to provide innovative solutions to national problems, but the political (emphasis added) commitment to implement them."Flushed with this optimism and the search for equality, states began taking serious steps at complying with this legislation. However, when the Supreme Court overturned the key accountability provision by declaring unconstitutional the take title section, interest in solving the problem began to wane, leaving the solution to the good will of the states to do the right thing. What seemed to be lacking was the political commitment to succeed.
What started with so much optimism to create a regional solution to the problem of only a few states bearing the burden of low level radioactive waste disposal ended up with those same states, less one, continuing to bear the burden some 20 years later. Initially 44 states, entered into 10 compact agreements. Today no state or compact is actively developing a site and most compacts exits in name only. The only real authority they have is to block waste from coming into a state and the power to limit waste from being exported to another state.
We should have recognized trouble on the horizon when compacts were scrambling to find states to join their compact with little or no waste generated in their states. We should have sensed trouble, when some states simply refused to join a compact since under no circumstances would they want waste from out of state coming into their state. We should have sensed trouble, when the money to fund the studies for subsequent sites came from the generators, mostly utilities, with no accountability for results or control over spending of the state agencies charged with finding a site. We should have sensed trouble when huge amounts of money were spent on siting those projects in California and Texas with federal approvals of the compacts either delayed as in the Texas compact or obstructed as in California.
We should have seen a lot but we refused to face the facts. Namely, there was not the political support to see this process through. When the courts refused to uphold the teeth of the act, states could with impunity ignore their obligation for disposal of low level radioactive materials in their regions. We are now at a point where there are no compacts seeking to site a facility in their regions. In short, people have given up and the political obstacles to putting a proposal together are simply not worth the risk or the cost.
During this time period, one new facility was opened. It happened to be outside the compact system. The privately developed Envirocare facility that started with disposal of very low activity waste has been subsequently expanded to the point where essentially all class A low level waste now goes. This private facility is now being considered for expansion to handle class B and C wastes. Why has the private sector succeeded when the well-planned federal approach for states equitably sharing the responsibility failed so miserably? The answer seems to be as simple as it is complex. The private sector had a reason to succeed. It wanted to be in the business and wanted it to be a successful profit making business. The states did not. They studied and when solutions were presented to the political bodies for approval, they either delayed or denied. This is obviously not a good situation.
What can we learn from this sad experience? The basic problem seems to be a lack of accountability for the siting of a facility since there were no means by which to make states accountable. When I was President of Yankee Atomic, we were faced with an agency that in my opinion was never going to site a low level waste facility in Massachusetts. We all knew that and tried to convince the political bodies that it was not a likely outcome since Massachusetts was too small a waste generator with too few appropriate sites if any. An example of the lack of willingness to accept accountability, Yankee and other waste generators and users worked hard to secure a $40 million revenue bond authorization through the Massachusetts legislature for building the low-level waste facility. When it came time to ask for state accountability in spending this money, the state refused. Our proposal was simple. We will pay all costs associated with the design and construction of the facility once opened. The key words are "once opened". They could use their bond authority for development and when the facility became operational, we would pay all costs back much like a private developer would be repaid for his investment. The resounding no to the concept gave us a clear signal that they had no either no desire to build a facility or no confidence that they could do it.
Instead of working to find alternative solutions by joining other compacts, Massachusetts through its Low-Level Waste Board, appeared to be continuing down the path of virtual siting. Regulations were put in place, siting criteria were established, public meetings were held, and people became agitated about the prospects. We all knew that it was an expensive charade. We did meet the milestones though. The good news is that Massachusetts did not spend a lot of money doing it. Specific sites were not identified or studied which greatly reduced the costs to the utilities. Is this right? No, but neither was the need to have 10 compacts since the volume of waste produced could not justify the cost or the hassle. It is reported that over $600 million has been spent since 1980 with little to show for it in terms of siting even one low level waste disposal facility in the nation. The site that had made the most progress was Ward Valley which was, as we know, thwarted by the Clinton Administration by refusing to transfer desert land to the state of California.
So where are we? Barnwell, which is not in a compact, accepts waste from most of the nation. Governor Hodges of South Carolina is committed to closing Barnwell to out of state generators. In a December 15, 1999 report of the South Carolina Nuclear Waste Task Force [4] formed by the Governor to find a path out of the low-level waste business, a recommendation was made to join the Northeast Compact which consists of Connecticut and New Jersey. The Atlantic Compact as it will be called if approved, will be able to once again exclude wastes from every place else. The Governor fully expects that the Barnwell facility will be used for South Carolina's nuclear facilities after a date certain. It remains to be seen what will actually happen in terms of approvals.
