.
The Myth of Carlsbad, New Mexico and the Safe
Disposal of Nuclear Wastes
T. B. Nicholas, Jr .
•
"I cannot accept your canon that we are to
judge Pope and King unlike other men, with
a favorable presumption that they did no
wrong. If there is any presumption it is
the other way, against the holders of power,
increasing as the power increases."
•
Lord Acton: Letter to Bishop
Mandell Creighton, April 5,
1887. Historical Essay and
Studies, 1907.
In June 1981 the United States Department of Energy
will begin development of the nation's first Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), near Carlsbad, New Mexico, in which
military-generated and commercial nuclear wastes will be
stored in deep salt bed geologic repositories. 1
Joe McGough,
director of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, states that the
site will provide "a research and development facility to
demonstrate the safe disposal of radioactive waste resulting
from the defense activities and programs of the United States."
Although the facility was planned initially for the disposal
of
milita~y
transuranic wastes only, this New Mexico facility
will now provide for:
(1) the permanent disposal of defense(2) experimental studies conducted
generated transuranic waste;
with high-level wastes; and (3) possibly up to 1,000 commercial
spent fuel assemblies.
Under current plans, all of these
various types of wastes would be stored in a retrievable manner
until it is determined that they may be allowed to remain
safely in WIPP in perpetuity.
3
'
To date, Carlsbad residents have not formed organized
opposition to the site.
4
Though environmental groups claim
that the WIPP is dangerous and that the facility would have
negative effects on the nearby town of 25,000, Carlsbad
residents, at least elected officials, apparently are delighted
with the pr.oject.
5
"We have eight city councilmen and a mayor,
•
two state representatives and a state senator, all of whom
have been work1ng on this since 1971, and we continue to be
-
1 -
0030~1
2
elected," says Carlsbad mayor Walter Gerrells.
"Now there's
a very vocal minority that opposes it, but I think you'll find
that even the motel owners around here support it." 6
Berry
Casebolt, managing editor of the Carlsbad Current-Argus, says
"the project already brought approximately $800,000 into the
town through contracts, and now it's mushrooming.
But the big
thing I believe is that Uncle Sam is supposed to pay for new
roads, a new transportation network to bypass major cities
when they transport the stuff.
It'll really give us a boost." 7
But measured against this commercial zeal of Carlsbad and
the nuclear industry is the fact that radioactive wastes are
among the most toxic substances known to man.
The release of
radioactive wastes into the environment could cause immediate
death, cancer, or genetic mutations in catastrophic proportions.
And because some of these wastes remain dangerous for tens,
and even hundreds, of thousands of years (depending on the
·particular waste product), they must be isolated from the biosphere for unprecedented periods of time to avoid harmful exposure to humans.
In order to mediate these competing interests of sc1ence
and society, the need for stringent regulation of these hazardous waste products by an independent agency with technical
expertise has been recognized by Congress.
The Nuclear Regula-
tory Commission (NRC), the federal agency with primary regulatory responsibility over radioactive wastes generated by cornmer-
-
2 -
00303
cial nuclear operations, was created for this specific purpose. 8
The regulatory SGheme was established and developed by the
Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (AEA), as amended by the Energy
Reorganization Act of 1974(ERA) 9 and the National Environmental
Policy Act of 1969.
10
Despite the recognized need for stringent
control, however, serious flaws pervade the substance and form
of the federal system for the management and disposal of radioactive waste.
These deficiencies are due in part to the
magnanimity of the waste products and their unknown effects,
the deficiencies of past regulatory attempts, and the now complete inability of state governments to intervene for the
adequate protection of public health and safety from the
potential hazards of the nuclear industry.
This article will first discuss the wastes--their toxicity
and magnitude--which are critically important in understanding
the potential threat of the WIPP experiment in Carlsbad.
I
will then focus on the problems of radioactive waste, past and
existing, and the inadequacies and flaws in the •federal
versus state' dichotomy of nuclear waste management and disposal.
Finally, I will point to other federal attempts at establishing
a permanent disposal site, and the continuing uncertainty
surrounding the Carlsbad project.
It is of critical importance that the people of West Texas
and Southeastern New Mexico understand the true dimensions of
•
the problem; in the meantime, we cannot afford to be trapped by
the commercial zeal of the nuclear industry into a short-order
solution that explodes on the next generat1on.
