Ohio's Unseen Nuclear Waste Crisis

by Harvey Wasserman
Reprinted with permission (published in Cities and Villages)

Ohio faces a crisis in nuclear waste.

This crisis may affect scores of communities around the state, impact our highways and railways, and render key segments of our community radioactive for centuries to come -- without those communities being allowed to vote on it.

Yet the true nature of this crisis is hidden from the vast majority of our citizens, including the administrators of our municipalities.

The problem is this: nationwide, the commercial atomic power industry is awash in nuclear waste. For decades, the builders, owners and operators of America's 110 electric-generating nuclear reactors have been searching for a way to move their radioactive trash off-site, into dumps that will ultimately become the responsibility of the taxpayer.

High-Level Spent Fuel Rods

There are two types of reactor-generated atomic waste.

Spent fuel rods, or high-level waste, ranks among the most lethal by-products ever produced by humankind. These rods will remain deadly for hundreds of thousands of years. The industry would like to send their accumulated thousands of tons of these rods to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as quickly as possible. Decades of research and development, and billions of dollars in construction costs, have thus far been sunk into building an underground disposal facility at this remote desert site, not far from the Nevada Test Site, where several hundred atomic bombs have been detonated since 1951. With the September 24 signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty at the United Nations, we have good reason to hope these explosions have finally ceased.

But what happens at Yucca Mountain may be a different story. Vastly expensive technical problems have plagued the underground dump project, making its ultimate opening an uncertainty. In addition, top-level studies now warn that large quantities of fuel rods stored underground may still be sufficiently radioactive to spark a catastrophic explosion in the unmonitored centuries to come.

In short, the future of underground high-level radioactive waste storage is uncertain at best.

But with spent fuel rods accumulating at reactor sites throughout the US, the industry is desperate. Legislation has been forced into Congress mandating that an above-ground complex be established to "temporarily'' store spent fuel rods on the desert floor at Yucca Mountain.

This "interim solution'' is fiercely opposed by the people of Nevada, which hosts no atomic reactors of its own. Polls show upwards of 80% of the populace demanding that no spent fuel rods cross Nevada's borders.

However, the atomic industry's clout in Congress is substantial. None of the bills mandating both permanent and temporary storage of radioactive wastes at Yucca Mountain have contained provisions for the citizens of Nevada to decide for themselves whether they want this waste. Thus, Nevada's two US senators have been forced to filibuster attempts to aim the radioactive funnel toward Yucca Mountain. President Clinton has also vowed to veto attempts to establish such a dump against Nevada's wishes. As a result, though the Senate passed a bill mandating the establishment of this waste dump, it was not brought before the House because of Clinton's veto threat.

What happens in future Congressional sessions remains to be seen.

Implications for Ohio

The impact on Ohio of this fight over high-level radioactive waste is substantial.

At Ohio's two commercial reactors -- Davis-Besse, near Toledo, and Perry, 35 miles east of Cleveland -- high-level wastes are building up. Should the rods continue to accumulate with nowhere to go, the reactors could be forced to shut, though poor economics and deteriorating performance could bring them down long before the waste problem does.

More importantly, should Yucca Mountain eventually open for high-level waste, either on an interim or permanent basis, Ohio's highways and railways are likely to become swamped with dangerous shipments of spent fuel rods. Because Ohio sits at the heart of the interstate highway and railway systems, fuel rods moving from dozens of reactors in the northeast and Atlantic coast states are likely to pass through our communities. Hundreds of Ohio municipalities and thousands of Ohio motorists would be put at risk.

The Low-Level Parallel

The perils to Ohio from low-level waste are even more immediate.

Low-level waste is the "other'' category of atomic offal. For medical and scientific uses, it encompasses slightly radioactive materials used for treatment, diagnostic, and research purposes.

But at commercial reactor sites, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission definition covers virtually all waste that is not high-level spent fuel rods. This can mean such relatively mild materials as slightly contaminated jump suits and booties, lightly irradiated tools, and so forth.