Washington state will not allow out of compact wastes coming into the state. Nevada with its intense opposition to opening Yucca Mountain to high level waste disposal is not likely to welcome low level waste from other states, particularly after it has successfully closed its commercial low level waste facility in 1992. Texas has two commercial companies trying to open up a low level waste facility. The battle each of the companies are having regarding the opportunity give the state a good excuse not to act on either. In any case, both companies are looking for the DOE business not the commercial business. Even though both companies would like to do business with all low level waste generators or users of radioactive materials, the political situation in Texas right now does not support it.
North Carolina is content with not developing a site apparently. Suits will fly while waste will be stored. No progress can be expected there. Because of the high price of disposal and the utilities need to be competitive, some are actually using the low-level waste as a budget balancing line item, delaying shipments and storing on site. This is not obviously a long term strategy or is it? What are the implications of existing nuclear power plant sites becoming not only long term high level nuclear waste storage sites but also low-level waste storage sites. This is not a pretty picture.
The compact legislation was very successful in at least one respect. It forced generators to reduce the volume of waste sent for disposal. Commercial operating waste volumes were reduced from about 1.3 million cubic feet in 1986 to about 300,000 cubic feet in 1998 according to the General Accounting Office [5]. Largely due to the economic reality of disposing a cubic foot of low level waste at about $500, utilities got the message - reduce the volume. The taxes imposed by South Carolina, which initially kept the Barnwell site opened, may eventually lead to its closure since the cost of disposal is very expensive, particularly for plants undergoing decommissioning.
What else has happened to Barnwell? Instead of being the all purpose disposal site, because of its high prices, most of the low level class A material is going to Envirocare further exacerbating the volume problem and making Barnwell the Class B and C disposal site for the nation. This is probably very annoying to the politicians who decided to impose such high taxes. We should, however be deeply thankful that the state of South Carolina has been so patient and understanding of the need for a safe disposal site for the nation. Their patience however is understandably running thin since for over 20 years the equity they were looking for has not materialized.
We have another problem brewing. An alternative to direct disposal was waste volume reduction, processing and recycling. The volume reduction business is doing fairly well largely as a result of the high disposal costs. More needs to be done in volume reduction to save existing capacity at low-level waste disposal sites. The metal melting or processing business is also doing well particularly if residual materials have end uses in restricted applications such as shielding materials for DOE or casks. What is in major difficulty is the recycling end of the business. While this is a major problem for DOE as it seeks to efficiently, safely and economically deal with the residuals of the weapons program, it also has major spin off and cost impact to utilities who are decommissioning their nuclear plants. The utility does not expect to make money from the recycled material since it is sold on a per pound basis, the savings come from not having to bury the huge volume of material that is only mildly contaminated and can be safely recycled even into consumer products. This will cost utilities in the range of $50 to $100 million per plant for additional disposal costs. Not a trivial amount assuming that there is a place to dispose of the material which is increasingly less likely in the future.
DOE has decided not to recycle materials from their Oak Ridge facility until the NRC comes up with a clearance rule standard to establish a safe level of volumetric activity for commercial use. This is vital if we are going to make progress in efficient utilization of our waste disposal facilities.
The other problem is Greater Than Class C (GTCC) waste. Those of you who know me, know that I have been raising this issue for at least 5 years. The tango that is underway between NRC and DOE about the definition of this material is very interesting to watch. We all know it must go into a geological repository. That's what NRC says. DOE says it is not officially defined as high level nuclear waste and therefore they don't have to deal with. All we need is for NRC to say to DOE in writing that GTCC is equivalent to high level waste since it must go into a geological repository so that DOE can work on designing something for Yucca Mountain. At present, they are not.
Try this for wild scenario. Let us assume that Yucca Mountain opens to accept spent fuel. All the fuel is moved off your site except one canister of stuff that looks like spent fuel, is stored in canisters that are equivalent to spent fuel canisters but require more shielding, but are still at your site because there is no place to send the waste. Wouldn't that be interesting? You have to maintain a security force to guard one to two canisters of radioactive metal that has no final resting place. Not an unlikely scenario in my opinion.
There is an alternative to this as we all know. Something that makes sense, Something that is already being done by the Navy when they decommission their nuclear subs and something that has already been done by at least one utility, Portland General Electric. They shipped their reactor vessel with the internals for final disposal in the Hanford low level waste site. The waste package is certainly stronger that any package we can make for spent fuel. Why isn't this being done as a matter of proper practice to reduce costs, worker dose and disposal risks?
