CONGRESS AND THE COMPACTS

Technically, then, LLW are a super-non-problem, and the only difficulties are institutional. If you look at the advertisements by various State Depts. of Commerce promising paradise for any enterprise that will come to their state to pay taxes, you would think South Carolina would fight like a lion to rebuff any state that dared question its historical and geological preordainement for the cherished prize of getting the LLW dump. But then, politicians do not care about the economy of their states or the well-being of their constituents: they care about being reelected. No nuclear wastes in our back yard!

Therefore in 1980 Congress passed...

Ah, yes, Congress. I sidetracked myself while discussing its qualifications as low-level radioactive waste. I think we are agreed on the matter of low level and waste, so consider its radioactivity.

It is not the same for all its members. To take two staunch antinukes as an example, Sen. Kennedy is more radioactive than Rep. Markey, not because the former is more venomous, but because he is more opulently corpulent; by the tables of Standard Man published by the Public Health Service (1970), Markey is definitely substandard. The total activity (disintegrations/sec) of a body depends not only on the type of radioisotopes in it, but also on their number, which clearly increases with the mass of the body. Hence Sen. Kennedy's unquestionable radioactive superiority.

The same tables give the body content of certain elements of Standard Man (weight 70 kg): 16 kg of carbon and 140 g of potassium, the two elements which include the two most active radioisotopes in the human body, carbon 14 and potassium 40. (There is also strontium, cesium and radium in the body, but not in significant quantities.) From the specific activity of carbon (227 becquerels per kg of naturally occurring carbon) and that of potassium 40 (60 Bq/kg of body weight), that makes about 211 nanocuries. Double that for Sen. Kennedy's estimated 300 lbs, and you have him polluting the environment with 15,664 radioactive disintegrations per second; and even the Hon. Markey's body, such as it is, is radioactive with some 6,000 becquerels.

Truth to tell, that is very little, even as LLW goes. But who am I to contradict Dr John Gofman, the favorite radiation scholar of these two? "There is no safe level of radiation," quoth Gofman, branding both of them as walking carcinogens.

Congress, then, passed the LLW Policy Act in 1980, and when states balked, amended it with various sticks and carrots in 1985. At present, only three LLW sites are available (in S.C., Nev. and Wash.). By 1 July of next year, states must either declare their intent to build their own disposal sites or join a compact with others, selecting a common disposal site; after January 1993, they may deny access to LLW from outside the compact. State governments will take possession of the LLW and will be responsible for them, extracting lucrative charges and surcharges per cubic foot from the disposers, who will merrily pass them on to the consumer.

All of which smacks of a command economy. In a truly free economy, the government is the legal user of force against wrongdoers and nothing else; it therefore has no business to meddle in LLW other than to provide courts where aggrieved parties may seek redress. The threat of having to compensate a plaintiff whose water was polluted is surely a stronger deterrent against sloppiness than a bunch of bureaucrats whose main motive is to be important.

Meanwhile, I suggest that antinukes be consistent and boycott all products that produce LLW. They should stop reading The Nation, Mother Jones, Ms. and The New Yorker, refuse to visit physicians or hospitals that use radioisotopes for diagnostics and therapy; and above all, stop using toilet paper.

[More: The AIF has just published an excellent booklet Low Level Radioactive Waste: Building a Perspective. $2 from AIF, 7101 Wisconsin Ave., Bethesda, MD 20814. As for His Chappaquiddic Majesty, it has been suggested that he holds his seat illegally. For details, send a 22-cent stamp to Hopfmann, Box 224, Sterling, MA 01564.]