NUCLEAR WASTES

First of all, the charges against nuclear wastes always omit to mention the miniscule amount of wastes involved, after the fission products in the fuel rods have been reprocessed to reclaim the valuable nuclear fuel. Dr R.P. Hammond, a widely respected and experienced nuclear scientist, points out that the waste produced by one person's annual share of the US electric output (if it were entirely nuclear) has the volume of one aspirin tablet, and it would take the entire US capacity (if it were all nuclear) 350 years to accumulate a waste volume of a cube 200 ft on a side (Am.Scientist, March 1974). Compare this to a coal-fired plant, which produces 320 lbs of wastes per person per year, and lO% of that goes into the air. Nuclear wastes, if improperly handled and disposed of, might cause cancer; fossilburning plants do cause it (and other diseases), about 100 times more by air pollution alone than all phases of nuclear power for the same output.

But miniscule or not, nuclear wastes are lethal, aren't they? Of course they are, if they get into food and drinking water. But not as lethal as some other stuff. Dr Bernard Cohen of the U. of Pittsburgh, a past President of the American Physical Society, points to arsenic trioxide, a widely used pesticide. First, it is 50 times more toxic than nuclear wastes (in weight per mean lethal dose); second, about 10 times as much of it is imported into the US than the wastes that would be produced if all US power were nuclear; third, it is not buried deep underground in carefully chosen geological formations, but scattered on the surface, especially where food is grown. "Nuclear wastes will be with us for a very long time," says Dr Cohen, "but the arsenic will be with us forever."

Arsenic, shmarsenic, nuclear wastes are radioactive, aren't they? Yes; and if buried underground, they're in plenty of company. In the first 2,000 feet under the US, there is radioactive material containing a total of 30 trillion cancer doses. It wasn't put there by Exxon, nor the AEC, nor the Pentagon; it was put there by Mother Nature. It is the uranium and its daughters (derivatives through radioactive decay) deposited underground. The damage done by this material finding its way into food and drink can be accurately estimated from autopsies revealing the amounts of each radioactive isotope in each organ of the human body: About 12 Americans die this way each year. These figures enabled Dr Cohen to calculate the probable deaths if nuclear wastes were simply buried 2000 ft deep at totally random locations in the US. The expected number would be 0.4 eventual deaths over the next million years for each year of nuclear power.

In reality, of course, nuclear wastes will not be buried at random, nor only 2000 ft deep, as in Dr Cohen's calculation. The main reason why the final disposal of nuclear wastes has not been "resolved" (in the legal sense, by NRC regulation) is that the problem is not at all pressing; there are at least two decades in which to study the many viable options.

If it is decided to make the wastes retrievable, they can - among other possibilities - be buried in salt formations known to have been undisturbed for hundreds of millions of years. If retrievability is not required, the problem is even easier. For example, Dr Gary Farmer (author of Unready Kilowatts, see AtE Apr.75) suggests lowering them down the holes of underground nuclear explosions on the Nevada test site. What is already down there would hardly notice the newcomers.

These are only two of several other methods of waste disposal. Most scientists, however, suggest that we keep our options open by depositing the small amounts of present wastes in retrievable storage for the next 30 years or so, in case a use is found for them later; this time can also be used to determine the best among the several methods of final disposal.

[More: Managing Nuclear Wastes by J.Grey, Atomic Industr. Forum 1974; Nuclear Energy & the Future, from Westinghouse, Box 158, Madison, PA 15663.