[RADMETAL] Action: oppose free-release of radioactive waste

[Guest guest]

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 16:56:51 -0500

" Joseph Malherek " <jmalherek

 

 

[RADMETAL] Action: oppose free-release of radioactive waste

 

 

 

 

This e-mail contains several items:

 

(1) An ACTION ALERT for organizations to endorse a letter to the U.S.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) calling for the cessation of

efforts

to deregulate and release radioactive waste.

(2) Accompanying BACKGROUND information on the deregulation effort and

the text of the LETTER to the NRC.

(3) A PRESS RELEASE about Public Citizen's opposition to an NRC plan to

cloak industry information with a new " Safeguards " rule.

 

==========

 

!!! A C T I O N A L E R T !!!

 

OPPOSE THE DEREGULATION OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE!

 

ORGANIZATIONS: Sign on to a letter [see text below] to the NRC calling

for a cessation of efforts to deregulate and release radioactive waste!

 

TO SIGN, please e-mail the following contact information to Diane

D'Arrigo (dianed) at the Nuclear Information and Resource

Service (NIRS): your name, title, organization name, city, and, state.

Please include " rad waste letter " in the subject line.

 

THE DEADLINE is TOMORROW, Wednesday, March 30th, at 6 p.m. Eastern

time.

 

If you have any questions, contact Melissa Kemp at Public Citizen

(202-454-5176) or Diane D'Arrigo at NIRS (202-328-0002 ext. 16).

 

==========

 

BACKGROUND:

 

Stop the NRC from Authorizing the Release of Low-Level Radioactive

Waste into Communities!

 

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Staff is expected to submit a

" Controlling the Disposition of Solid Materials " rulemaking package to

the Commission by the end of March. The proposal, however, has nothing

to do with control.

 

Specificially, the proposal is to instigate a rulemaking to once again

try to deregulate significant portions of the " low-level " radioactive

waste stream, permitting nuclear material to go to unlicensed sites

such

as local municipal garbage dumps, hazardous waste sites, and recyclers

for transformation into consumer goods and construction materials.

Landfills are known to contaminate nearby soil and drinking water, and

recycled materials are used throughout our cities, suburbs, and rural

communities. There is no safe level of exposure to ionizing radiation.

 

In addition, the NRC staff is moving to present this misnamed

rulemaking to the Commission without making the recommendation

immediately public, and without scheduling a Commission meeting to hear

from staff and key stakeholders.

 

Don't let the NRC proceed in this manner! This is a regulatory agency

whose stated number-one priority is the protection of public health!

The

release of radioactive waste into our communities is dangerous and

unacceptable, and decisions of this importance should not be done

secretly!

 

Click here for more background and history on this issue:

http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_enviro_nuclear/nuclear_waste/low-level/recycl\

ing/

 

 

==========

 

[LETTER TEXT]

 

March 2005

 

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Washington, DC 20555

 

Re: Opposition to Proceeding with Rulemaking on the Release of

Currently Regulated Radioactive Waste and Materials to Unlicensed

Destinations ( " Controlling " the Disposition of Solid Materials)

 

Dear Commissioners Diaz, Jaczko, Lyons, McGaffigan and Merrifield:

 

Nineteen years ago, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ignited a

national firestorm of concern and outrage when it issued a Policy

Statement on radioactive waste " Below Regulatory Concern " (BRC),

essentially attempting to deregulate a major portion of the " low-level "

radioactive waste stream. The BRC Policy would have permitted

radioactive wastes to be disposed of in landfills not licensed or

designed to handle radioactive wastes, and to be otherwise " free

released, " so they could end up in schools, farms, and parks,

throughout

our cities, suburbs, and rural communities. The proposed policy would

have allowed " recycling " nuclear waste into consumer products. The

Commission, charged with regulating such materials so as to isolate

them

from the human environment, had chosen instead - in order to save money

for industry rather than protect the health of the public - to permit

nuclear wastes to be placed into intimate human contact.

 

The outcry was intense. State legislatures around the country passed

laws barring BRC practices within their borders. Eventually the

Congress

intervened, in a remarkable fashion, and by statute overturned the

NRC's

BRC 1986 Policy and its 1990 expanded BRC policy, and expressly

reserved

for the states the right to regulate any radioactive material that NRC

might subsequently try to deregulate [Energy Policy Act of 1992].

