Focus 580; Low Level Nuclear Waste Issues

Well good morning and welcome to focus 580 This is our morning talk program. My name is David inch. Glad to have you with us this morning. In the first hour of the program today we'll be looking at some issues involving low level nuclear waste. Now when people talk about nuclear waste as I said before the news I think most of the time the conversation has focused on high level nuclear waste. This is the material spent fuel that comes from nuclear power plants that generate electricity. The federal government now has been engaged in a long effort to set up a site to store high level waste. The place has developed. It's in Nevada although continues to be very controversial. People in Nevada don't want it. And there are still some scientists to raise questions about whether or not that is a good site. But there is also other kinds of waste that is not as radioactive. However it's still hazardous and it also has to be stored appropriately. Back in 1980 but Congress said to the states you States need to figure out how you're going to deal with this and suggested that they could get

together and form regional compacts and then among those compacts decide on some place in one of those states to develop their own site to store that waste. This was in 1980 and to date I'm a little uncertain I think actually my guest informed me here that I was a little bit wrong I thought there were no new sites. I think maybe there might be one. But the fact of the matter is that the states really haven't done what Congress had asked them to do back in 1980 despite spending a very significant amount of money. It's estimated that something like 100 million dollars has been spent by states in the effort to develop these new sites. We also did that here in the state of Illinois although it's been out of the news for some time now. You may recall that there was an effort to set up a site in Clark County in a place called Martinsville and then a little bit more recently although we're talking about. Several years ago there also was another site selected in McLean County. It's the state some years back put the

whole effort on hold but this whole thing has not gone away certainly and we're going to try to catch up on all of this this morning in this part of focus 580 our guest where the program is Clark Boulevard. He is professor emeritus of mechanical and industrial engineering at the University of Illinois here in Urbana champagne. I will not read you his entire beta. However I do want to mention that in addition to the teaching and working on mechanical industrial engineering he spent a time as the director of the Office of Energy Research and has been a faculty affiliate in the nuclear engineering department he also for a number of years served in the central Midwest low level radioactive waste commission as commissioner and also as chair. And as we talk this morning questions are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Those are the numbers to call with questions. Well thanks very much for being here. It's a pleasure being here appreciate it. To begin maybe one of the most basic sorts of things that people ought to know

is low level waste. What is it. Well most of it comes from nuclear power plants. About 90 percent of that generated in Illinois. It is everything from booties and gloves to the kind of radioactive sludge that accumulates on the inside of plumbing pipes in a nuclear power plant that sludge inside the pipes can become radioactive and then has to be removed and disposed of. So there are irradiated parts pieces of metal all kinds of waste things that you want to put that you want to get rid of. That is no longer economically useful. Now the other waste comes from a medical establishment university research labs industries in Illinois like formerly allied now

Honeywell in southern Illinois. Engaged in part of the process of producing nuclear fuel. And another site up in Morris Illinois had an old General Electric facility that's involved in a lot of high level waste transportation storage. And they generate low level waste as well. So that's a little bit on what it is and where it comes from. Maybe then next I might ask you and I give a very very quick gloss and I hope that that was I didn't skate over the facts to too seriously but to go back and talk about what it was that the Congress said to the States back in 1980 about setting up their own facilities to store this material. Yes. In 1980 the Congress gave the states the authority to keep

other people's waste out of their state. They gave them a mechanism called an interstate compact. We have interstate compacts dealing with. Management of rivers that divide state lines and these sorts of things. They're just a contract an agreement between states where the states signed this agreement and it's ratified by their state legislatures and by Congress. And basically it's a way in this instance and radioactive waste as a way to get around the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution because what happened back in the 1950s when we started President Eisenhower started the Atoms for Peace program. All of the radioactive waste disposal sites in the country about a dozen of them were military sites. And some of it was dumped at sea by about 1960 it was clear that the civilian industry was coming on

stream and ocean dumping was no longer allowed. So six commercial facilities were built around the nation including one in Sheffield Illinois and another in Maxey flats Kentucky. So all six of those facilities then started having problems in the 60s. Several were shut down like the one in Sheffield as it started leaking the one in Maxey flats Kentucky was shut down because it started leaking. Then in the 70s at one point a truck showed up burning caught on fire at one of the other facilities in Nevada and that was closed temporarily and this was I believe right around the time of Three Mile Island in the late 70s. And then there was a lot of discussion about where all that Three Mile Island waste was going to go. And the governor of South Carolina actually resorted to calling out the National Guard to try to stop

