NUCLEAR GUARDIANSHIP FORUM, On The Responsible Care of Radioactive Materials
Issue # 3, Spring 1994, pp. 1, 6.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
U.S. Nuclear Waste Program in Crisis
Interview With Arjun Makhijan
Arjun Makhijani is president of the Institute For Energy and
Environmental Research, Takoma Park, Maryland
by Francis Macy
You have long watched American policy and practice with regard to
radioactive waste. What is the most critical problem we are facing
right now?
Well, I think there are two different areas of critical problems.
One is the problem of military high level waste stored mainly in
tanks in Hanford, Washington, Idaho National Laboratory, and
Savannah River. There is some risk that waste contained in several
dozen tanks could catch fire or explode so there is a real
environmental health danger.
Already some are leaking at Hanford.
True, there are over 60 tanks leaking, 66 and more tanks are
identified as potential leakers. Of these tanks, many have
actually leaked more than three quarters of a million gallons of
radioactive waste into the soil.
Has this endangered the water table?
Yes, there are radioactive materials in the water. However, part
of the characteristics of these cracks in the tanks is that salts
tend to get deposited around them so the leaks tend to be
self-sealing. By the same token, if you try to empty the tanks by
washing them out you're going to risk washing out the seals. --
This is a major challenge at Hanford: how are we going to empty
these tanks?
What is the second problem area?
The second is primarily an institutional problem and it is central
because all of the technical issues around disposal of radioactive
waste cannot be resolved until the institutional issues are
resolved. The Department of Energy has historically approached the
disposal of high level waste for the long term as a matter of
political expediency rather than scientific integrity. The whole
process which led up to the selection of Yucca Mountain as a
permanent geologic disposal site is simply unbelievably weak. It
was not a process in which scientific integrity and democracy and
public participation were paramount.
You see that as an institutional problem more than a policy
problem?
Historically the Department of Energy has been devoted to the
production of nuclear weapons and the promotion of nuclear power.
One of the main roadblocks to nuclear power is the apparent lack
of any long term solution to nuclear waste disposal. So nuclear
utilities and nuclear power plant vendors and their supporters in
the Department of Energy want to see a repository opened.
Actually, I think many nuclear utilities don't want nuclear power
plants.
They have not ordered any for 13-14 years.
But they do want to get rid of existing waste.
------------------------------------
The American government has become
a machine for the conversion of
public assets into private profits,
and a big machine for the conversion
of private liabilities
into public liabilities.
------------------------------------
Unfortunately, the American government has become a machine for
the conversion of public assets into private profits, and a big
machine for the conversion of private liabilities into public
liabilities. The problem of nuclear waste is a very good
illustration of the second feature. The government has agreed to
take the nuclear waste of private American utilities and convert
it into government waste to be handled at public expense.
Secretary of Energy, Hazel O'Leary said she is concerned about the
commitment the U. S. Government made to utilities with nuclear
power plants to relieve them of responsibility for their highly
radioactive used fuel rods by 1998. Yet the DOE has no disposal
site, medium or long term.
The Department made commitments under the 1982 Nuclear Waste
Policy Act to have two repositories with scientific integrity. And
it has not met these commitments. Instead, it has lobbied
unsuccessfully for legislation to abandon these commitments for
political expediency. To evaluate sites it has set up scoring
systems that are transparently political and without scientific
merit. It has failed to use technical literature which it, itself
commissioned from the National Academy of Sciences. It has failed
to respond with any serious integrity to public concerns. All
these things are public commitments which the department has
repeatedly made, and has repeatedly failed to implement.
------------------------------------
We often say that the DOE
has created a new Murphy's Law
for high level waste disposal.
------------------------------------
So the question does arise, which commitments will this Department
take more seriously? Is it going to take a commitment to the
public and to the people of this country more seriously, a
commitment to democracy and scientific integrity and environmental
protection, and to finding the best possible site? Or is it going
to take more seriously a dubious commitment made in haste to take
away the utilities' nuclear waste?
You see this as an institutional question.
Yes, here is an example. The Department made some commitments to
environmental protection. And yet the depository investigation of
Yucca Mountain in Nevada proceeded even when it looked like the
environmental standards that had been promulgated by EPA would not
be met by Yucca Mountain in relation to specific radionuclides,
such as Carbon-14. These standards could be easily met by many
other repository sites. The Department and its supporters in
Congress moved to have special standards developed for Yucca
Mountain. So we have a double standard for disposal of highly
radioactive waste: one set of standards being developed by the
National Academy of Sciences which would apply only to Yucca
Mountain, and another set of standards which would apply to all
other sites. Such are the Department's commitments to the public
and to future generations.
Does the Department have a conflict of interest as weapons
producer and manager of nuclear waste?
Yes. Our Institute published a book [High-Level Dollars, Low-Level
Sense: A Critique of Present Policy for the Management of
Long-Lived Radioactive Waste and Discussion of an Alternative
Approach, by Arjun Makhijani and Scott Saleska] on nuclear waste
in which we proposed that the Department of Energy should no
longer be in charge of waste and long term waste disposal. We
advocate that a new institution without this conflict of interest
should be put in place.
Outside of DOE?
Yes. I think it has to be a new structure that is more responsive
to considerations of democracy and science and environmental
protection. The structure should be a matter of considerable
debate. A Blue Ribbon Commission to look into all of the
radioactive waste issues should be formed at the presidential
level. [see Fresh Start Advocated, below]
Would you say that the U.S. has a real public policy on waste
management now?
Well, we don't have a public policy on waste management. We have
got a lot of attempts to do something. Almost all of which are
failing. In sum, the whole waste management system is in crisis.
The low level waste system is breaking down. The high level waste
disposal system deadlines are being repeatedly postponed.