That still leaves us with the question of what are we going to do with this impending crisis? The General Accounting Office, in a report to the Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources of the US Senate appropriately entitled "Low-Level Radioactive Wastes - States Are Not Developing Disposal Facilities" [5] evaluated the options being considered but recommended none. Let me go through some of them quickly. In the short term should Barnwell close to out of state or out of Atlantic Compact generators, most of the nations generators will have to store on site for at least the 10 years that it will take to site a new disposal facility according to past licensing experiences. The general feeling is that it doesn't matter much and that most can wait it out. For utilities, it is cheaper to store on site than dispose of it anyway. Is this a good idea or bad?
For those plants decommissioning, it means either a cessation of decommissioning or putting all the waste into boxes for onsite storage until a facility opens up or using the containment as the low level waste engineered storage facility. Some have said that we will end up putting all this waste into the containment anyway in the future and so why not use the reactor building as an entombment facility for low level waste for 300 years. It is certainly the ultimate engineered storage facility. This idea, I recall, was originally proposed by Maine Yankee in the 80's. Is that a good idea for the future of nuclear plants in terms of building new ones either at the same site or new green field locations? I don't think so since it will continue to perpetuate the perception of an industry that does not know what to do with its waste. The public perception of this solution has yet to be tested. Clearly, this is a solution for a utility that will never build another nuclear plant.
Some have suggested yet another federal law that would force the states and the DOE to open up the existing DOE low level waste facilities used for a relatively small amount of commercial low level waste. The 150,000 cubic feet of waste to be disposed of at these facilities is less than 2% of the annual volume disposed by DOE at Envirocare alone. This is a great idea and makes the most common sense until we look at where these facilities are. The only trouble is the states that we have to convince, namely Nevada and Washington, are those states that were the original source of the equity argument over 20 years ago. The action by Congress would be precipitated only by the frustration over the failure of the Low Level Waste Policy act that in twenty years could not site one new facility. Given the success of a Congressional law aimed at siting a high level waste facility over the objections of a state, I would not put that high on my list of solution options.
Commercial efforts at siting under the Waste Policy Act have not by successful either. Several companies, Waste Control Specialists, Envirocare and Safety Kleen have attempted to site low level waste disposal facilities but have failed thus far. The reasons seem to be a lack of interest by the states to permit a competing disposal site to the compact site and intense efforts by the existing businesses to exclude the other creating opportunities for political delay. The commercial path under the existing legislation gives states little incentive and great disincentive to cooperate in the siting of a facility. The lack of consequences in the Waste Policy Act gives little incentive to site a facility with or without a compact. With the compacts as presently organized, the costs of siting for the volumes disposed would be prohibitive. Without a compact, the perception of being a waste dump for the nation is too powerful a political tool to permit a site to be developed. We are really stuck with no solution under the status quo.
In light of this frustration, people are looking for alternatives to the lack of progress in siting disposal facilities. The most commonly mentioned is "assured isolation". This concept claims to be less expensive but, on the face of it, this is hard to believe unless you make some very interesting assumptions. These assumptions relate to what the future low level waste disposal costs will be; how long you have to monitor the facility; should you chose to dispose of the wastes in place do you really expect to walk away from the facility; if not, what might the handling and processing costs be with final disposal in the future? If 300 years is the assured isolation time frame, there are significant institutional assumptions that have yet to be addressed. Conventional present value analysis for such a long time frame is meaningless.
Yucca Mountain is facing these same long time frame institutional control challenges with no clear answers. By going to assured isolation, we will have transformed a problem that has a demonstrated solution to one that is open ended with no final solution putting the final decision on a generation of people who have yet to be born. This, in my opinion, is not responsible. No amount of word splitting or legal parsing changes that conclusion. I view the argument that by using assured isolation we keep our options open for better techniques in dealing with this waste as disingenuous. We should not be tempted by expediency to go down a path that really doesn't solve the problem but delays the solution. What is needed is a new creative way to site disposal facilities.
What if the legislation of 1980 as amended in 1985 was simply repealed? In October of 1999, the Health Physics Society adopted a position statement on Low-Level Radioactive Waste which stated quite plainly [6]:
"The LLRW Policy Act now unnecessarily restricts access to available disposal sites and impedes open commercial development of additional facilities".This position is based on the consequences of the act which has resulted in low-level waste being stored a thousands of sites nationwide. They point out the net effect of the obstacles imposed by the act is to "interfere with optimal beneficial uses of radioactive materials in medicine, research and technology." They go on to recommend either amendment, or replacement of the act to allow existing facilities and commercial development of new sites.
