Storage of nuclear waste poses dilemma for future

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we thought you needed a little cheering uf eventually end up on the In December 1942, Lieut. Col. F.T. Matthias and Lieut. General Leslie Groves, commander of the Manhattan Project, arrived in the small town of Hanford, Wash. After a two-week survey of the nation, Matthias and Groves chose this town on the Columbia River as the site to build the nuclear reactors that would supply plutonium for the bombs to be dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.

For 44 years now, managers of the nuclear plants on this remote bend of the Columbia River have emptied waste into 177 steel tanks, earthen ditches, trenches, ponds, swamps, underground drains, and deep wells.

They have also buried long-lived transuranic waste (known as TRU) in boxes and drums that will soon corrode. Whether the people of Hanford want it or not, their town has become a permanent radioactivewaste site.

Need for "security"

Up until a few months ago, the Department of Energy (DOE), which manages the plants, was exempt from all state and federal waste-disposal rules. The DOE and its predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, argued that the "special nature" of radioactive waste and the agency's need for security made it unwise to let outsiders get involved in monitoring the bomb factories.

But as more and more stories of spills and accidents reached the public, it became clear that the weapons plants were not meeting any standards at all. So on May 1, 1987, DOE Secretary John Herrington finally consented to at least abide by the same rules—weak as they are—that applied to everyone else.

Of course, the DOE's main concern in this is not and has never been public health but rather the financial health of the nuclear industry. It is more worried about how much money it must spend on cleaning up its radioactive mess in the name of good public relations.

According to Jerry White, director of waste management and a 22-year Hanford veteran, it would cost in the neighborhood of $100 billion to restore Hanford to its "pristine condition."

"After the latest CANCER scare, it "precluded the practicability of storing them in tanks.

The problem was "solved" by drilling two deep wells. Over a two-year period, about 11 million gallons of radioactive waste were injected through settling tanks into the aquifer. Both of these wells were later closed, and plant managers substituted another cheap method of disposal known as "cribbing.' In this process, wastewater is piped into enclosed wooden structures consisting of a series of cascading tubs. The heavy elements settle at the bottom while the rest go off into the ground. This procedure was also curtailed later on when Hanford geochemists finally decided that ground DANGER 90, and 297,00 Ю curies of other fission products. This radioactive waste is so "hot," it often boils spontaneously and continuously.

According to well samples taken by the DOE, this mass of radiation is now sitting in the soil-a mere 100 feet above the water table.

Obviously, the DOE has not yet settled on a plan for dealing with the extensive ground contamination at Hanford. One project now underway is the draining of the 149 leaking tanks. The effluent from this draining process is being put into 28 "newer" tanks.

These stainless-steel tanks are expected to last about 50 years. But what is 50 years nuclear plant is only good for about 20 years to 25 years before it becomes too radioactive to maintain and operate.

Once a nuclear plant's time is up, it must be shut down and "decommissioned." This involves disassembling all the equipment and burying each part or simply burying the entire plant under a mound of concrete and earth, thus creating a permanent radioactive mausoleum for hundreds of thousands of years. And larger units with loads in the 1000 megawatt range may in fact be impossible to decommission.

What should be done with nuclear sewage? At present, there is no answer.

Scientists have offered a number of ingenious suggestions ranging from solidification of high-level waste in glass containers and burial in salt formations, to lowering waste into ocean trenches, burying it under Antarctic ice, or launching rockets loaded with it into the sun. None of these techniques have been proven to be either practical or safe.

Nuclear-industry projections anticipate a total of 152 million gallons of high-level waste by the year 2000. The cost of preparing our present load of 83 million gallons for geological disposal is estimated to range from $2 billion to $20 billion.

The utilities want the taxpayers to foot the bill for nuclear waste. Since these utilities do not account for the costs of decommissioning or waste disposal in their present rates, the utilities can easily present a case for "cheap" nuclear energy.

Low-level radiation risk

Seen in its entirety, however, nuclear technology is neither cheap, clean, nor safe.

In the face of increasing scientific evidence that even low levels of radiation are more harmful to humans than has been officially recognized, the U.S. government and the nuclear industry are now moving to weaken nuclear regulation and radiation health standards.

"Today we know that the risk of radiation-induced cancer is more than 10 times what we believed it to be when the current standards were established," says health authority Dr. Karl Morgan. "It is unthinkable that permissible levels will be increased rather than decreased when everyone agrees the risk of getting cancer is greater than we thought."