trucks at the state line that were headed for the Barnwell South Carolina disposal site because that state legislature had passed a law saying that they were not going to accept anything over a certain amount of waste each year. So that was created a constitutional crisis where the. Where a state wanted to impede interstate commerce it was unconstitutional. They could not do it. So Congress passed gave the states the authority to go into these interstate compacts Illinois was about to join the Midwest compact of about eight or ten states. But since we were the largest generator because we had the most nuclear power plants it became obvious that we were the ones who were going to get the site. So before the Illinois legislature ratified it they amended it to say no shallow land burial which is the technology used at all the sites earlier that had

problems. And the other states wouldn't buy that. That left Illinois alone. So we decided to do it our way. We formed a compact with Kentucky that has no nuclear power plants just a few medical and academic and industrial facilities. They produce very little waste. We agreed at the outset that Illinois would be the host state but Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety would be able to define the rules as to what kind of monitored retrievable storage and disposal facility would be built. So we could have. Tougher standards that way. So that's how we got there. And all of the other compact regions did too. And there were deadlines and surcharges all the way through the late 1980s and the deadlines slipped and the states. Like Illinois tried to cite facilities for a variety of reasons they failed.

Illinois spent 80 million dollars alone on the Martinsville site characterization and facility development. And then what happened in the late 1990s. The Supreme Court declared part of that 1980 law unconstitutional. There was a provision in there that the utilities wanted the utilities who generate most of the waste they wanted to make radioactive waste a government problem. Used to be a commercial site problem regulated by the Feds in the 1960s and 70s that failed. They wanted to hand the problem over to the states. So there was a provision in there that if the states did not develop their own disposal facilities in each compact region then the states would have to take title to all of the waste. And that was judged unconstitutional in the late 90s. So now

the teeth are gone out of that system. And this the the and now we're in more like a market oriented system. Barnwell South Carolina site is still accepting waste from outside its compact region and a new site was developed in the desert of Utah west of Salt Lake City. The Utah site has permission from the northwest compact to accept very low level waste. High volume low level class a waste from outside the compact region and it has about 20 years left of storage has capability. The Barnwell site however has only has a legislative deadline. The South Carolina legislature says we're going to phase it out starting now and not accept any out-of region waste by 2008. So now that puts states like

Illinois and really the utility industry and the other generators of radioactive waste that puts them. That puts the responsibility back on them. So just so one of the sort of the wrap that up right now if you ask what's happening to the stuff some is going continues to go to Barnwell although they're coming it's coming to the end of its life. That's right. There's a site in Utah that excepts the the lowest level of the low level waste. And I think also that now this may not be true today but I think that I read that some one was going to Hanford in Washington state that's only waste that is generated within the Northwest compact States. There's 11 states in the northwest. Yes. How is that and I think also that that some of the generators and I guess the only ones who really would be in a position to do this would be the nuclear power plants are storing onsite some low level waste

just just as they are storing onsite there high level waste. Some generators the University of Illinois is a terrific example who deal with only radio isotopes that are very short lived. They are storing onsite and if you store it for 10 half lives you know 6 10 years 20 years. The radioactive activity decays to background levels so some of the lowest level waste is being handled that way by onsite storage in hospitals and places like that. However it's not the price of disposal at these two sites that are open has been increasing steadily and I don't think anyone wants to get caught with a lot of waste when Barnwell closes or if there's some kind of an accident or shutdown. The Utah site well let me reintroduce our guest for this part of focus 580 We're talking with Clark Ballard. He is emeritus professor in mechanical

and industrial engineering at the University of Illinois and among the things served on the central Midwest low level radioactive waste commission. He was Commissioner for a number of years this was in the mid from 1984 until 1998 and also spent a time as a chair. It's an issue that he has been involved with in the past and he came in this morning admitted he'd kind of been out of it for a while so he really had to spend a lot of time brushing up. And I appreciate his putting in the effort in being here this morning so that we could talk about him dealing with low level nuclear waste 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. So just before we get back to you I want then to to again take a few steps back and talk a little bit about what happened here in the state of Illinois. But just recently I came across a story where some members of Congress were apparently talking about the fact that they felt that Nel seeing the way things have gone and the fact that states have not developed their own sites as the intention