But it also includes far more dangerous items, such as highly radioactive lubricating oils, heavily irradiated plant components, even certain materials contaminated with plutonium, the deadliest of all radioactive isotopes.

In fact, except for the spent fuel rods and certain core components, virtually the entire corpus of a nuclear power plant is officially classified as low-level waste.

This means that when a commercial reactor is shut and then decommissioned, thousands of tons of radioactive concrete, metals, and other materials could be put on the road to a low-level dump.

And that's where Ohio comes in.

The Ohio Situation

In the 1980s, with thousands of tons of low-level waste building up at US reactor sites, the nuclear power industry prompted Congress to enact a Compact System for establishing regional dumps.

The idea was that groups of states would band together to establish dumps. The state in each compact generating the most waste would establish the first dump, to be open for 20 years. Then the next leading generator would open one for the next twenty years, and so on. In exchange, the states would (theoretically) be able to ban wastes coming in from outside the compact.

Ohio joined a seven-state Midwest Compact, the other members being Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri. When the legislature and Governor Celeste approved the deal, Michigan was the compact's leading generator, and was scheduled to establish the first dump.

However, widespread public opposition prevented Michigan from actually siting a dump. Ironically, some of the fiercest clamor came from the town of Sylvania, Ohio, which is just over the border from one of Michigan's prime dump targets, in the state's southeast corner.

After years of bitter wrangling, Michigan was ejected from the Midwest Compact, leaving Ohio, the next largest generator, holding the bag. In 1995, amidst intense lobbying from the nuclear power industry, the Ohio legislature passed Senate Bill 19, aimed at forcing open a regional low-level dump in Ohio. The bill was opposed by all the Democrats in the State Senate, and was supported by all the Republicans except Tim Greenwood, who represents the northwestern district that includes Sylvania. The House vote was also largely along party lines, and the bill was signed by Gov. Voinovich.

Thus Ohio faces the burden of hosting at least a regional -- and possibly a national -- low-level radioactive waste dump, scheduled to open by the year 2005.

What does this mean in concrete terms?

A Target for A Dozen Reactors

The prospect of such a dump already has many of Ohio's cities, towns and counties deeply alarmed. The commissioners of Athens, Fairfield, and Lorain Counties have already voiced their opposition to the project. So have the councils of such cities and towns as Cleveland, Brooklyn, Brook Park, Woodmere, Bedford Heights, Strongsville, Oakwood, Painesville Township, Mayfield Heights, Mayfield Village, Parma, South Euclid, Gates Mills, Highland Heights, Mentor, Maple Heights, Wickliff, and the Franklinton Board of Trade. The opposition from Strongsville is particularly ironic, since that's the hometown of Sen. Gary Suhadolnik, chief sponsor of Senate Bill 19 to enable the dump. As part of the process of passing that bill, supporters like Sen. Suhadolnik have staged a wide range of hearings throughout the state. A Blue Ribbon panel was appointed to make recommendations about the pending legislation, and the environment committees in both the Senate and House held hearings on the bill. More hearings are scheduled as the process of building the dump wends its way toward its proposed 2005 opening date.

In the July/August 1996 issue of this magazine, Stephen James, an employee of the board established to shepherd the dump to completion, described the opportunities for public input in great detail.

Missing, however, are tangible results from that input. Many key recommendations from the Blue Ribbon Panel, for example, failed to surface in the final legislation. Testimony before the House and Senate Committees -- as well as in front of the Blue Ribbon Panel -- reflected strong public opposition to a dump being established at all.

Yet this testimony was largely ignored. Concerned citizens opposing the dump, or with serious objections to various parts of the plan, are not optimistic about their voices being heard in the long series of hearings that are likely to follow. Many will regard these hearings as a sham, designed to give the public the illusion of participation without the reality of having a tangible say over whether or not the dump will be built, or what kind of dump might be acceptable.