------------------------------------
The DOE should
no longer be in charge
of nuclear waste.
------------------------------------
We often say that the DOE has created a new Murphy's Law for high
level waste disposal. The more money is spent to open a
repository, the farther away from a repository we get.
Does your new Murphy's Law also apply to the so-called clean up of
radioactive contamination at DOE nuclear production sites?
We have spent a lot of money on clean-up and have very little to
show for it. I'm afraid most of the cleanup is being regarded as a
quick cash contract job for private companies. A lot of money has
been wasted. Yet some progress has been made. For instance some of
the problems with the Hanford liquid waste tanks have been
improved. Some progress has been made in stopping some very bad
things from happening.
Have satisfactory ways been found to stabilize liquid waste in
tanks which you called our greatest danger?
Vitrification is a proven commercial technology, the glass
produced in vitrifying radioactive waste is essentially the same
as Pyrex. But there are problems when we combine radioactive
materials with molten glass. Radioactive waste has been
neutralized with sodium hydroxide, or lye, and this has separated
the waste into many different layers which are very difficult to
manage physically. At the bottom of tanks there is a sludge area
which contains most of the radioactivity which is very hot. It is
a very inhomogeneous waste. We are generating explosive gases and
flammable gases, and all these things are very difficult to handle
in the processing.
Do you feel as an alternative to vitrification that it is useful
to mix liquid waste with cement, as Dr. Rustom Roy proposed in an
interview published in the second issue of Nuclear Guardianship
Forum?
I think large quantities of radioactive material with organics and
nitrates is a very bad idea in cement mixtures. The cements will
not set in a regular way, and if anything goes wrong, it will be
practically impossible to undue the damage. And in all these areas
there are everyday engineering principles which have never been
spelled out.
Is there another approach?
For many years I thought that photo fission of transuranic waste
had potential by knocking out neutrons from long lived fission
products, using protons in certain energy regions. However --
Is that what's called transmutation, which we examined in the
first issue of the Nuclear Guardianship Forum?
Yes. But I am discussing a transmutation with a very particular
technology, not what is being advocated in Los Alamos which you
mentioned. They propose to add neutrons and have many of the same
old problems. The amounts of energy that are required are huge.
The amounts of chemical processing that are required are gigantic.
And the waste that will be created from that process will be
tremendous. In the end it is not clear what will have been solved.
A lot of radioactive waste problems will remain in any case.
What do you propose as the most responsible approach to waste
management today?
I have been able to identify no good approach to getting rid of
the highly radioactive waste which contains long-lived materials.
We should have on site storage of radioactive waste from 50 to 100
years. We should give ourselves the time to study these issues
carefully.
We should build institutions and staff them with people who are
committed to environmental protection, who know what excellence in
science means, and who know what democracy and public
participation mean. I think the question of geologic repository
disposal must be kept open because it is one of the options that
is least bad.
------------------------------------
We should have
on-site storage
of radioactive waste
from 50 to 100 years.
------------------------------------
Some research on seabed disposal should also be done. It is not
that I advocate seabed disposal, but again it might be a method of
dealing with these things which is less horrible than other
methods.
The most important two things that need to be done, which I have
not mentioned, are: first, management of medical wastes should be
separated from the controversial wastes from production of nuclear
power and nuclear weapons. [see Medical Waste, page 12]
------------------------------------
We must stop the production
of radioactivity...
We have no need
to produce more waste.
------------------------------------
Secondly, we must stop the production of radioactivity from
nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons production. We have no
need to produce more waste. I recognize that we can't switch off
all nuclear power plants overnight, but we must have an energy
plan which includes the dramatic reduction of fossil fuel use,
certainly more than 50 percent, and the gradual elimination of
nuclear power by phasing out the existing power plants.
Because of the unsolvable waste problems?
That is one of the reasons. The other is that however small the
probability, nuclear power plants are prone to catastrophic
accidents, although the risk in some countries is smaller than in
others. However, the consequences of these accidents are so bad
even in the United States as to be unacceptable to me.
Thank you very much.
------------------------------------------------------------------
High-Level Dollars, Low-Level Sense: A Critique of Present Policy
for the Management of Long-Lived Radioactive Waste and Discussion
of an Alternative Approach, by Arjun Makhijani and Scott
Saleska,Apex Press, New York,1992, is available from the Institute
for Energy and Environmental Research, 6935 Laurel Avenue, Takoma
Park, MD 20912, USA. tel: 301-270-5500, fax: 301-270-3029.
Francis Macy is a founding member of the Nuclear Guardianship
Project. As Senior Advisor of the Environmental Program, Center
for Citizen Initiatives, he is facilitating collaboration between
activist groups at Russian and U.S. weapons complexes.
* The Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Where Science and
Democracy Meet
The IEER site is loaded with essential reading materials! including:
o The Nuclear Power Deception, U.S. Nuclear Mythology from
Electricity "Too Cheap to Meter" to "Inherently Safe" Reactors
including (among others) sections on
+ Basics of Nuclear Physics and Fission
+ Uranium: Its Uses and Hazards
+ Basic Characteristics of Reactor Types
o Science for Democratic Action, IEER Newsletter
o Physical, Nuclear, and Chemical, Properties of Plutonium
o Incineration of Radioactive and Mixed Waste
o Classifications of Radioactive Waste
o The Nuclear Safety Smokescreen, Warhead Safety and Reliability and
the Science Based Stockpile Stewardship Program
o Tritium: The environmental, health, budgetary, and strategic
effects of the Department of Energy's decision to produce tritium
o Risky Relapse into Reprocessing: Environmental and
Non-Proliferation Consequences of the Department of Energy's Spent
Fuel Management Program
o Fissile Materials in a Glass, Darkly: Technical and Policy Aspects
of the Disposition of Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium