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South Carolina’s Citizens Advisory Board has “had enough” of the nuclear waste burden

‘Enough is enough’ nuclear waste http://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/editorials/enough-is-enough-nuclear-waste/article_5875b0fc-aadc-11e7-baa8-13314076fcb5.html  8 Oct 17 South Carolina has been generally accommodating to the federal government’s nuclear waste disposal needs over the decades, based on the promise that the highly radioactive material would be eventually shipped out of Savannah River Site to a permanent storage facility. Unfortunately, the federal government hasn’t been willing to live up to its part of the bargain.

So the SRS Citizens Advisory Board recently said “enough is enough” in response to federal plans to ship a ton of uranium from Germany through the port of Charleston then by rail to the Aiken facility. While the board’s role is advisory, its decision can have a major impact on federal policy. For example, a federal committee examining nuclear waste disposal options during the Obama administration backed off a plan in 2013 to formalize SRS’ use as a waste treatment and disposal site when the citizens panel balked.

The uranium was originally sent to Germany for research purposes as part of the U.S. Atoms for Peace Program — and the U.S. government agreed to take it back when Germany was finished with it. No question, SRS has the experience and the capability to process the material so it can’t be used to produce a nuclear weapon, but CAB reasonably balked at the transfer.

“The proposal will unnecessarily add to an already large burden of … high-level radioactive waste storage at SRS with no established path for disposal,” the CAB stated in its response to the Department of Energy request. “DOE failures to faithfully keep pace with its SRS cleanup commitments impede the acceptability of this deficient proposal by the citizens of South Carolina.”

Among those failures are the previous administration’s unwillingness to continue funding a plant to process weapons grade plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors. The federal government agreed to build the mixed-oxide facility as a condition of sending 34 tons of plutonium to SRS. The decision to abandon the project came after the plutonium already had been shipped to SRS.

Meanwhile, the planned permanent storage site for high level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, was shut down in 2011 by the then-chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with the Obama administration’s approval. There are ongoing efforts to restart the project on which $15 billion has already been spent since the 1980s.

So don’t blame the SRS Citizens Advisory Board for being less than accommodating to the federal government’s latest radioactive waste disposal plan. As CAB member Larry Powell said, “I would just like to see less of this fuel coming into SRS, especially when there’s no exit plan out of state.”

South Carolina should emphasize its opposition to becoming the dump site for federal nuclear waste at every possible turn — in the courts, in Congress and by state government. The state has assumed more than its share of responsibility for nuclear defense production and waste management since the early years of the Cold War. The federal government should have to live up to its promises to the state.

October 9, 2017 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes