Public input sought on nuke waste

Industry wants to garner more trust among citizens over power source

By Judy Fahys
The Salt Lake Tribune

LAS VEGAS - The nuclear waste industry wants you.
    Well, at least your input.
    Without it, the nation's nuclear waste logjam could get worse, said cleanup industry representatives and regulators last week.
    "It's a very complicated problem and one that will take a lot of communication to solve," said Gregory B. Jaczko, of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
    The message comes at an important time for the industry. On one hand, many hope to see the public embrace nuclear power as a solution to growing energy demands and cutting the pollution blamed for climate change. At the same time, there are too few options for radiation-contaminated waste.
    And, although it believes it has the technology to do its work safely, the nuclear waste industry doesn't have sufficient public trust. Public opposition has derailed at least five nuclear waste facilities in two decades.
    That means just 14 states have somewhere to send all their low-level waste. A national repository for high-level waste is already a decade late.
    It's as if we had built houses without toilets. And the hazardous excrement is piling up.
    Meanwhile, the nuclear-waste industry needs public support for a few important low-level waste projects:
    * New disposal is needed for some of the more radioactive material that used to go to a Barnwell, S.C., disposal site. Until it shut its doors to waste from all but three states this summer, it accepted these hotter forms of waste from hospitals, universities and, primarily, from nuclear power plants.
    * Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions wants to bury waste from Italy at its Tooele County landfill. Garnering more than 2,900, mostly critical comments to the NRC last spring, the proposal has raised policy questions that are now before a federal court and Congress.
    * Blending more-radioactive low-level waste with less-radioactive low-level waste so that that reactor rubbish and other too-hot waste can be buried in Utah, which limits the hazard level of waste coming into the state.
    * A new disposal site in Texas is headed into the public-review phase of licensing. Although company representatives say, "the community is solidly behind us," a Texas chapter of the Sierra Club filed suit to stop the site in June.
    Jaczko spoke to industry representatives and regulators attending the Annual RadWaste Summit last week.
    "The challenges aren't necessarily technical," he said later in an interview with The Tribune.
    "We don't fully understand what the public's concerns are."
    And it's not clear that industry is persuaded that more public involvement is an antidote to public fear and mistrust.
    Bret Rogers, senior vice president for EnergySolutions, highlighted during the summit a Tribune editorial against the waste-blending proposal under consideration and noted stories about the gathering were being posted on the Internet.
    "So, be careful about what you say throughout this conference," he warned.
    But Oregon resident Shelley Cimon applauded the idea of more public involvement in nuclear waste programs. She has bird-dogged the $25 billion cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state for two decades and currently serves on the multifaceted citizen advisory board for the cleanup.
    The group reviews everything from budgets to contracts to policy to scientific tools involved in the $2 billion-a-year cleanup, she said.
    The panel's voice is helpful and respected by the government agencies overseeing the work.
    "There has to be a public voice," Cimon said in an interview.
    The pledges of openness she heard at the RadWaste summit were "terrific," she said. "It's important that's being said, but the implementation is also important."
    fahys@sltrib.com
    Low-level radioactive waste is generally material from government cleanups, nuclear plant cleanups, reactor rubbish and similar waste from hospitals and universities.
    Class A low-level waste Ð the kind accepted by EnergySolutions Inc. in Utah - is the least contaminated. It's considered to lose its hazardous quality in about 100 years.
    State lawmakers outlawed Class B and C waste in Utah three years ago. It's hazard lasts about 300 and 500 years, respectively.
    High-level waste is dangerously radioactive. It includes used fuel rods from commercial reactors and highly contaminated material from atomic weapons plants. The Skull Valley Goshutes and their business partners have filed suit to protect a license they obtained from federal regulators to store high-level waste on the tiny tribe's Tooele County reservation.