Q030G
I. The Wastes
The major categories of radioactive wastes involved in
the Carlsbad experiment include those from the processing
and use of radioactive materials:
"tailings" from uranium
mills, "high-level" wastes from nuclear power plants, and
transuranic and low-level wastes, consisting of contaminated
work materials.
a. Uranium Mill Tailings
The first step in producing enriched uranium fuel for
nuclear power plants is the milling of the uranium ore. 11
The ore, which. is usually from a nearby mine, is crushed,
ground, and chemically treated in a mill to extract and
concentrate the uranium.
The processed ore is then discharged
into a tailings pond as a solids-laden liquid.
The water seeps
into the ground or evaporates, eventually leaving a dry pile
of sandlike waste.
Uranium tailings contain natural radio-
nucleides that are highly toxic, and long lived.
For example,
thorium-230, which is a highly toxic isotope contained in large
amounts
with~n
mill tailings, has a half-life, or decay period,
of 80,000 years, and, therefore, it must be isolated from man
on the order of a million years or longer.
Human exposure to uranium mill tailings may be by the
inhalation bf wind-blown particles from unstabilized piles,
of radon gas which emanates from the piles, or of decay products
from escaped radon. 12
A person may also be exposed by direct
.
.
f
.
.
.
rad1at1on
rom the piles, or by dr1nk1ng
contam1nated
water. 13
Approximately 25 million tons of radioactive mill
tailings have already accumulated at twenty-two inactive
mill sites in eight western states. 14 Abandoned by the
operators, these piles of radioactive waste are largely
unstabilized.
But while these pose grave dangers enough,
the corning decades will pose even greater problems.
Annual
amounts of mined uranium to fuel nuclear plants are projected
to increase more than ten-fold by the year 2000. 15
Presently,
there are twenty-one mills in active operation throughout the
u.s.,
and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates that
109 mills will be needed by the year 2000 to support the
commercial nuclear power industry. 16
Accordingly, the volume
of accumulated mill tailings will increase by thirty-fold
in that period.
b. Reactor Generated Wastes
Once the uranium is mined and fabricated into fuel, it
is used in nuclear power plants.
A nuclear plant generates
'
electricity by fissioning, or splitting,
uranium and plutonium
atoms in the nuclear reactor core.
electric generators.
This in turn powers
As the fissioning isotopes in the fuel
are depleted, the resulting waste product, the 'spent fuel
rods' are then withdrawn from the nuclear reactor cores.
17
Until 1977, the federal government and the nuclear power
industry had planned on chemically treating, or 'reprocessing',
•
these spent fuel rods in order to remove the unused, still
stable, material for further uee in the processing of fresh
- 5 -
00303
fuel.
When this reprocessing occurs, "high-level radioactive
wastes" are produced.
18
But in 1977 former President Carter
announced tha·t reprocessing would be deferred indefinitely,
because of possible additional risks in the theft and fabrication of nuclear explosive devices by terrorist groups. 19
c. Transuranic and Low-Level Wastes
These wastes are by-products of the nuclear fuel cycle,
and are comprised of materials such as clothing, glass, and
metal that become contaminated with radioactivity.
Transur-
anic wastes are produced primarily at reprocessing plants and
facilities where plutonium is processed into fresh fuel.
Low-level wastes, on the other hand, are produced at nuclear
reactor sites themselves, and do not include the "heavier"
radionucleides with atomic numbers higher than simple uranium,
as do the transuranic wastes.
But like the uranium mill tailings, both wastes are
highly toxic.
For example, one radionucleide produced at the
nuclear reactor stage 1n connection with low-level wastes is
plutonium-239.
It is so toxic that as little as three micro-
.
.
1 s. 20
grams--a ' spec k' --can cause 1 ung cancer 1n
an1ma
Further,
because of its exceedingly long decay period of 24,000 years,
the large quantities of plutonium produced in reactors will
remain at least potentially harmful to man for at least several
hundred thousand years .
21
•
Each of the toxic substances above will be present at the
carlsbad WIPP proJect either permanently or on an experimental
basis.
As an initial operation, it will be responsible for
0030~
housing wastes from the seventy nuclear power reactors which
22
.
