Don't Waste South Carolina

Since passage of the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act of 1980, there were plans to build around 13 new "low-level" nuclear waste dumps in the U.S. -- one in each groups of states that formed into compacts." Of the nation's six "low-level" nuke dumps (most of which is for waste from nuclear reactors, even though they pretend it's mostly for medical waste), all of them have leaked and three were still open at the time (the ones in SC, NV and WA).

To relieve these states, they were to be allowed to discontinue taking waste by 1986, but as grassroots efforts stop every new nuke dump proposal planned under the compact system, the deadlines for closing Barnwell, South Carolina's dump kept slipping back, with the help of their state legislature (and pressure from the nuclear utilities).

South Carolina was supposed to be part of a compact that included North Carolina, where North Carolina (the state creating the most nuclear waste) was to host the first new dump. However, when activists stopped that proposed dump, South Carolina pulled out of the southeast compact and for many years has been continuing to take waste from all states but those in the western U.S. (which send their waste to the dump in Washington).

In 2000, South Carolina joined the "Atlantic Compact" which was just New Jersey and Connecticut. NJ and CT both had tried building their own dumps, but activists stopped these in the 1990s as well. On March 28th (anniversary of the Three Mile Island meltdown), a committee of the South Carolina state legislature defeated with a 0-16-2 vote a bill that would have extended the deadline (from 2008 to 2023) for when the Barnwell, SC dump will start taking waste ONLY from their compact.

Unless the nuclear utilities manage to change the minds of the South Carolina legislature, they nuclear industry in most of the country will need to find other places to dump their "low-level" nuclear waste (which is basically all waste from nuclear reactors except for the fuel rods themselves, which are legally defined as high-level).

For a rather old article I did on the loopholes involved in what "low-level" means, see: http://www.energyjustice.net/nuclear/loophole.html If Barnwell is REALLY going to finally close their doors to all but SC, NJ and CT, the waste will have to flow somewhere, and we need to figure out where that will be, so we can stop these as well (and by giving them no place to dump, help ensure that they stop making the waste in the fist place).

A map of the compacts can be found here: http://www.nrc.gov/waste/llw-disposal/compacts.htmlLegally, a state is required to develop a nuclear waste dump site if they aren't in a compact or -- if they are -- if they're the state with the largest nuclear waste generation within their compact. [Note: EnergySolutions of Utah (www.energysolutions.com) is the new operator of the Barnwell nuke dump, which used to be run by Chem-Nuclear Systems, Inc. -- which was a subsidiary of Chemical Waste Management, which was a division of Waste Management, Inc. -- the world's largest waste corporation. EnergySolutions is also now the operator of the "not-quite-low-level" dump in Clive, Utah which used to be run by a company called EnviroCare. The Utah dump is an unlined dump on the salt flats which takes high-volume, low-activity nuclear waste (a subset of "low-level" nuclear waste) from around the nation. The websites for these dumps can be found through here: http://www.energysolutions.com/Disposal/disposal.php]

Mike Ewall
Energy Justice Network
http://www.energyjustice.net