Indeed, the most glaring warning signal came with the legislature's decision to disallow voting power to the community chosen to host the dump. In short, if a municipality is chosen as the site for this facility, it will not have the power to say 'no', even if its elected officials and its citizens are overwhelmingly opposed, as so many communities have already shown they are.

A target community will thus be in an even worse position than Nevada, with no hope of a Senatorial filibuster or executive veto to make tangible its opposition.

The problem, however, will not stop with the host community, willing or otherwise. Should a dump be opened for radioactive waste in Ohio, shipments of that waste will pour in from at least the other five states in the compact. This hot cargo will compromise the safety of the highways and railways over which it travels.

As with shipments of high-level waste that might cross through Ohio on their way to Yucca Mountain, our cities and towns along the routes to an Ohio dump will be at the mercy of the truck and train drivers taking it there. Again, these communities will have no say in how or when these shipments come through. Nor will they be able to buy insurance against such a disaster. Legal and financial responsibility for the inevitable accidents and damage to human life and the ecology could plague an unfortunate municipality for decades to come.

Dump promoters are now assuring the public that those who produce the waste will be financially responsible for its safe disposal. But at least some of these generators will go bankrupt long before the dump loses its radioactivity. And at this point full liability along the transportation routes remains to be legally clarified, not only for accidents, but also for the very expensive emergency preparedness training that must precede these shipments.

The suspicion is widespread that, when push comes to shove, at both the state and the municipal level, the taxpayer -- as usual -- will be stuck with the bill.

The Nuclear Power Dimension

But why is all this happening?

Proponents of this dump argue that Ohio has 57 generators of nuclear waste, and that these materials must be consolidated to be handled safely.

In 55 of the 57 cases, there is a case to be made. These 55 small-scale generators are mostly medical, research, and small industrial facilities. Many are not properly organized to handle their wastes.

A dialog on their needs -- and responsibilities -- should take place. But the first order of business is to realize that these 55 generators produce less than 10% of Ohio's low-level radioactive waste, both by volume and by radioactivity.

Where does the other 90%-plus come from?

The other two generators -- the Perry and Davis-Besse nuclear plants.

In reality, Ohio could build a very small dump designed specifically to handle the limited quantities of radioactive materials coming from medical, research, and small industrial facilities.

But handling the wastes from Perry and Davis-Besse would require a much bigger dump. And, of course, a dump big enough to handle wastes from five other states, with their nine additional commercial reactors, will be much larger still.

Proponents of such a dump currently argue that the money provided by the utilities owning these nuclear plants is needed to make possible a dump handling materials from the smaller generators. It is, indeed, these generators who are pushing most strongly for this regional dump.

But it is precisely the owners of the nuclear plants who are in the most precarious long-term financial position. It is their wastes that pose -- by at least two orders of magnitude -- the greatest threat to the physical and fiscal health of those living near the chosen dump site and along the routes to it.

And unfortunately, the compact system magnifies the risk even further, again as a reflection of the needs of the nuclear power industry.

There are eleven large commercial reactors within the Midwest Compact system: the two in Ohio, four in Wisconsin (one of which is already shut), three in Minnesota, one in Iowa, and one in Missouri.

Worldwide, the average lifespan of a commercial reactor before it shuts is roughly 17 years. No commercial reactor anywhere has operated as long as 35 years. It is thus a virtual certainty that all but two of the reactors now operating within the Midwest compact will close by the year 2025, which is when an Ohio dump would allegedly close its doors after 20 years of operation following a 2005 opening.

Ironically, one of the reactors that might be expected to operate beyond that date is Ohio's Perry.

But in Minnesota, for example, the two large reactors at Prairie Island have come under fierce public attack. The legislature there has mandated closing dates as early as 2002. That shutdown target may well slip. But few serious observers predict that Prairie Island will still be operating beyond 2025. Wisconsin's LaCrosse reactor is already shut, but has not been officially dismantled. The three operating reactors in Wisconsin are also likely early shutdown targets, as is the Duane Arnold plant in Iowa.