- an d t h e over 500 reactors which are projecte d
a 1rea d y ex~st,
to exist by the year 2000. 23 Over 600,000 gallons of
commercial liquid high-level wastes and about 4,000 metric
tons of commercial waste in spent fuel rods already exist. 24
Measured by long-lived radioactivity, this inventory is
expected to double within three to four years, and will be
twenty times greater by the end of the century. 25
II. Problems
a. Problem 1:
Unsatisfactory Safety Record
Checkered with missteps, negligence and overzeal, the
history of waste management and disposal in the United States
has been far from satisfactory.
For example, in 1952 through 1966, mill tailings were
psed extensively as construction fill in houses, schools,
businesses, sidewalks and highways in Grand Junction, Colorado.26
The danger was only realized in 1972, when a remedial
program was instituted to remove the hazard from 700 locations. 27
The remedial program was put on an entirely voluntary basis,
and few local contractors have been interested in performing
the work. 28 No regulatory action was ever undertaken by the
federal government to prevent this noncompliance or to compel
•
any effective cleanun.
Other instances of gross mismanagement include contamination of public water supplies.
As early as 1958, it was
discovered that the drinking water in two towns below Durango,
003)0
Colorado--Aztec and Farmington, New Mexico--contained concentrations of radioactivity exceeding federal standards. 29
Radioactive concentrations in the river flora and fauna were
100 to 10,000 times the concentrations found in the river
30
water itself.
Grasses and alfalfa irrigated with the
water and consumed by livestock contained radiation 100
.
.
t 1mes
grea t er th an th e r1ver
water. 31
In the Grants Mineral Belt of New Mexico, the The
Environmental Protection Agency in 1974 found that the problem
continued to exist.
Water discharges from uranium mining and
processing in the Belt were found to contain certain poisonous
32
chemicals 7,300 percent in excess of EPA standards.
Contamination of the drinking water near the sites were found
to grossly exceed drinking water standards and to pose a
health hazard to the employees and their families. 33
Perhaps most pertinent to the Carlsbad project in terms
of similarity is the case of West Valley, New York, where
all commercial high-level wastes are currently stored.
Plans
for the project initially contemplated that all liquid wastes
could be stored indefinitely in near-surface storage tanks.
But the project was without foresight; though envisioning
repeated transfers of the wastes as old storage tanks deteriorated, no plan ever existed that ensured a safe transfer.
Even worse, to date no safe method of removing and transfering
wastes
has~been
developed, and additional special research
34
must now be conducted.
The cost of remedying the West Valley situation has been
estimated at 600 million dollars, and implementation of any
06~-:
---~
effective cleanup operation could take another fourteen
35
years.
And finally, among the still unresolved questions
is who will finance and implement the clean-up operation-the site operator, the state of New York, or the federal
government. 36
Serious safety flaws, then, have pervaded the history
of radioactive waste management and disposal.
But in these
cases previously considered, one may argue that the dangers
incurred in those instances were problems arising from the
interim storage dillemma.
When a permanent waste repository
was found, one would argue, these problems of ina~rlquate
temporary disposal would be alleviated.
This leads to the second area of possible problems for
Carlsbad:
assuming no negligence or mismanagement , as was
present in the cases above, will the site of Carlsbad be
safe?
The proposed answer in Carlsbad--storage of waste in
bedded salt deposits--must be examined in order to give any
credence to the federal government's assurance that a safe
disposal site will be developed in Carlsbad.
b. Problem 2:
The
Propo~ed
Solution
Shortly after passage of the Atomic Energy Act in 1954,
the Atomic Energy Commission and its advisors focused on
bedded salt deposits as the most likely underground geologic
formation eor the disposal of the long-lived nuclear wastes .
37
•
But a 1978 Department of Energy report now questions the
government's almost exclusive focus upon bedded salt deposits
and recommends that a variety of other geologic media be
- 9 -
003~~
considered more seiously before any permanent disposal site
is begun.
The dichotomy highlights important unresolved
scientific and technical problems which exist in spite of
Carlsbad's acquiescence to the site location.
In the most recent past, the favorite engineering solution of the nuclear industry to the problem of storage has
been the transformation of wastes from their granular state
to a glass state, then storage in bedded salt deposits. 38
But the U.S. Geological Survey, the Office of Science and
Technology Policy of the White House, the Department of
Energy's Sandia national laboratory, independent scientists from
a wide range of institutions, and Swedish researchers have
all found fallacies in the glassified waste in bedded salt
deposits approach.
