THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 15, 1996 TAG: 9601130035
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A34 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
The United States now produces six tons of high-level radioactive waste a day. Some 30,000 tons of spent fuel rods are stored temporarily. But temporary could mean decades since no permanent site is in sight.
This is an ongoing, slow-motion scandal of gigantic proportions. According to recent reports in The Washington Post, 109 power plants producing 20 percent of the nation's electricity just keep producing hazardous waste as a byproduct with no final resting place available. It's costing utilities, and therefore ratepayers, millions a year to store the stuff.
Federal law requires a solution by 1998, but don't hold your breath. So far $4.2 billion has been spent studying possible solutions. The officially designated storage place is Yucca Mountain, Nev., but Nevada protests and the studies are years from completion.
Even if the Yucca Mountain repository were already built and ready to accept the waste - at a projected cost of $33 billion - at current rates of waste production it would be full to overflowing by 2010. Unfortunately, it's expected to take another 15 years until regulatory approval will be won for Yucca Mountain. So by the time building can commence, enough waste to fill up the repository will already be ready for interment. Which means it's time to start hunting for Yucca II.
In fact, so many technical obstacles and legal roadblocks stand in the way of the Yucca Mountain project that those who know it best are inclined to believe it will never be built. One huge problem is EPA rules that require a site to be isolated from the environment for 10,000 years. Humans have no experience in designing for that kind of time frame.
Some critics contend the waste will have decayed to a level of radioactivity no more dangerous than the original ore in just 300 years. If the EPA were to modify its standards, progress might be possible.
But there are still political crosscurrents, scientific worries and security concerns to contend with. The likely solution is adoption of a temporary site in the vicinity of Yucca Mountain that, by default, will turn into a permanent site - or at least our nuclear-waste repository for years to come.
Since plutonium in spent fuel rods is something terrorists would like to get their hands on, guarding one site rather than scores of them makes sense, but Nevada will fight this back-door method of sticking it with the nation's waste.
There's no easy answer to this problem, a reminder that projects involving highly toxic and dangerous byproducts ought not to be rushed into. When we let the nuclear genie out of the bottle, we also inherited the deadly waste that is part of the bargain. Finding a safe place for it is essential, but the government that encouraged the adoption of the technology has so far failed miserably to resolve the problem. by CNB