S. 104, an environmental disaster in the making
Few environmental challenges are more daunting than that posed by high-level nuclear waste, which must be isolated for hundreds of thousands of years. While the defense weapons complex and “low-level” radioactive waste dumps have left heavily contaminated sites across the nation, civilian irradiated fuel contains over 95% of the nation’s waste radioactivity, presenting a unique threat.
S. 104, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1997, could prove a disastrous response. In addition to attacking state authority, creating massive taxpayer liabilities, and unwisely mandating an “interim” storage facility for high-level nuclear waste, S. 104 directly threatens the environment.
Transportation
S. 104 opens the door to the unprecedented transportation of high-level waste and fails to address concerns about shipment safety.
By mandating construction of an “interim” storage facility at the Nevada Test Site (NTS), S. 104 would require the unprecedented shipment of irradiated fuel. Annual shipment figures would soon exceed the cumulative total of the last three decades.
While high-level waste at reactors will likely eventually have to be moved, S. 104 exacerbates the risks of the activity. Current cask regulations fail to consider the full range of plausible accident conditions and do not require compliance testing of full-scale cask models. S. 104 does nothing to address these issues, but mandates that shipments begin in 1999, which will not leave adequate time to ensure the maximum possible transportation safety. Indeed, the independent Nuclear WasteTechnical Review Board states that interim storage is not feasible in this time frame. “Developing a transportation system will require the acquisition of sufficient numbers of trucks or rail cars and casks, the establishment of transportation routes, and the development of emergency preparedness plans at the affected state and local levels. As a result,the federal government could not begin accepting spent fuel at a facility much before 2002, and then not in significant amounts.” The bill also fails to guarantee funding for the training of emergency personnel and contains broad preemptions of local and state law, hampering efforts to maximize transportation safety.
Repository Standards
S. 104 guts environmental standards for a permanent repository. Despite serious flaws with the site, studies continue to determine whether Yucca Mountain in Nevada is capable of hosting a permanent repository for high-level nuclear waste. In addition to prejudicing the studies by designating Nevada as the host for the waste before the studies are complete, S. 104 runs roughshod over crucial environmental protections.
Although Yucca Mountain faces numerous unresolved technical issues, S. 104 tampers with the integrity of the ongoing studies by explicitly revoking regulations (10 CFR part 960) that set guidelines for determining site suitability. With this negation, provisions on key site-performance characteristics, like the travel time of groundwater and climatic stability, would be swept away, casting doubt upon integrity of any site suitability determination.
More importantly, the bill would endanger public safety if a repository is constructed at Yucca Mountain. Current law directs the Environmental Protection Agency to promulgate regulations to protect the environment from repository radiation releases, but S. 104 creates obstacles to the EPA’s efforts to carry out this responsibility.
Instead the bill would create a single performance standard that allows annual radiation exposures of up to 100 millirems to an average member of the surrounding population, a level four times the amount allowed by regulations for storage facilities. According to established risk factors, employed by the International Commission on Radiological Protection and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, this exposure level is associated with a lifetime risk of one excess cancer death for every 286 exposed individuals. This standard also preempts the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Another major issue faced by the proposed repository is the possibility of human intrusion. Rather than address honestly the unpredictability of human behavior during the repository’s hazardous life, S. 104 directs the NRC to assume that no human intrusion would ever occur.
“Interim Storage”
S. 104’s “interim” storage provisions exclude citizen concerns.
Although NTS is in a highly seismically active area, S. 104 would allow construction of an “interim” waste dump to commence with the simplesubmittal of a license application. Site selection, license application,and construction would be exempted from the Environmental Impact Statement(EIS) normally required by the National Environmental Policy Act. In fact,beyond the EIS requirements specified by the bill, NEPA is wholly preemptedwhen adhering to the law would be “inconsistent” with S. 104.
The bill would require the NRC to license the facility within 16 months, a period that the Commission has testified is too short to allow for a public hearing in the process. Citizen participation may also be curtailed at reactor sites, because the bill’s broad preemption language would also hamper citizen efforts to raise environmental concerns about on-site storage technology, allowing the NRC to continue to license storage casks under generic procedures, without public hearings.
Preemptions
S. 104 curtails a broad range of environmental laws. S. 104 contains broad preemptions for environmental legislation. S. 104 states that any federal, state, or local law that is “inconsistent” with the bill’s requirements is preempted.
For more information, contact Bill Magavern or Auke Piersma
at 546-4996.
The Critical Mass Homepage is located at
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