 

Several years later, the Commission asked the National Academy of

Sciences to perform a study about whether another attempt at

deregulating certain radioactive wastes should be undertaken. Hoping

for some political cover from the Academy, the NRC was shocked when NAS

declined to endorse such an effort and provided very strong criticism

of

NRC's credibility in such matters. The Academy report concluded that

if

the NRC nonetheless remained interested in such a BRC endeavor, no such

effort should be undertaken until and unless NRC had taken significant,

successful measures to repair its credibility with stakeholder groups.

The National Academy of Sciences committee - established at the request

of the Commission - stated:

 

" [T]hat in the past, the USNRC failed to convince any environmental and

consumer advocacy groups that the clearance of slightly radioactive

solid material can be conducted safely, and failed to convince certain

industry groups that such clearance is desirable. Furthermore, a

legacy

of distrust of the USNRC has developed among many of the environmental

stakeholder groups, resulting from their experience with the BRC

policy,

the enhanced participatory rulemaking on license termination

( " decommissioning rule " ), and the USNRC's 1999 issues paper, published

in the Federal Register on June 30, 1999, on the clearance standards.

Reestablishing trust will require concerted and sustained effort by the

USNRC.

 

***

The USNRC must overcome serious levels of distrust, generated by its

actions during the BRC policy and License Termination Rule efforts,

before [any effort to revive a new BRC policy] is likely to succeed. "

 

Despite these strong recommendations, however, no such efforts have

truly been undertaken; indeed, every action has further eroded public

confidence. Although NRC has had some public meetings and workshops,

these have been few and far between, and NRC has used these meetings

simply as a way to improve the image of the proceedings without

seriously taking the input of citizen and industry groups into account.

 

 

Rather than give up on deregulating radioactive wastes, NRC has been

quietly proceeding to put the pieces in place to try again. NRC has

spent large amounts of staff and contractor time and international

effort to do exactly what the public opposes - release radioactive

waste

into our communities.

 

At present, the NRC staff is set to submit to the Commission a

recommendation that it approve a kind of " BRC II " . The proposal is to

instigate a rulemaking to once again try to deregulate significant

portions of the " low-level " radioactive waste stream, permitting

licensed nuclear material to go to unlicensed sites such as local

municipal garbage dumps, hazardous waste sites, and recyclers for use

in

consumer goods and construction materials (giving new meaning to the

phrase " hot roads " ). This can only create, as did the ill-fated BRC

efforts of the early 1990s, tremendous concern across the country and

further damage the Commission's very tattered credibility.

 

We are therefore dismayed that the NRC is moving forward with BRC, the

Sequel. We are furthermore concerned that the Commission is doing so in

a non-transparent way that will further erode public trust. In

particular, it is our understanding that the staff proposal will be

presented to the Commission with no public meeting, no testimony from

key stakeholders, and without the proposal becoming immediately public.

The Commission rather will vote in private on this important and

controversial proposal, after having only seen recommendations from the

staff but not hearing directly from those who would be most affected.

 

There will of course be an opportunity for the public to submit written

comments to the staff after the Commission approves the proposal for

rulemaking and directs the proceeding to begin. But the Commissioners

themselves really should hear directly from stakeholders NOW, prior to

embarking on this dangerous course.

 

Furthermore, NRC appears to intend the rulemaking to have a

pre-ordained outcome. NRC is already considering and approving such

deregulations without public input and now seeks to do so generically.

For example, the operators of the Connecticut Yankee reactor are

requesting to dispose of significant quantities of radioactive

decommissioning waste at an unlicensed landfill in Idaho. NRC staff

appears on the verge of approving this request without any opportunity

for a public hearing.

 

We therefore strongly urge you to:

 

1. Vote against initiating any rulemaking to remove from full

regulatory control portions of the radioactive waste stream -- i.e., do

not move forward with a new, highly controversial BRC/deregulation

endeavor.

 

2. Insist that before any such vote, the Commissioners hold a public

meeting at which representatives of our stakeholder community can

testify to the Commissioners as to why you should not proceed with the

staff's proposal. It is highly inappropriate to vote on such an

important issue after having only had input from the staff pushing the

proposal and not from anyone opposing it.

 

3. Require that the staff recommendation be made public immediately

when it is submitted to the Commissioners and before the Commission

meeting requested in (2) above, so that stakeholders can effectively

inform you of its problems in detail.

