WILL VERMONT SECEDE?

Switching on NPR the other day I heard the end of a debate whether Vermont should secede from the Union. "Lithuania is not afraid of Soviet tanks any more; why should we be afraid of the federal government?" said one speaker. "Gorbachev has his hands full with such problems; why should George Bush sit in Washington without any worries?" The profundity of thought and the urgency of the subject left little doubt that the debate took place in the halls of higher learning¾a conclusion confirmed by a vote of 151 to 55 in favor of secession.

But more important than the debate was the reason for it: Ver-mont may become subject to a tyrannical injustice¾dispose of the low-level wastes (LLW) it generates. By the 1980 LLW Act, the US is divided into regions, in each of which states may either join a compact with other states to dispose of their LLW, or do so for themselves. Most states have by now joined a compact, but some, such as California, Texas, and evidently Vermont, have not.

You would think LLW would be defined by an upper limit of activity in curies per kilogram; but to lawyers they are wastes other than defined by Sec. ### of CFR %%%, as amended, unless of course, except if, and notwithstanding . . . it is one of the ways in which lawyers make themselves needed by delivering garbage that only they can decontaminate. But in the end LLW amounts to fairly innocuous waste with high volume and low radioactivity; it can be safely disposed of in simple drums buried at a dump¾a special dump, for the duration of the hysteria. It needs little or no shielding and most of it can be handled without protection other than gloves (which protect from dirt and injury more than from radioactivity). Of all the radioactive waste generated by power reac-tors, defense projects, industry, and hospitals, LLW amounts to 99% of the total volume, but only to 1% of the radioactivity.

LLW includes general trash such as workers' gloves or broken glass that may be slightly contaminated by radioactive material. For power reactors, much of it comes from filters cleaning the cooling water and from replacements of corroded parts of its pipes. If everything were perfect, the cooling water would need no care, for it runs in a closed, shielded circuit. However, due to pin-hole leaks both fission products and neutron-activated material may penetrate into the water and then out of the cooling circuit. The water you drink with your lunch is, of course, radioactive also, but in cooling water the activity is not allowed to rise above 5 picocuries per liter without special reports and countermeasures. The average activity of US drinking water varies between 0 and 6.5 pCi/l, but in the Western states it can go as high as 440 pCi/l (1). When it reaches or exceeds such levels, it is bottled, drunk, and bathed in for a con-siderable charge in hopes of restoring the health of the buyer¾as in Lourdes, Bad Gastein and other famous spas.