was that perhaps the federal government is going to have to think about setting up a federal site to take a lot of waste as they are setting up this federal site to take the high level waste because the states haven't done it. Do you think that that's the way that things are going to go. No I don't believe so. I believe that the General Accounting Office which serves both the House of Representatives and the Senate came out with a report last summer where they laid out the state of the situation there is another site under construction in Texas and may turn out to be accepting waste from outside of that compact. So it's a wait and see proposition right now. The physical size of the storage facilities available or disposal facilities at Barnwell are limited and they're only taking the highest level of the low level

waste the most radioactive part. But from a place like Illinois that's just a couple of roomfuls per year. So even if Barnwell closes for good or shuts out out-of region generators they threaten to in the past in the state as always. Wanted to make a little more money they've just added up the prize because they know they're it's not a state site but there are surcharges that go to the South Carolina state budget. And you know the price of disposal has gone from a couple of dollars a cubic foot up to six hundred dollars a cubic foot. So it's not you know it's on the books but it's been on the books before in South Carolina. So there is this wait and see approach. And since the volumes of the waste going to South Carolina are so small anyway it would be possible for many utilities and hospitals if not all to just store on site for a while or for Illinois to develop a temporary storage

facility. But the 90 percent of our waste volume goes to enviro care and Utah and that's the situation with most other states. So they had a say they have 20 years left so there's really not a lot of urgency right now. What you may be hearing about in Congress is serious concern over what's called greater than Class C waste. There is high level waste which is the spent fuel and that's what the Nevada Yucca Mountain site is all about. There's low level waste which is class A B and C depending on how radioactive it is. But then there is something called greater than Class C waste which is too radioactive for a low level waste. And there are basically the states are not responsible for it. And the federal government has no facility but the Department of Energy has recently been directed to develop one really fast because that's

the type of material that could end up in a dirty bomb. And since 9/11 it's mostly sealed sources that are at construction facilities medical facilities the type in the instruments that are used to determine soil moisture at construction sites for example. There's a quarter to a half a million of those around. And the federal government has had a high priority on trying to find them. They're not as well regulated as other types of waste or not as well tracked. They've recovered about 10000 out of the quarter to half million that are no longer wanted. Some of those are being stored at Los Alamos on an emergency basis because there is no federal long term disposal facility. And others the people who have them now are being asked to keep them until a disposal facility is available. So the Congress is dealing with issues related to that.

We have a caller here so why don't we bring them into the conversation and then then just in a moment here what I'll do is ask Professor Bullard to give us a look again sort of a thumbnail sketch of the effort to find a site for storage here in the state of Illinois. Color here is in the combine already calling from a party calling from a combine I was the combine was a place line number one go ahead. Oh no. Yes. Wow thank you for taking my call Sure. Thank you. Yes you might have answered this question. Yes. OK. What form is the waste in is it solid or liquid and I'm a bit rusty I didn't have a handle on this at one time in my life but is it possible to re fertilize that spent fuel in say a breeder reactor and make it viable again. Thank you for your time and I'll hang up and listen thank you all right. Well thanks for the call. Well those are really two different sorts of questions. Maybe

we did talk a little bit about this at the beginning but again for the benefit of anybody who might have tuned in late when we talk about this this low level waste. What what it what is it what's the nature of the material that we're talking about. Most of it is solid can be paper cloth mops pieces of metal sludge out of the inside of pipes. Sometimes that sludge is mixed with key lading agents which try to dissolve the sludge and that makes it difficult to handle at a burial site because it likes to head for water. So there's chemical stabilization that goes on after that. In many cases. So and some of it is liquid mixed with oil and can be burned it even places like Abbott power plant. So that's that's what low level waste form is. High level waste is spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors.