The following exerpt from an environmentalist group
newsletter examines, in question and answer form, some of
the considerations which should be examined before construetion of the first permanent disposal site begins.
In short,
it examines the mode in which Carlsbad will dispose of nuclear
wastes and some possible ramifications:
Q: The nuclear industry says the waste disposal problem isn't
so serious. It says we can convert nuclear wastes into a
glass and store the glassified wastes in a salt mine. What's
wrong with this?
•
A: The problem with that solution is that it has been utterly
discredited by just about every scientific group that has
looked at it in the past two or tpree years. The U.S. Geological Survey, industry scientists in Sweden, independent teams
1475'74
at Penn State, and two laboratories of the Pepartment of Energy
have found fatal flaws in glass and in salt. Minute amounts
of water have.be~n foun~ betwe~n crystals in bedded salt
deposits. This water migrates toward a heat source, like a
radioactive waste canister. When the water reaches the
canister, it will be hot (300-400 degrees centigrade) and
salty, and recent tests show it capable of corroding almost
anything. The strongest glass tested has been obsidian. It
lasted one day. According to David Stewart, chief of the
experimental geochemistry and mineralogy branch of the U.S.
Geological Survey, 'the mystique has built up that salt is
dry and it's okay. Salt is not dry and it's not okay.'
Q: After 20 years of research on waste disposal and 30 years
of waste generation, why do we discover this now? It's
unbelievable that these things weren't known earlier.
A: That's right. But according to a prominent Stanford
geochemist, William Luth, the only exhaustive tests on glass
were done ten years ago at room temperature with distilled
water! In May 1978, a group of scientists at Pennsylvania
State University published a short report in Nature, the
British scientific journal, that fell like a bomb on the
nuclear industry. The group te~ted borosilicate glass at the
temperatures (300-400 degrees centigrade) expected in a
sealed repository. It broke into little pieces in less
than two weeks. Twelve percent of the cesium leached out
into the water and 'millimeter-size radiating yellow needles
were growing on the specimen and throughout the capsule.'
Tests in Sweden and at the Department of Energy's Battelle
Northwest Labs confirmed that strontium and cesium--the two
most dangerous short-lived waste products--leach into solution
in less than a week at high water temperatures. These tests
were with fresh water; with salt water, the tests were
catastrophic. As Dr. Stewart of the USGS has noted, 'the
- 11 -
003~~
only waste forms stable in dense brines are the noble metals
like gold and the high titanium minerals.' Nuclear wastes
are neither of these.
Q: It's still astounding that we've spent two decades thinking
about putting glassified wastes in salt mines and no one ever
tested what hot salt water would do to the glass. What reason
was used to select salt?
A: There were at least two good reasons for picking salt as a
disposal medium. It is 'plastic' or 'self-healing' when
heated and it dissolves in water. The latter doesn't sound
like a good reason, but the argument goes that if salt's
been there a million years, water hasn't. Hence, put waste
in it. The second argument has been seriously eroded--so to
speak--by the discovery and analysis of minute water migration
toward heat sources in salt. You have to remember that U.S.
waste policy has been a.paper exercise. A federally appointed
panel of eminent earth scientists chaired by Siever of Harvard
and Giletti of Brown University, reported recently, 'We are
surprised and dismayed to discover how few relevant data are
available on most of the candidate rock types even thirty
years after wastes began to accumulate from weapons development.
We are only now just learning about the problem of water in
salt beds and the need for careful measurement of water in
salt domes.' The first argument in favor of salt was its
plasticity or ability to heal cracks. But even here, salt's
advantage has been washed away. Instead of plugging holes or
cracks, such as those made during the original mine excavation,
heated salt is likely to expand, flow upward around the canisters,
leaving the containers to plummet, in the words of the Stanford
geochemist.Luth, 'like lead into water.'
•
Q: What's wrong with having the waste go further into the earth?
- 12 -
003~3
A: The problem is deep-plowing underground rivers. One
well-known aquifer ;:lies beneath the Waste Isolation Pilot
39
. New Mex1co,
.
·
a propose d d.1sposa1 s1te.
Pl ant 1n
The article, continuing, graphically illustrates the
Carlsbad project:
where its unanswered questions exist and
possible dangers lie:
rrnnm
•- - -
AOUIFF.R
- 13 -
40
One fact which has changed significantly since the
August 1980 publication of this article is that Carlsbad,
New Mexico is-no longer a proposed site; the project was
given a go-ahead in late January 1981, and construction
will begin in June, as I have mentioned earlier.
Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information
Center has recognized the danger of the WIPP plan: "There
are a couple of areas within the boundaries of the site
where the seismic measurements show anomalous activity.
They can't tell what's there, but it's not what it should
b e. u41 Hancock said some of his colleagues believe that
salt beds, thought to have formed and stabilized about 30
million years ago, are in an active deep dissolution process
caused by underground water. 42
It should be pointed out that any miscalculations on
the formation's stability could be disastrous even if involving only low-level wastes.
The Carlsbad site will also
include an area for research on high-level wastes.
Joe
McGough, WIPP director who announced the construd.tion goahead, said that though the Carlsbad program had not been
entirely defined, it will definitely include about 40
canisters of high-level nuclear waste.
He said the program
is designed to find out the effect of high-level waste, largely
43
plutonium, on salt beds.
In ot4er words, the Carlsbad program is designed to rebut,
•
by experimentation, the conclusions which at least one section
of the scientific community has drawn--that the effect of
. - 14 -
003:.7
nuclear wastes on salt beds is both highly speculative and
potentially very hazardous to the biosphere with which it comes
in contact.
But let us assume for the sake of argument that Carlsbad
realizes its role as merely an experimental nuclear dump and
no longer has the zeal for the project that it currently
expresses.
What then?
Will it be able to revoke its commit-
ment to house the permanent site?
This problem has very
recently posed perhaps the greatest possible threat--the
inability of a municipality, or even state to regulate against
federal imposition of nuclear facilities.
This federal
preemption would be a disability which would prevent the
locality's preservation of the safety and welfare of its
citizens.
c. Problem 3: State Inability to Protect Its Interests
In 1971, at the outset of development of the Carlsbad
project, a New Mexico congressional delegation sought the
power to veto the WIPP project should public outcry become
43
too strong.
The effort failed, signalling the federal
preemptory notion that the nation's interests should come
first. 44 Since, the delegation has succeeded in attaching an
amendment to the plant's authorization allowing the state
consultation rights with the Department of Energy. 45 But
these
cons~ltation
rights, advisory in nature, have no affirm-
•
ative role in the state's duty to protect its citizens.
- 15 -
003~8
Therefore, the 1971 preemptive federal decision to disallow
state veto power on the
WIPP project's direction would also
disallow any state legislation-designed to protect the
public health, safety and welfare with respect to the storage
and disposal of nuclear waste.
To illustrate the 1971 decision's ominous precedence,
one may examine the case law arising during the same year.
The scope of federal preemption in the nuclear field was
defined by the principal decision in the area, Northern States
Power Co. v. State of Minnesota. 46 Northern States invalidated
Minnesota's attempt to impose radioactive emission standards
that were more stringent than the federal standards on the
basis that the state's standards were preempted by federal law.
In a recent article by Donald J. Moran, 47 however, he
discusses at length the direction in which this precedent of
federal preemption has expanded.
A recent federal district
court decision in California, Pacific Legal Foundation v.
State Energy Resources Conservation and Development Cornmission,
has held that there is a complete preclusion on states from
regulating on the subject of nuclear waste disposal.
In doing
so, it has expanded federal preemption to prohibit any state
legislation designed to protect its citizens with respect to
the storage and disposal of nuclear waste.
The California federal court had, in part, considered a
49
section of:the California Public Resources Code
which
provided that no nuclear power plant could be certified in the
state of California unless the California State Energy
- ~~003_!}
48
Resources Conservation and Development Commission (1) found
that the 'authorized United States Agency' had approved a
technology for the disposal of. high-level nuclear wastes and
(2) reported its findings to the state legislature, which had
the power to disaffirm them. 50
The court held the section of the Code unconstitutional,
enunciating two grounds for its decision.
First, the court
found that Congress had impliedly preempted any state legislation on the subject of nuclear waste disposal when it
passed the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and its amendments in
51
1959.
Second, the court perceived the statute to be "an
obstacle to the purposes and objectives of Congress as stated
in the Atomic Energy Act." 52
States like New Mexico, when confronted with this expanding power of federal preemption in nuclear waste regulation,
are unable to properly evaluate their responsibility to promote
the public health, safety and welfare, and thus are frustrated
·in their attempts to prevent overzealous development of the
nuclear industry and its regulation.
