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Whatever the ultimate solution to
the dangers now being created by
exposed pites of uranium tailings, it
promises to be an expensive lesson in
the cost of dealing with the danger–
ous debris of the nuclear era.
Reactor Wastes.
Yet the frightful problems associated
with tailings may seem a lmost trivial
compared to the gigantic headache of
safely disposing of highly radioactive
wastes from nuclear reactors used for
both military weapons production
and power generation.
The first nuclear reactors were built
during World War
JI
for the pro–
duction of plutonium for atomic
bombs. Now government officials a re
admitting that military nuclear
wastes have in sorne cases leaked out of
tbeir storage containers and could
threaten the environment. At the gov–
ernment's Hanford Nuclear Works
near Richland in southeastern Wash–
ington S tate, over 100,000 gallons of
highly radioactive wastes leaked from
a 30-year-old storage tank back in
1973. More than 400,000 gallons of
high-level radioactive wastes have
leaked into the soil from tanks at Rich–
land and Savannah River, Georgia.
Sorne of this deadly garbage may
eventually penetrate the soil andenter
thewater table.
The record of past years sbows
that the military nuclear program
has often employed woefully inade–
quate methods of waste storage.
Lethal Legacy
A similar problem faces the nuclear
power industry. About 30 tons of
spent nuclear fuel are discharged
from a typical reactor each year. Plu–
tonium and other radioactive prod–
ucts in spent fuel must be isolated for
thousands of years before the ra–
dioactivity decays to a safe level.
Otherwise, genetic disorders, cancer
and other illnesses can result from
contact with even minute particles of
the deadly wastes.
But the fact is, a lmost two decades
after commercial nuclear reactors
began producing electricity, the
United States sti ll has not decided
how to get rid of dangerous radioac–
tive by-products. Finding a cemetery
to contain these wastes safely for half
a million years has not been easy.
At Maxey Flats, in northeastern
24
Kentucky, industrial nuclear wastes
containing plutonium and other
deadly radioisotopes have been slow–
ly leaking out of a burial grouod into
the surrounding soil and water.
The nuclear weapons factory just
outside Denver, Colorado, known as
Rocky Flats, has also leaked plutoni–
um aod otber radioactive substances
into the air, water and soil- for years
before anyone discovered it.
Attempts to recycle radioactive
wastes bave also been fraught with
unnerving if not alarming problems.
In 1966, at West Valley, New York,
the Davison Chemical Company
opened the world's first commercial
nuclear-waste plant. The plant repro–
cessed about 625 tons of nuclear
waste during its six years of opera–
tion. But in 1972, West Valley was
closed and will probably never re–
open. Why? The plant was found un–
safe and was ·contaminating the
countryside with radioactivity. To–
day, the legacy of West Valley's brief
excursion into the nuclear-fue! repro–
cessing business
is
sorne 600,000 gal–
lons of highly radioactive liquid
wastes held in tanks buried in the
ground, and sorne two million cubic
feet of buried radioactive trash.
Sadly, the radioactive trash has
contaminated ground water which
flows into Lake Erie, from which the
city of Buffalo obtains its drinking
water. The cost of cleaning up the
nuclear garbage at the defunct West
Valley plaot may total a billion dol–
lars-paid by the taxpayer.
At Morris, Illinois, General Elec–
tric spent $65 million to construct a
nuclear-waste reprocessing plant.
But the emerging problems of dispos–
ing of nuclear wastes may preclude
the plant from ever opening. At
Barnwell, South Carolina, a $250-
million plant has been constructed by
Allied General Nuclear Services. Yet
this plant, too, may fiod the cost of
safely doing business is simply too
high and the risks unacceptable.
Significantly, Russian defectors
report that, in December of 1957, a
nuclear-waste depot apparently ex–
ploded in central Russia, kill ing
hundreds of people. Though the So–
viets are understandably reluctant to
discuss it, many hundreds- possibly
thousands--of square miles a re said
to remain contaminated to this day
from that tragic accident.
In England, drums containing over
100,000 cubic feet of plutonium-con–
taminated wastes have started cor–
roding in their storage bunkers oear
Windscale on the nortbwest coast.
Needed: Fail-safe Disposal
What can be done to ensure that
nuclear wastes are isolated from the
environment? No one yet has a final
answer. But pressures are rapidly
building to find an adequate long–
term answer. An estimated 5,000
tons of spent nuclear-reactor fue!
currently exist in the United States,
and experts expect 10,000 tons by
1984. More than 100,000 tons are
anticipated by the end of the cen–
tury.
Whatever the solution, the míni–
mum requirement is isolation for at
least 1,000 years, in which time most
of the radioactive elements will bave
decayed to stable substances. Sorne
wastes, however, will bave to be iso–
lated for over 250,000 years.
One possibility is to bury radioac–
tive wastes in abandoned salt mines.
The Atomic Energy Commission ori–
ginally felt this was the solution to
the nuclear-waste problem. But nag–
ging questions have postponed sucb
schemes indefinitely: Can we be sure
the wastes will not contaminate un–
derground reservoirs ofwater, or per–
haps be spewed out of the ground by
a buildup of heat or an earthquake?
In Lyons, Kansas, the AEC
planned to bury wastes
in
an aban–
doned salt mine, but then found,
much to its chagrín, that over
175,000 gallons of water had "disap–
peared" in a nearby mine. Since no
one could be sure that the missing
water might not undermine the in–
tegrity of the AEC's mine, the
scheme to bury highly radioactive
wastes at Lyons was scuttled. Still,
nuclear experts hope sorne type of
. burial plan may succeed and are ac–
tively considering at least one salt
mine site in New Mexico.
Another suggestion has been sorne
type of man-made facility consisting
of giant casks a rranged above the
ground in a pattern reminiscent of
Stonehenge. The casks would be lit–
erally hot because of the decaying
radioactive elements inside, but nat–
ural air convection would keep the
temperature within bounds. Perhaps
a new kind of "priesthood" would
The
PLAIN TRUTH May 1979