And I think what the gentleman was referring to is something called reprocessing those fuel rods can be reprocessed into plutonium which can either be used for bombs or it can be used for breeder reactors like they do in France to fuel other reactors and to make to make a power out of that. So that. Whole reprocessing issue and its weapons implications and security implications is really part of the high level waste debate not the low level. So if the caller wouldn't would mind if we leave that that's kind of another show we thought we would really want to concentrate here on that the low level waste issue and again other people have questions. You are certainly welcome to call 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Well to get back here to talk a bit about what's happened in Illinois and to get sort of to review as you explained what happened was essentially in 1980 Congress said to the states you States are going to have to get together and figure

out what you're going to do with this stuff and suggested that what the states could do was form associations of neighboring states. And so 10 I believe there are 10 compacts that formed different regions the states sort of got together and said OK well we'll deal with our stuff. And in Illinois because we had more nuclear power plants than anybody else. As you explained if we had gone together with any states around Illinois we had to know we were going to end up being the storage site. There was some controversy about the nature of the site so it stayed on and I said fine we'll just go and we'll form our own compact with form a compact with Kentucky because Kentucky Jen doesn't generate very much waste so it wouldn't we wouldn't be importing much of mostly it would be what we've got here. So there was a long and very expensive first pass on this and they ended up with a site in Clark County a place called Martinsville and then after again a long process of hearings that we covered here my colleague Celeste Quinn spent an awful lot of time

covering this story and then covered them. The meetings there was a commission put together they looked at all of the information about the site. And ultimately after all of that decided that the Martinsville site was unsuitable. So there and at that point then they kind of had to start all again maybe just you want to talk just a little bit about that but the first pass through. Yes it started. With good intentions the state of the compact commission designated Illinois gave them the responsibility for developing the facility. The state wanted to try a voluntary process where it did characterized some sites all over the state the geology and other factors. And then 17 counties were responding with requests for more information. What do we do to take the next step. Because

the idea was to negotiate at the end as to what benefits and what risks the counties would would assume. And. Some county started asking how much are the benefits and won. In a moment of weakness I think our state director of nuclear safety said you could levy surcharges up to a million dollars a year and within a week I think we had instead of 17 counties we had two. And they thought that that was not enough to compensate them for the risks that they perceived. So when it was down to two there were referenda in those counties Wayne County rejected it. Clark County by a 56 no Martinsville had an advisory and referendum that was 56 percent in favor. Clark County at large was.

Twenty six percent in favor but the site was within a mile and a half of Martinsville so they proceeded. And then there were many news stories and allegations. In fact one state agency the Geologic Survey here. Had some of its reports edited and altered by the Department of Nuclear safety consultants and they objected to that publicly. And the director of nuclear safety was forced to resign and a three person citing commission was set up chaired by a Supreme Court justice. A University of Illinois civil engineering professor and a. Carolyn Raffensperger who was the head of the Illinois chapter of the Sierra Club. And that three person commission heard testimony for almost a year and finally decided that the site was unsuitable. But our

compact commission was really on the outside of that hearing because we were finished theoretically once we handed the problem over to Illinois and designated Illinois. But we decided that in order to make these hearings fair and even before any hearings we wanted to give counties enough money to hire their own independent consultants. So we gave some very large grants during those hearings. Almost three quarters of a million dollars too. The League of Women Voters who then accepted proposals from pro and anti groups in Martinsville and any group who felt their views were under represented or under represented and didn't have the money to hire attorneys I mean these were like chamber of commerce type groups who wanted to argue that this would be an economic development opportunity for the town but they didn't have the money to hire expert

witnesses and lawyers. So it went to both sides. And after the hearing the Supreme Court justice after a year almost a year of hearings he said if we hadn't funded those intervenor groups to put contrary evidence on the table those hearings probably would have been over in a week. And the bottom line was that the. Site was not suitable because they were concerned about the site leaking radioactive material into the ground water and possible routes over the surface. Before it was detected could get to surface water supplies in Martinsville area. So then just have a couple callers I want to get to but but real quick just to go on to the next spot and as I understand it what happened after the first round when the idea was to make this process voluntary. That is to let communities look at the pros and