In the January 2000 issue of Nuclear News [7], Jack Lemley, chairman, president and chief executive officer of American Ecology that operates the commercial low-level waste disposal site in Hanford for the Northwest Compact and a waste minimization facility in Oak Ridge Tennessee, called for the repeal of the Low-Level Waste Policy Act since it has not worked. In the Nuclear News interview, he points out that his company also operates hazardous waste facilities which are also difficult to site. Some 20 years ago both the low-level waste and the hazardous waste facilities were in the same condition - nobody seemed to want them in their backyards. In the hazardous waste area, the role of the government was as a regulator of public health and safety. In the nuclear waste disposal area, the government passed on law on "how the system should work". The results are clear. In the 20 years since the act was passed private industry was able to site more than a dozen hazardous waste facilities and no low-level radioactive disposal facilities. There is no more graphic example of what can happen when the commercial industry has an economic incentive to solve a problem. Mr. Lemley believes the best way to get sites open is to let the commercial industry compete and work the political and public acceptance process. The incentive is clear. He wants to make it a business and he thinks he can do it.
If the act were repealed and the monopolies broken, some speculate that Washington would close its site permanently to avoid out of state wastes from coming in. Even if the act was not repealed, South Carolina will end up closed for most of rest of the nation in two years anyway by all accounts. So what are we left with? Crisis and chaos which is inevitable in this case with or without the legislation. Both the 1980 act and the 1985 amendments were the result of an impending crisis, the closure or threatened closure of Barnwell, Hanford and Nevada. We are approaching that same crisis point with some action likely to happen in Congress. The only question is what action can do the most good. With crisis comes opportunity. This opportunity and the ability to make money is the secret of our economy. By letting the commercial process, unencumbered by legislation that has demonstrably failed, a site can be developed with political support. The more companies that participate in the competition, the better.
Utilities are planning for the closing of low level waste sites. The shock will not be that great even if Barnwell and Hanford close. The original equity argument still has not be addressed. The pressure that Washington State and the Northwest compact hoped to exert on states by not allowing out of state wastes into their compact was to create the crisis that never happened when Barnwell re-opened to all states. This strategy of Washington also failed since equity has not happened. They should support repeal of failed legislation and allow the market to work its magic. Legislation is the art of compromise. I am sure legislation can be written to protect the Northwest Compact by keeping waste from out-of-compact states out, if that is what it takes. The same can be done with South Carolina to allow for an orderly transition to site replacements for these two facilities at site that are willing, and safely able to dispose of low level waste economically.
What concerns me is that we may be lucky again as we were with Barnwell's reopening. Let us assume that in two years Barnwell closes to out-of-state wastes. Let us also assume that Envirocare obtains a full range of low-level waste disposal categories in two years. Problem solved right? No need for action? What about Envirocare holding what some may consider monopoly power being able to charge what the traffic may bear? What about the state of Utah saying we have had enough or imposing surcharges like South Carolina? No more dumping ground for the nation? What if Utah decides not to grant Envirocare the full range license? Problem solved or problem delayed again.
So what should we do? At this point, the American Nuclear Society has not taken a position on this matter but we will be reviewing all options and become active on this very important issue to all our members in the scientific research and power production sectors. Once a policy statement is issued it will be forwarded to our Washington office for distribution as an information resource for the public.
In my opinion, the most important first step is the repeal of the failed Low--Level Waste Policy Act while protecting Washington state and South Carolina by allowing them to phase out of their operations if they so desire. Second, the NRC must expeditiously pass a clearance rule to allow for safe recycling of materials to reduce of volumes of materials that do not require long term isolation and third, the Greater than Class C waste definition should be resolved so that DOE can begin incorporating GTCC in the design and licensing of Yucca Mountain. There are undoubtedly many more issues that need to be addressed such as the mixed waste question, incineration as a viable waste volume reduction technique to mention just two.
The American Nuclear Society is an available technical resource for you as you seek resolution of this important matter for the benefit of scientific research, medical diagnostics and therapy and energy production. My expectation is that we will be making our recommendations known on many of these points to develop a responsible low-level waste policy for this nation.
It's time to open the market and let real competition begin.
Thank you
Andrew C. Kadak
References:
- Public Law 96-573, Low-Level Waste Policy Act of 1980.
- Public Law 99-240, Low-Level Waste Policy Act Amendments of 1985
- Holmes Brown, National Governor's Association, "The Low-Level Waste Handbook", November, 1986.
- "Report of the South Carolina Nuclear Waste Task Force", December 15, 1999.
- General Accounting Office, "Low-Level Radioactive Wastes - States Are Not Developing Disposal Facilities", September 1999.
- Health Physics Society, "Low-Level Radioactive Waste - Position Statement of the Health Physics Society", Adopted October 1993, updated July 1999.
- Nuclear News, "Lemley: Speaking out on Low-Level Waste Disposal", Interview, January 2000, pp 41-47.
