Thursday, Jan. 06, 2011

Nuclear dumping in SC a concern

Forum Friday to discuss role SRS should play now that Yucca Mountain site is off the table

With a Nevada disposal ground now off the table for nuclear waste burial, environmentalists are sounding alarms that S.C.’s Savannah River Site could one day become the country’s replacement dump for deadly nuclear garbage.

Conservation groups, including the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, began running advertisements this week in the Aiken-Augusta area in preparation for a major national forum on nuclear waste disposal Friday morning. They also began blitzing the media with e-mails about what they see as the possibility of waste being dumped at SRS near Aiken.

But the Friday forum is expected to produce sharp disagreements between environmentalists and SRS boosters over how to handle the country’s growing burden of nuclear waste — and what role the Savannah River Site should play in that. SRS backers say fears by conservation groups are overblown and misguided.

The all-day meeting is being held by a national panel that will recommend what to do with waste from nuclear power plants, now that the U.S. has backed away from the Yucca Mountain, Nev., site. The government spent billions of dollars preparing the site to take the country’s most dangerous nuclear waste before the Obama administration abandoned the plan, citing environmental concerns.

Those on the 15-member Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future include former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft,; former U.S. Rep Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana; former U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.; and Vicky Bailey, a former commissioner with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. A tour of SRS is planned for the commission today.

The panel is expected to recommend to President Obama by mid-summer how to deal with the nuclear waste, which is growing as nuclear power plants continue to produce electricity. The U.S. has generated more than 70,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear waste — lethal material that, in some cases, doesn’t break down for thousands of years.

Alternatives to Yucca Mountain under consideration include:

• Leaving the waste at the nation’s power plants until a long-term disposal option is developed

• Developing an interim storage site until a permanent disposal ground can be built

• Upgrading a dump site in New Mexico that already takes certain types of toxic nuclear waste

• Reprocessing used commercial nuclear fuel, a practice that would, in theory, reduce the amount of waste

Environmentalists say reprocessing and interim storage are among their biggest concerns and key reasons why SRS could become a national dump site.

SRS supporters, including U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., enthusiastically back recycling nuclear fuel as a way to reduce the amount of radioactive waste. Environmentalists fear SRS would be targeted because the 310-square-mile weapons site has an extensive industrial complex, a need for new missions and a plethora of supporters.

Critics, however, say reprocessing creates its own toxic waste stream, doesn’t recycle all the used fuel — and produces a demand for nuclear waste. If reprocessing doesn’t work, nuclear fuel shipped to SRS for recycling would likely remain there, critics say. Reprocessing has long been a topic of intense debate. Reprocessing defense material has occurred for decades at SRS, but that helped create some 37 million gallons of toxic nuclear waste. Although done in Europe, commercial reprocessing was abandoned in the U.S. in the late 1970s because of safety concerns.

“We will watch out for the public interest and strongly oppose efforts to dump high-level nuclear waste in South Carolina,” said former U.S. Senate candidate Tom Clements, a nuclear campaign coordinator with Friends of the Earth. “Environmental groups will confront efforts by special interests to reprocess nuclear spent fuel as it leaves behind a huge volume of nuclear waste and would make SRS the nation’s de facto nuclear dump, which is totally unacceptable.”

Susan Corbett, who chairs the state Sierra Club, said SRS has a recent history of bringing in the nation’s unwanted nuclear material to feed a mixed oxide fuel plant. But the plant has no customers, raising the possibility surplus plutonium will remain at SRS indefinitely, she said.

Bringing atomic waste to SRS for a possible reprocessing facility would only continue the state’s legacy as a site to dump the nation’s waste, she said. Until just a few years ago, South Carolina had a national low-level nuclear waste dump near Barnwell, a national medical waste incinerator at Hampton, and a regional hazardous waste landfill on Lake Marion. The state also has several major regional garbage dumps and entertained ideas last year of allowing a new incinerator near Chester.

“We’ve had a lot of waste that was orphaned here,’’ Corbett said.

SRS backers say the federal weapons complex could play a lead role in recycling the toxic material — a process that could create jobs and prestige for a site that played a major role in producing weapons during the Cold War.

The Savannah River Site now employs about 13,000 people, but that is down from a peak of about 25,000 in the late 1980s. The site also has recently announced that about 1,400 employees of a prime contractor are being laid off.

Graham is expected to make his case for reprocessing Friday morning before the panel. He was not available Wednesday, but a spokesman said Graham is firmly committed to recycling used nuclear fuel. Supporters say that, if the process works, it could cut the overall volume of nuclear waste since some would be re-used.

“The senator has long been a supporter of recycling,’’ Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop said. “If Yucca Mountain is going to close, exactly what is the pathway for using the spent nuclear fuel?

Other politicians that back SRS were also invited to speak Friday, including Gov. Mark Sanford and Gov.-elect Nikki Haley, and U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C. Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue was also among those invited to speak. It was not known Wednesday how many would be at the meeting.

SRS booster Clint Wolfe, director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness, said he does not believe the nuclear complex would ever become a permanent disposal site for the nation’s high-level waste. Instead, recycling would work to lessen the nation’s burden of atomic waste, he said. Wolfe said he’ll tell the panel Friday that he supports recycling, but also favors conducting more research at SRS on the best way to do that.

“To say hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil about reprocessing’’ is unrealistic he said, adding that “I would not put used nuclear fuel in the ground anywhere. I would put into a recycling protocol.’’

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