cons and then if some of them decided that it would be their in their to their advantage to to host the site. And of course that the site was suitable geologically and in every other respect then you could go along and consider that site next time around. The thinking was well maybe what should happen is we should have the surveys look at the whole state. Do the characterization end up with a number of places that they considered suitable. And that then three of those would be selected and ultimately it would be up to the company that was going to build and operate the site to choose the site. Is that correct. I believe that's what's on paper now but it's almost moot. I mean this was a late 90s plan more recently I think within the last year or maybe two. The State Department of Nuclear Safety had to produce a report for the

legislature as to where we were and basically they looked at the 20 years of capacity had enviro care another site possibly coming on in Texas. All of this were saying that we have time we can just wait. And after that a new Illinois process was started in the mid 90s was when the Supreme Court declared the take title provision unconstitutional. So really it's less of a problem for the state right now and more of a problem for the generators of the waste which some people think that's where the problem should lie not on the public public. Could be focused primarily on safety regulation of a private disposal enterprise something we failed to do in the 60s. Well just to just again to you know what when I went out looking for material to try to bone up on the subject as well. I discovered that there was really very in the public realm there was really not very much available

and the last story specific story that I could find mentioning what was going on here on Ellen in Illinois I think was from 2000 which at that time the state was saying essentially what you have just said given the fact that it's been very difficult to find the appropriate site and also given the fact according to the people speaking for the state that they sort of said well there's really not that much. And there are other places that we can take it so for the moment we just don't think it's all that important for us to can to keep. You know bang your head against the proverbial wall. And they said well for the moment we'll just put this process on hold it's not like it's been closed down. It's just we don't need to do this right now. Sometime in the future we will. But for now we can go on and worry about other things. I guess my question ultimately is how long can you maintain a position like that that says well we really don't need to worry about this today. Sometime in the future we will but but not now we know this

sometime in the future can catch up with us pretty quick. I think it can but that's the bureaucratically optimal solution. And that's. And it really is a message to the utilities and other generators to have some contingency plans for onsite storage if the Barnwell option is closed off. And at that point the state might just reopen a siting process for a temporary storage facility. I mean by temporary 10 20 years to see how things shake out just so the waste doesn't pile up at hospitals and power plants and universities. And a lot of power plants are not located in a place where long term storage would be appropriate because they're all located near water for cooling. So I think we are in a reasonable position of waiting. But I believe one virtue and one benefit of our American

system of government is that one Congress cannot bind the next. So frankly I think when a new when the need arises again whether it's in the next couple of years because Barnwell closes or something else happens. We'll start with a clean slate. We have this flexibility and the United States to do that. We might go back to the mid 90s plan that's on the books that lays out a detailed process for how the contractor is going to recommend a site to the Department of Nuclear Safety and then director of the department will say this one yes or no. But we don't really know how that's going to unfold. All right well we have several callers have been very patient let me again just very quickly introduce our guest. Clark Bullard he is professor emeritus of mechanical and industrial engineering at University of Illinois and we're talking about low level nuclear waste and questions are welcome. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. That's for champagne Urbana toll free

800 to 2 2 9 4 5 1 2 the phones here and Urbana is next in line number one. Hello good morning. About 20 years ago or so I had a summer job with the water resource the water resource division at the U.S. Geological Survey here and one of my jobs was to go with people up there to collect water at both Sheffield and an argon lamp. I help help help the fellow with a Harvard and we collect water samples and I do remember from that you know the guys there at the lab would test them and they'd find. Traces of the Terran human tritium and I was I remember especially at Argonne thing like they were detecting things just miles away from the source and some kind of wondering are they. Is that still the methodology that's used to detect how a low level storage site is. Containing itself and

also what is the understanding of how these sites can be contained. If they can be. The old shallow land burial sites like Sheffield. Do present. A really tough problem because the water once it migrates off the site and keeps on going. There are huge quantities of soil underground that are contaminated and a judgment has to be made as to whether you go in and start digging or whether you just let the material move on and hope it decays to safe levels before it reaches any drinking water supply either on the surface or underground water. That's basically the approach that has been taken. At Sheffield as far as I understand it there was a settlement with the company who was. Responsible who developed and operated the site called us

ecology there was a settlement with them back I believe in the late 80s. So there was some money changed hands and it became the state's problem. So are there any of these sites containing there are radioactive matter or do they all leak the sites that have been closed to like. You know like the shadow land burial sites that were closed like West Valley New York Sheffield Maxie plats flats Kentucky and even BARNWELL I think has had leaks in the past and each all of the leaks are dealt with in the way that I described. They try to catch it. And if its not headed for a water supply and it looks like its going to decay before it gets there they can just let it go. Now the new sites like the one in Martinsville that was designed but never built. We insisted at the beginning that those be.