Conclusion
There should be growing concern in the United States,
and especially in Carlsbad, New Mexico, about how to safely
and effectively
manage increasing quantities of radioactive
.
•
wastes being generated.
As I have attempted to show in my
discussion, the dangers are great, risks are high, and a
state may be continually disabled in any attempt to exercise
its power to prevent federal encroachment into its environment.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has admitted that
until 1970, whatever waste management policy that had existed
had been more. or-less ad hoc. 5 3
Repeated efforts from 1970
until January 1981 reflected failure by the government to
establish a permanent repository for two fundamental reasons-uncertainties in scientific projections and hesitance at public
outcry.
In the late 1960's, the government selected a site to
locate its first WIPP project--an abandoned salt mine near
Lyons, Kansas.
However, later investigation disclosed, among
other things, that water from adjacent mining operations might
seep into the repository and dissolve the salt containing the
waste.
In early 1972, the Lyons, Kansas, site was abandoned. 54
Then, in 1972, the Atomic Energy Commission announced
plans to build another facility to store nuclear wastes
for an indeterminable period of time, while the long search for
an acceptable, safe geologic site continued.
But in 1975
congressional appropriations were withdrawn, focusing more
pressure than ever before to find a stable geologic site.
The 1972 plan, however, has been retained as a backup system in
55
case "other repository plans failed."
With the renewed interest in the development of a deep
geologic repository, efforts were increased to locate a
suitable site.
~
In 1976, a salt formation in the state of Michigan
was promoted for investigation.
However, in June 1977, after
residents of northern Michigan had voted overwhelmingly to
prohibit the siting of a waste repository within their area, the
federal government, though under no obligation to do so,
abandoned its efforts to locate the first WIPP there. 56
A recent report of a Department of Energy task force
on radioactive waste management 57 clarifies how much uncertainty still surrounds the government's efforts to establish
the Carlsbad WIPP project site.
First, the task force notes
that the "federal gove_rnment, as an entity, has not formally
reached a conclusion on ultimate disposal of high-level
58
wastes."
Second, the report's conclusion that the federal
government's previous target deadline of 1985 for the permanent repository will now be delayed until 1988 "at the earliest
date" signals the prospect of the Carlsbad site's prematurity.
Third, the report questions the government's focus on bedded
salt deposits as the most stable medium.
It points out that
fundamental questions continue to exist about which geologic
medium is most appropriate for nuclear waste disposal, and
recommends that a variety of other geologic media be considered
more seriously. 59 And fourth, the report realizes that several
'
important technical issues remain unresolved, and calls for
further efforts in "developing scientific data, safety analysis
and systems models to improve the scientific bases for specific
60
media choice, site selection and repository designs."
The experiences with radioactive waste management in the
past have not inspired public confidence that the wastes are or
..
will be pr6perly processed, stored, or disposed of in the government's first permanent disposal site in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
- 19 -
003~
Important unresolved scientific and technical problems concerning
waste disposal remain, and the only way to ensure against the
possibility of any disaster is ·to compete with the current
commercial zeal of Carlsbad and the nuclear industry.
Without
opposition, we as a race may well be trapped by the industry
into a short-order solution which will, indeed, explode on
the next generation.
- 20 -
FOOTNOTES
1. Associated Press, "Nuclear Waste Dump Okayed Near Carlsbad,"
The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, January 24, 1981, at A-8.
-
2. Id.
3. 43 Fed. Reg. 30,331 (1978).
4. E. Davis, "Carlsbad Nuclear Opposition Fades," The Lubbock
Avalanche-Journal, February 1, 1981, at A-1, A-16.
5. Id. at A-16.
6. Id.
7. Id.
8. The NRC was given licensing responsibility over nuclear
activities, including licensing of nuclear reactors, 42
U.S.C. §5843 (1976), and waste disposal facilities, 42 U.
S.C. §5842 (1976). Pursuant to section 301 of the Department of Energy Organization Act, 42 U.S.C. §7151 (Supp.
1977), NRC's nuclear waste management development and
research functions were transferred to the Department of
Energy (DOE).
9. 42 u.s.c. §§2011-2296 (1976); 42 u.s.c. §§5801-5891 (1976).