NRC regulations require the dismantling of closed reactors, and the moving of most of its structure to a dump site elsewhere. It is thus highly likely that as many as nine reactors would become eligible to send tens of thousands of tons of irradiated materials across state lines to an Ohio dump.

As written, Senate Bill 19 limits the proposed dump to 2.25 million cubic feet. But long-time observers of the nuclear industry strongly doubt Ohio will be able to defend that restriction once a large-scale dump is built. Numerous experts warned throughout the public hearing process -- and will no doubt continue to warn -- that once Ohio builds a dump, other compact states will simply refuse to follow suit when "their turn'' comes due. Thus, after 2025, Ohio would be forced to take more and more waste. "If you build it, they will come,'' warned innumerable dump opponents.

Thus once a large-scale dump is built, Ohio is unlikely to be able to maintain its size limit. Nor do many observers believe it likely Ohio will even be able to keep out shipments from states beyond the Midwest Compact.

In other words, the danger is real that once Ohio builds a large radioactive waste dump, it will be unable to keep it from becoming a national-scale facility.

Congress has mandated this limiting power as part of the "deal'' for establishing a dump. But the "national emergency'' of our deepening nuclear waste crisis, the courts, and Congress, are almost certain to overrule the original limitation. Expansion of Ohio's dump could easily be forced, bringing in ever-larger quantities of radioactive waste from both within the compact and outside our regional borders.

Promoters of the dump have estimated that at least 3000 shipments of radioactive waste would come by truck or train to even a limited regional dump. Coming in from Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri, these shipments would endanger every community past which they travel, plus the unfortunate host.

The likelihood of such a dump becoming a national facility is high. That would further open our highways and railways to an ever more dangerous flood of radioactive disasters waiting to happen.

And despite all the public hearings, not one of the affected municipalities would have the actual right to vote on its fate.

A Solution

First and foremost, the citizens of Ohio must be given the right to vote on this issue. Our state is not even 200 years old; yet this dump must be maintained, by the proponents' own admission, for at least 500 years. Many of the materials in such a dump will remain lethal far, far longer.

This could be the most important decision Ohioans will ever make. A long string of hearings may make for good public relations. But there is no substitute for a direct vote, by the state as a whole, by the community ultimately designated as the dump site, and by those along the transportation routes. Nothing less than a direct vote would be consistent with our democratic traditions.

Toward that end, Citizens Protecting Ohio, a statewide coalition, is circulating petitions to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot allowing for a statewide choice on this issue. As these activists build a grassroots organization determined to fight this proposed dump every inch of the way, they are prompting a dialog on what to do about nuclear waste.

Virtually everyone familiar with the problem agrees "something must be done.'' But nationwide, six low-level dumps have already demonstrated very serious unsolved problems. Four have been shut with devastating long-term health and environmental problems. Only two now remain open, and their continued operations remain in serious question. Accidents carrying radioactive materials towards them continue.

As the new century dawns, alternative proposals will likely focus on each state constructing its own small, manageable dump to handle the relatively small quantities of waste from its medical, research, and light industrial uses. The much larger and more dangerous quantities of trash from the nuclear industry's 110 commercial reactors will have to stay where it is until it decomposes, and until those who produced it prove responsible and fiscally sound enough to manage the problem they created.

Establishing these small state-dumps will minimize the substantial and growing danger from massive shipments of radioactive materials long distances over our very vulnerable highways and railways.

It will save hundreds of municipalities from exposure to such dangerous shipments without first having been given the right to vote on such exposures.

And it would give the nation as a whole the time for a meaningful dialog about the future of atomic power in a changing economic and ecological environment.

It would also, finally, allow us all to make this life-and-death decision by the only process that reflects the core of what has made American democracy great: a vote of the citizenry.


Harvey Wasserman, senior adviser to Greenpeace USA, lives in Central Ohio.

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