The waste be put in containers and then the containers be put in bunkers above ground. With. Ability to identify leaks and ability to retrieve the waste when a leak is found. That's the most new. Disposal sites under development in the United States except the one is in Texas and Utah are of that type. The ones in Texas and Utah are being sited in areas that are high and dry. And the and therefore with much less concrete and containers around them. Still more than the old days when 55 gallon drums were just rolled off a truck into a trench. But there are still better container ization today but in some of these desert sites the health authorities have

decided that it's not necessary to go to the extent that we were ready to go to an Martin's will. OK thank you. All right to go to band of this would be line number two. Hello Clark really really appreciate your years of service. The public both at the university and in government and I see this low level wasteful disposal as a subset of a much bigger waste problem in the United States. You know we were using resources at a phenomenal rate in this leads to a radioactive contamination. CO2 generation as in global warming. Boron contamination there were versions like it happened over the power plant. Illinois Power Plant in the Middle Fork of the Vermillion. And you could truly say we're in a fluent society why hasn't the government really sort of abandoned the notion that conservation is going back to the source

and trying to reduce the problems the waste disposal all the way up the line. A low level again radioactive waste being just a subset of a much bigger problem. Nation of disposing of trade and all sorts of toxic. You want to address that. I guess they have the approach that theoretically both Republican and Democratic administrations profess to advocate is that if we regulate waste disposal whether it's radioactive or municipal garbage if we re regulate those disposal facilities and make sure they're safe make sure they don't they're built so that they won't leak and that something can be done if a leak is spotted and they're monitored for many years in the case of low level radioactive waste. It can be hazardous for three to five hundred years. So when you're. So what

happens is that the Martinsville facility. And Barnwell today is charging $600 a cubic foot for disposal. Well not surprisingly we're only getting about 20 percent of the cubic feet that we used to get when it was a few dollars a cubic foot so that produced a lot of conservation all the way back up the line. People are using in research labs here at the university. We're using nine radioactive tracers where we used to use radioactive tracers. Hospitals and other facilities are being much more careful with their radioactive material and power plants are so that they don't contaminate something that is not initially radioactive by mixing it with radioactive contaminated material. So the idea is that if waste disposal gets clean enough and is properly regulated the price will go up and less waste will be generated. More

things will be recycled reused and. Yeah. They idea of trying to put limits environmental limits on waste and pollution is intended to send price signals back to the people who are generating it and that's the whole approach being taken in Kyoto you mention the carbon dioxide global warming the global treaty there is to place caps on each nation's CO2 emissions. And once those caps are there the price of energy will go up and people will start buying more efficient vehicles etc. but the problem here clearly is that the U.S. has one of the few countries in the world that didn't ratify the Kyoto agreement and apparently is hell bent on continuing to use you know resources in general petroleum being one of them. It's sort of a thoughtless level. Leaving

future generations in the lurch and. Well that's true with any environmental regulation whether it's global like the one you're talking about or whether it's radioactive waste. We're talking about here some states and regions can decide they want to take more risks than others. And if Utah and Texas decide that shallow land burial albeit with better containers than 55 gallon drums and wooden boxes is an acceptable risk for them. And there are other generations that follow them. There's not a whole lot that the federal government has been willing to do to set in any kind of view that as a local state responsibility. Obviously if it posed a threat across state lines it would be a different issue. Sure. Oh we certainly appreciate your years of efforts and keep up the good work.