10. 42 u.s.c. §§4321-4361 (1976).
11. H. Linker, "Radioactive Waste: Gaps in the Regulatory
System," Denver,,Law Jour .1 (1979).
The followTng expTanation is attributable to the portion
of the article discussing uranium mill tailings, high-level
and low-level wastes.
12. Pohl, Health Effects of Radon-222 From Uranium Mining,
7 Search 345, 346-48 (1976).
13. U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Summary Report: Phase I
-Study of Inactive Uranium Mine Sites and Tailing Piles,
==
9-10 (October 1974).
"
14. U.S. Ge.neral Accounting Office, Uranium Hill Tailings
-Cleanuo: Federal Leadership At Last? 1 (June 20, 1978)
[hereinafter GAO Mill Report].
--
- i
-
15. U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Nuclear Power Growth 19742000, Wash 1139 at 29 (February 1974).
16. GAO Mill Report, supra note 14, at 1.
17. H. Linker, supra note 11, at 5.
18. 12 C.F.R. §50 App. F (1978).
19. Executive Office of the President, Energy Policy and Planning,
--The National Energy Plan 70 (April 29, 1977).
20. Bair and Thompson, Plutonium: Biomedical Research, 183 Science
715, 720 (1974).
21. Id.
22. U.S. Department of Energy, Nuclear Generating Units In the
United States as of June 30, 1978 (August 9, 1978).
23. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Final Generic Environ==
mental Statement on the Use of Recycled Plutonium in Mixed
== ------ ---== == -- ~===
Oxide Fuel in Light Water Cooled Reactors, NUREG-0002,
Executive Summary, at S-12 (August 1976).
24. U.S. Department of Energy, Report of Task ~orce for Review
of Nuclear Waste Management, DOE/ER-ooo4/D 66 (February
1978).
25. Id.
26. GAO Mill Report, supra note 14, at 21.
-27. Id.
28. Id. at 22-25.
29. Union of Concerned Scientists, The Nuclear Fuel Cycle 47 (1975).
-
-
30. Id.
31. Id.
32. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Water Quality Impacts
-of Uranium Mining and Milling Activities in the Grants
----Mineral Belt, New Mexico, No. 6/9/75/002 58 (September 1975).
33. Id. at 60
34. House Crimm. on Government ~erations, West Valley and the
=-Nuclear Dilemma, H.R. Rep. No. 755, 95th Cong. 1st Sess.
16 (1977).
- ii -
35. Id.
36. Id.
37. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory ~ission, Environmental Survey
-of the Reprocessing and Waste Manag;ment Portions of the
LWR Fuel Cycle - A Task Force Report, NUREG-0116, ( Supp.
==.
=
1 to WASH-1248)at D-2 (October 1976).
38. J. Harding, "The Nuclear Blowdown: The Devilish Problem of
Radioactive Waste," Friends of the Earth Foundation Newsletter (August 1980) at 14.
39. Id.
40. Id. at 15.
41. Associated Press, supra note 1, at A-8.
42. Id.
43. Id.
- 44 . I d . at A-1 .
45. Id.
46. 447 F.2d 1143 (8th Cir. 1971), aff'd mem., Minnesota v.
Northern States Power Co., 405 U.S. 1035 (1972)
47. D. J. Moran, "Regulating the Disposal of Nuclear Waste",
Vol. 85, No. 5, Case and Comment (Sept.-Oct. 1980), at 20.
48. 12 Env. Rep. (BNA) 1899, 1906 (S.D.Ca1. 1979).
49. Cal. Pub. Res. Code §25524.2 (1977).
50.
51.
52.
53.
Moran, supra note 47, at 20.
Id. at 22, 25.
Id. at 22.
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Environmental Survey
-of the Reprocessing and Waste Management Portions of the
---LWR Fuel C-;-rcle- A Task Force Report, supra note 37, at D-3.
--- --
- -
.JI
54. Id.
55. Id. at D-4.
56. U.S. General Accounting Office, Report to the Congress, The
-U~ited States Nuclear Energy Dilemma: Disposing of Hazardous Radioactive \vastes Safely 15 (September 9, 1977).
-
- iii -
57.
58.
59.
60.
Supra,
-Id. at
Id. at
Id. at
note 37.
7.
9' 52.3, 9, 26.
.
-
•
- iv 0~('..,
~
0 ti.