 

4. Direct staff to not approve the Connecticut Yankee request, or any

similar requests to send decommissioning wastes to landfills not

licensed to receive Atomic Energy Act radioactive wastes.

 

The job of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is to regulate nuclear

materials, not deregulate them. The lessons of the BRC controversy of a

decade and a half ago should not be forgotten. The release of

radioactively contaminated materials violates your mission of

protecting

public health. Proceeding with this ill-conceived favor to industry

would destroy the last vestiges of opportunity for the Commission to

resurrect public confidence. We urge you to not go down this dangerous

path.

 

Sincerely,

 

Wenonah Hauter

Energy Program

Public Citizen

Washington, DC

 

Michael Mariotte

Executive Director

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Washington, D.C.

 

Dan Hirsch

Committee to Bridge the Gap

Santa Cruz, CA

 

==========

 

*** P R E S S R E L E A S E ***

 

For Immediate Release: March 29, 2005

Contact: Joseph Malherek (202) 454-5109; Michele Boyd (202) 454-5134

 

Public Citizen Calls on Nuclear Agency to Withdraw Secrecy Proposal

 

" Safeguards Information " Rule Would Unjustifiably Restrict Public

Access to Industry Information

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen has

called on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to withdraw a

proposed rule that would unduly and perhaps illegally broaden the scope

of nuclear industry security information that would be restricted from

public access. The group made the assertion in formal comments

submitted this week to the NRC on the agency's proposed rule to revise

its regulations governing the protection of so-called " Safeguards

Information, " access to which is restricted to people who have

undergone

extensive background checks and demonstrated a " need to know " the

information.

 

" If instituted, these new regulations would further compromise the

public's ability to hold the nuclear industry and its government

regulators accountable for their management of nuclear facilities and

materials, " said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical

Mass Energy and Environment Program.

 

The proposed regulations go beyond the " minimum restrictions needed to

protect the health and safety of the public or the common defense and

security, " as required by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, the law that

established the Safeguards category, Public Citizen said in its

comments.

 

" Rather than applying the 'minimum restrictions needed' requirement,

the commission is attempting to expand the category of Safeguards

Information to encompass virtually anything it wants -- including

information important to the public such as engineering and safety

analyses, emergency planning procedures and inspection reports on

nuclear facilities, " Hauter said. " This is an unacceptable information

blackout that will leave the public in the dark about the competency of

the nuclear industry and the NRC. "

 

The group also charged that the NRC's proposed rule would improperly

restrict the public's access to important information that has proved

useful in the past. For example, using information obtained from the

NRC about nuclear facilities' security capabilities, citizen groups in

the early 1990s successfully pressured the agency to adopt higher

standards for the protection of nuclear facilities, incorporating the

possibility of adversaries using truck bombs.

 

The proposed rule comes at a time when the NRC is under fire for its

allegedly improper use of the Safeguards classification to conceal

industry vulnerabilities. U.S. Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) recently

said in a letter to the NRC's inspector general that the suppression of

a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) study about the security

vulnerabilities of the pools in which reactor operators store

irradiated

nuclear fuel may be " based on the fact that it disagrees with the NAS'

conclusions, not on any legitimate security concerns. "

 

The NRC also has been criticized recently -- by Markey, Public Citizen

and others -- for its decision to bar public access to its online

document library for several months while it conducted a security

review

" to ensure that documents which might provide assistance to terrorists

will be inaccessible. " Despite this restricted access, the NRC did not

suspend its licensing or rulemaking proceedings, compromising the

participation of stakeholders who needed access to the NRC's documents.

While most of the documents are back up on the Web, some have been

redacted.

 

Public Citizen further noted in its comments that the Safeguards

category is not subject to the protections from institutional abuse as

is National Security Information, a government-wide category. The

public

may challenge perceived instances of abuse or excessive secrecy

surrounding information in this category.

 

" This proposal gives the NRC and its licensees free rein to make secret

virtually any information even tangentially related to the security of

nuclear facilities, " said Joseph Malherek, policy analyst for Public

Citizen and principal author of the comments. " The NRC should withdraw

this regressive proposal and instead establish responsible reforms to

its rules for the protection of Safeguards Information. "

 

To read Public Citizen's comments, please go to

http://www.citizen.org/documents/sgicomments.pdf

 

###

 

Public Citizen is a national, nonprofit consumer advocacy organization

based in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit

www.citizen.org.

 

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