Well thanks for the call. Let's go to someone in Indiana on our toll free line. Hello. Hello. Unfortunately the phone rang when you were talking and you were saying something I want to make sure I get it clear so I have the facts correct. Did you say that utilities in some way got it so that they weren't responsible for their waste and that the government was. And if that's what you said I was wondering how in the world they pull that one off. Well they must hire good lobbyists. The this was the case back in 1900 when the low level Waste Policy Act was passed. It gave the states the authority to keep out of state waste out of region waste out of their region to handle their own. And if the states did not meet a certain deadline for doing that the states would have to take title to the waste. The utilities wanted that provision in the law they got it. It was declared unconstitutional in the late 90s so it

is no longer there. The same sort of thing was done with high level waste. The high level waste may be for more for security reasons national security reasons and because it's hazardous for tens of thousands of years instead of hundreds of years. That is a federal responsibility and the utilities are being charged taxed surcharges on waste generation. But it is the federal government's responsibility to. Build a disposal facility. They've been trying for 25 years to build one in Nevada for 20 years and they still haven't done it and the utilities are being forced to store the waste on site which is potentially another security problem in these days of terrorism. So the burden has been removed from the utilities. But now in low level waste since

they take title provision is unconstitutional. It really is back on the utilities the utilities are going to be the ones who have the problem. If Barnwell closes or if the Utah site closes for any reason temporarily or long term. And. They are going to have to do something like onsite storage and they will I'm sure come to the states and say take our waste build us a centralized storage facility it's in the public health interest to do so and we'll be back in the same sort of debate you know. Well given the fact that of that we we know at some point Barnwell is going to close. And so that's not and even now that's a limited option. The in the northwest some of the states in the Northwest compact are sending some of their stuff to Hanford which is sounds pretty much like a nightmare all the way around for the people who are there in that area. We have a

site in Utah that's accepting the lowest level of the low level waste and we're talking about building a site. There is there apparently is a site that's going to be built in Texas like like the one in Utah. But so given the pain in even the as you say because the cost of disposing of this has become has gotten so high that the generators are doing everything they can apparently do to generate less. But there is still. But we still have a problem we still have some stuff that's got to be disposed of. Eventually the Utah site may well fill up and then there just aren't a whole lot of options I mean I guess are we are we going to eventually see some some of these compact actually setting up new sites are they going to have to do that. I'm It's my feeling that if the situation stays like it is and the utilities have the problem then there will be companies stepping forward to develop new sites.

Maybe it'll be a spinoff from the old Commonwealth Edison now Exelon nuclear. And they will offer to build a site in a state and they will try to get regulatory approval and the state will try to set up standards that are safe enough and the price may be a lot more than $600 a cubic foot. But I think that's the way things are going to unfold. The real pressure for this will be when the current generation of reactors are decommissioned. The newest reactor today out there was ordered in 1974 so these are all going to be coming to the end of their life in the next by about 2030 at the latest. So these are going to involve huge quantities of low level waste. The utilities would like to be able to just call it into mint pour concrete inside the reactor. Facility and let it sit there and cool off for

decades or century because they're close to water there's concerns about that so there's another option called safe store. Let's monitor it and let it sit and cool off for a while. Let's move the most radioactive complements off to disposal those issues are all on the table but my guess is that after this experience with government run command and control authoritarian siting processes I think we're ready to try a more market oriented approach but this time with government really having regulatory teeth and communities able to cut their own deal in terms of. Long term care funds that are set aside and all sorts of things like this. This is a very complicated story has lots of facets and unfortunately we're kind of at the point we have to finish I just want to ask real quick before we got going here you talked about the fact that because of the security concerns arising out of 9/11 just for you for someone like

you who was just interested in researching and getting up on the topic again it was difficult to get a hold of the information and in future will it. How difficult will it be for citizens to have an informed role in this process. If we were trying to go through a siting process today in Illinois it would be very difficult for citizens I believe to get this information. When I was chairman of the radioactive waste commission the transcripts of all of our public meetings were on the web. Now they're not. They were taken down after 9/11. The New Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the second time since 9/11 has taken down their entire public docket site for review for potentially sensitive material. They did that once before right after 9/11. They did it again about two or three weeks ago. So for example in preparing for this program I

couldn't find anything on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission site. So if we go into another public process like the US government will have to pay a lot more attention to placing information where people can get at it because the nuclear industry has still not earned back the trust that was lost in the 1970s with these disposal failures and Three Mile Island. They have to earn it back. And without information in the public domain it's going to be extremely difficult. Well thanks very much for being here. Increase in.