- WASHINGTON, DC (ENS) - The
manufacture of consumer products out of radioactively contaminated
materials
discarded from commercial nuclear power plants and government bomb
factories
could become a fact of American life. In an extraordinary move, the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission today asked the National Academy of Sciences
to sanction the controversial practice.
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- Dr. Richard Meserve, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission (NRC), made the request during the public portion of a special
National Academy of Sciences committee meeting in Washington.
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- Meserve asked the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
panel to examine the practice of releasing radioactively contaminated solid
waste materials into everyday commerce. He said this type of recycling
is necessary to insure the continued viability of the commercial nuclear
power plant industry and the Cold War decommissioning activities of the
U.S. Department of Energy.
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- "There has basically been no guidance as to how
those problems should be addressed," Meserve said to the panel of
NAS scientists. "It is our hope that we will get your findings and
recommendations as to how we should proceed in a timely
manner."
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- Meserve's request of the NAS panel is the latest
development
in a long standing government and industry led effort to establish a
consistent
system governing the release of solid materials from NRC licensed
facilities.
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- The nuclear power industry and the Department of Energy
(DOE) are currently saddled with tens of thousands of tons of solid
materials
contaminated with low levels of radioactivity, which they once disposed
of in specially designed nuclear waste disposal facilities.
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- That practice changed beginning in the 1970s, when the
NRC, its licensees, and the DOE began searching for a more cost effective
method of disposing of the enormous volume of steel girders, pallets,
machinery
and other solid materials tainted with tiny amounts of
radioactivity.
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- The NRC and the DOE now allow their licensees and
contractors
to recycle some solid materials, but there is currently no national health
based standard or generally applicable criteria governing the release of
solid materials from commercial nuclear power plants or government nuclear
weapons facilities.
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- Meserve said that the current "ad-hoc"
recycling
system is not sufficient for the NRC and its licensees, which he noted
must spend large amounts of money to dispose of their low level solid
wastes.
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- Meserve said that the DOE has encountered the same costly
solid waste disposal problem "in spades" as it proceeds with
decommissioning a number of Cold War nuclear weapons facilities.
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- "That's why we're here - to seek your advice on
these matters," Meserve told the NAS panel.
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- At the NRC's request, the National Academy of Sciences'
panel has agreed to examine the question of whether or not there are
sufficient
technical bases to establish a consistent system for controlling the
release
of what it is terming "slightly contaminated" solid
materials.
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- The panel is expected to evaluate a number of factors
in making its recommendations regarding the release of these materials,
including studies of critical groups, exposure pathways and scenarios,
and individual and collective doses.
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- Meserve asked the panel to consider a number of other
factors in reaching its conclusion, including rulemaking actions taken
by federal agencies, states, and the European Union.
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- Meserve outlined four conclusions that he said the NAS
panel could reasonably reach. * Permitting the release of radioactively
contaminated solid materials if the potential dose is less than a specified
level. * Restricting the release of such materials for only certain
authorized
uses, which could prohibit recycling. * Prohibiting the release of
materials
that were stored in areas where radioactive materials were present. *
Segregating
reused materials for public and nonpublic use.
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- Meserve added that his list of alternatives was not
intended
to "constrain [the NAS panel] from being more inventive" in its
recommendations.
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- Meserve acknowledged the controversial nature of the
solid waste recycling initiative, which environmental and public health
groups have vehemently criticized.
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- "This is a difficult issue where the emotional
currents
run strong," he said.
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- Still, Meserve implored the NAS panel to resist putting
a "spin" on its findings to address - or to avoid - the
controversial
nature of the NRC's solid waste recycling initiative.
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- "Call it the way you see it - we'll worry about
the political fallout," Meserve said. "We want your best advice
- give it to us straight."
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- Some members of the NAS panel did just that, as they
wasted little time in peppering the NCR chairman with a host of probing
questions.
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- Dr. Robert Budnitz, president of the California based
Future Resources Associates, wanted to know why the NRC had requested the
panel's recommendations at all.
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- "Where did this come from? What's going on?"
Budnitz asked Meserve.
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- Budnitz, a former NRC official, said he suspects the
request came about because the agency could no longer deal with the myriad
individual recycling cases that it is currently juggling.
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- Meserve acknowledged the point, saying that "it's
a licensee need," and that it is "extraordinarily expensive"
for nuclear power plant operators to dispose of their radioactively
contaminated
solid materials through other means.
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- Meserve added that, "There's a lot of
decommissioning
underway [at DOE nuclear weapons facilities] that we need to deal with
somehow."
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- Bunditz pressed the point, asking Meserve if the Energy
Department has "formally or informally" approached the NRC about
pushing for a national standard for the recycling of contaminated solid
materials.
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- "Is that part of this or not?" Bunditz
asked.
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- Meserve acknowledged that he did "personally
meet"
with Energy Secretary Bill Richardson about this problem, and that
Richardson
had encouraged the National Academy of Sciences' involvement in the
matter.
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- Andrew Wallo, director of the DOE radiation division's
office of environment, safety and health, was on hand Wednesday to report
the agency's perspective on the contaminated solid materials disposal
problem.
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- Wallo noted that there are hundreds of tons of metals
and other slightly contaminated materials at DOE nuclear weapons facilities
that must be removed if the sites are to be cleaned up and closed
down.
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- "It's a valuable commodity excepting the
radioactivity
in it," Wallo said of the materials.
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- Wallo told the panel that most of the scrap metal that
has been released from DOE facilities is either not contaminated at all,
or has surface contamination well below the agency's current standard.
However, the pubic and the steel industry has not been accepting of those
very low exposure risks, Wallo acknowledged.
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- Wallo recalled the furor that erupted when the DOE
allowed
contractor British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) to release 110,000 tons
of radioactive metals - including 6,000 tons of volumetrically contaminated
nickel - from the DOE's K-25 nuclear weapons plant at Oak Ridge,
Tennessee.
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- Public health and environmental groups vehemently
objected
to the contract, saying that there was no law prevent the metals from being
used to make silverware, orthodontic braces, hip joint replacements, and
even intrauterine devices.
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- The steel industry also opposed the release of the
contaminated
scrap metal, saying that it would erode public confidence in the industry
and cost steel companies tens of million of dollars should radioactive
materials somehow find their way into production furnaces.
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- The public outcry forced Energy Secretary Richardson
to block the sale of the radioactive nickel. Richardson later issued a
moratorium restricting the release of such materials until a national
policy
could be devised.
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- Gary Visscher, vice president of the American Iron and
Steel Institute, watched with interest on Wednesday as the NRC and the
DOE asked the National Academy of Sciences to sanction the practice of
recycling radioactively contaminated metals.
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- "Anything that diminishes the public's confidence
in the safeness of steel is going to hurt our companies," Visscher
told ENS.
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- Lisa Gue, a policy analyst with the consumer advocacy
group Public Citizen, was also on hand on Wednesday to keep tabs on the
two federal agencies and their industry contractors.
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- "We have an ongoing concern with federal agencies
that appease industry by setting rules that facilitate the release of
radionuclides
into the environment," Gue said. "If the nuclear industry cannot
afford to protect the public and the environment from its waste products,
then it's not a viable industry."
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- Gue and other observers said they are concerned with
the large block of time that was devoted to closed sessions during the
three day meeting. According to the official agenda, a total of 12 and
a half hours of meeting sessions are to be closed to the public, though
officials pledged to post a summary of the private sessions on the
Internet.
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