- Press Release
- Contact -
- David Ritter (202) 454-5176
- Erica Hartman (202) 454-5174
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- "Non-Regulatory Approach" to Radioactive Waste
Handling Would Jeopardize Communities with Further, Widespread Contamination
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- WASHINGTON, D.C. --
Today's Federal Register announcement of a possible rulemaking by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) raises the prospect that the government's
primary environmental guardian is willing to compromise its mission in
order to support and promote the nuclear power and weapons industries,
Public Citizen said, and would therefore pose serious dangers to public
health and the environment. The notice specifically addresses "simplified,"
"non-regulatory approaches" to the management of some types of
nuclear waste that could include incineration and dumping in facilities
not specifically licensed to handle radioactive materials, including municipal
landfills.
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- The notice was developed with significant cooperation
and coordination from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) over
18 months and, apparently, with some input from the U.S. Department of
Energy (DOE).
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- Currently, the NRC and DOE are the two primary federal
proponents of policies that allow certain radioactive wastes to be released
from regulatory control and dumped into fully unregulated, unrestricted
environments, including recycling streams that produce everyday consumer
products such as bicycles, bed springs and frying pans.
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- In proposing its own rule and requesting public comment,
the EPA is now giving its approval to the idea that the deregulation and
subsequent widespread dispersal of many nuclear wastes is worthy of consideration.
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- "The public should be warned that the EPA appears
to be captured by yet another polluting industry that it should be strictly
regulating," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical
Mass Energy and Environment Program. "By seeking to lighten the so-called
'regulatory burden' on industries that produce massive quantities of nuclear
waste, and by proposing that radiation should become an acceptable pollutant,
the EPA is making clear that we can't count on them to do their job and
protect the public."
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- It is significant that the EPA is considering a rulemaking
on the issue of nuclear waste dumping in conjunction with the NRC. The
current NRC efforts are essentially a repackaging of their earlier attempt,
developed in the 1980s under pressure from the nuclear industry, to allow
the release of radioactive waste. Radioactively-contaminated waste materials
given the deceptively innocuous description of being "below regulatory
concern" (BRC) were to be labeled as safe, and eligible for unrestricted
release from nuclear facilities, where they could be incinerated, reused,
dumped or recycled. After a massive outcry from environmental, consumer,
labor and citizen groups, Congress banned the BRC policy in 1992.
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- The NRC is presently conducting a rulemaking on the issue,
and their current policy permits all types of radioactively-contaminated
materials to be released or recycled without restrictions on a "case-by-case"
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- basis. Should the NRC standardize the policy via their
rulemaking, the floodgates would be opened for the public to be exposed
-- without their knowledge or consent -- to radiation from a wide variety
of sources, including refuse from nuclear reactors.
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- "What makes the EPA think that the public would
now approve of having nuclear waste dumped in their communities' landfills
-- most of which leak like a sieve -- or recycled into their kitchen utensils?"
asked David Ritter, a policy analyst with Public Citizen's Critical Mass
Energy and Environment Program. "The EPA should study the public response
to BRC, and the 1992 legislation which banned it. That might give them
a hint of what people think of this awful idea."
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- Already, many existing landfills are contaminated with
radiation, despite lacking the design or safeguards to isolate and contain
the radiation. A report earlier this year indicated that many California
landfills have measurable radioactive contamination, some of which is leaking
into groundwater and exceeding limits in safe drinking water standards.
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- "The policy EPA is considering here is akin to buying
bigger pants to solve a weight problem, and the more disposal 'alternatives'
the nuclear industry is given, the more waste they will produce,"
said Ritter.
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- "Public health and the environment are being jeopardized
to save nuclear waste generators big bucks. To use the EPA's term, 'non-regulatory'
management is no regulation at all."
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- The EPA will be accepting comments through March 17,
2004. Public Citizen will be submitting comments soon, and will post them
at <outbind://2/www.citizen.org/cmep>www.citizen.org/cmep .
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- **********
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- To learn more about this and other Public Citizen Critical
Mass Energy and Environment Program campaigns, visit our website at <http://www.citizen.org/cmep/>http://www.citizen.org/cmep/
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- Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment
Program
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