Happy New Year 2002?

Sure if you want to sell or give away your nuclear waste into everyday commerce without telling anyone it is radioactive or poisonous or carcinogenic. Not so happy for those of us who would like to avoid more routine exposure to ionizing radiation.

Don’t worry, though! The people who own and regulate this material (nuclear power and weapons companies, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Departments of Energy and Defense) have acquired the most convincing experts they can find (National Academy of Sciences, American National Standards Institute, Health Physics Society) to promise us it is safe and that it will only be a little bit anyway. Who would question a group with Ph.D.s in science and risk communication (even if a lot of them do have nuclear waste of their own to get rid of anyway)?

Merry Christmas?

If the big guy in the red suit has anything for us this year, let’s hope it’s some very sensitive $10,000 hand-held radioisotope-specific spectral analyzers to take shopping with us. And let’s hope our stockings are stuffed with gift-certificates for laboratory tests for the presence of those harder-to-detect radioactive materials.

Not to be greedy, but we also need another gift – a subscription to the Federal Register, so we can keep up on all the exciting opportunities being provided to tell the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Energy just how much radioactive contamination we think is okay in toys, personal care-items, cars, chairs, building materials, clothing, cookware, garden soil, and more.

Those of us who have been good over the last year have been reading, commenting and testifying on several democratic processes that we read about in the Federal Register, including:

* NRC is allowing radioactive soil to be dispersed into regular commerce. NRC hired the National Agricultural Library of the Food and Drug Administration to help figure out all the ways humans interact with soil. We had the chance to comment on all the ways we can think of that we interact with soil, too. Selected results are now being used develop computer models to justify acceptable radioactive contamination levels for soil that can be used for anything from growing food to playground sand.

* DOE again is trying get away with dispersing radioactive metal into the open marketplace, despite its existing bans on metal getting out. A Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement is underway, received public comments on the scoping (we called for expansion of the scope to cover all the radioactive wastes DOE is releasing into commerce not just metal), and the public can comment on the draft environmental impact statement in early 2002.

We have not been able to comment on or even know about the secret amounts of concrete, soil, chemicals, asphalt, plastic, wood and other radioactive materials DOE is/could be releasing routinely from all of its sites right now. If DOE really knows, they are refusing to say.

*Department of Transportation is making it legal to transport some radioactive waste and materials without regulatory control.

Many of us commented against this and were ignored by DOT, which adopted "exempt quantities and concentrations" for radionuclides in international transport effective in 2001. In 2002, DOT and NRC are joining forces to adopt the same rules domestically. DOT and NRC will give us a chance to weigh in on exempting contaminated materials and radioactive wastes in domestic transport regulations. The Nuclear Energy Institute is very supportive of this rule, which they encourage NRC to use for across the board exemptions of radioactive materials- not just in transport.

* NRC is "supplementing" its decommissioning rules, which already allow the same or more radiation exposure than the operating, licensed facilities. In addition to making rubblization of nuclear reactors a generic issue (one that cannot be challenged locally), NRC is now in the process of okaying dumping the contaminated radioactive "rubble" ("flooring materials concrete, rebar, roofing materials, structural steel, soils associated with digging up foundations and concrete and/or asphalt pavement or other similar solid materials originating from decommissioning") at regular landfills.

Residents around the closed Maine Yankee nuclear reactor have been opposing the rubbilization and abandonment of the remains of that power plant onsite, demanding stricter cleanup levels than NRC requires. Now residents in the region around the closed Big Rock Point reactors are threatened with rubblization and dispersal of that reactor to unregulated dumps. It is highly probable that some of both of those reactors decommissioning wastes have been released into general commerce through "recycling" after processing at facilities in Tennessee. What are the states’ roles here? Maine passed a law requiring stricter cleanup levels than the company and NRC wanted for the reactor site. Michigan appears to be going along with NRC to allow dispersal into regular dumps. Tennessee has granted at least a dozen permits to companies to "process" or analyze and "release" radioactive materials into the unrestricted marketplace.

* On the international front, there appears to be no opportunity to comment. Metal "recycling" facilities are processing and/or releasing radioactive waste at Chernobyl, in Sweden, throughout Germany and at the ECOMET-S melter near the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations are pushing the dispersal of nuclear waste into commerce internationally.

The year 2002 will bring us even more opportunities to inform our employees at the federal agencies just how much radioactive contamination we want in our homes, workplaces, schools, playgrounds and public and private transport systems.

Thanks to the thousands of you have circulated, signed petitions and commented on these issues. They have been and will continue to be used to inform and fight these agencies, the Congress and the Administration. We need to keep it up and accelerate, getting resolutions from every type of organization, group, local government, businesses expressing our commitment to keeping radioactive waste and contamination out of our everyday commerce, raw materials and household items.

In early 2002, it is more important than ever to get the word out, again and louder, to this Congress and to all our elected officials. Get resolutions passed now against nuclear waste and materials deregulation, release, dispersal into commerce and unregulated disposal, and send copies to all elected officials and to NIRS. At least three federal agencies are taking action in early-to-mid 2002 to promote and legalize nuclear waste deregulation from the weapons and commercial nuclear power fuel chain. Your creative ideas and actions will make the difference on holding them back and stopping them in 2002. —Diane D’Arrigo