Environmental Protection Agency Proposes
New Rule:
Nuclear Power and Weapons
Waste to go to Regular Landfills and other “Non-Regulated Management”
Comments due to EPA by
Email to: a-and-r-Docket@epa.gov Attn: Docket OAR-2003-0095
or upload them onto EPA’s website www.epa.gov/radiation
The US Environmental Protection
Agency is proposing a new rule (68 FR 22:65120-65151,
TAKE ACTION!
1) Send a letter to the new EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt encouraging him to withdraw EPA's proposed action. leavitt.michael@epa.gov
Administrator Mike Leavitt, US Environmental Protection Agency, 1101A,
2) Send comments to EPA and get organizations and landfill boards to do so at:
a-and-r-Docket@epa.gov Docket No. OAR-2003-0095.
The proposal is on the EPA website www.epa.gov/radiation.
3) Let your elected officials know how you feel about these dangers by sending them a copy of your letter to Secretary Leavitt and telling them about your opposition to the federal rules that would deregulate and exempt nuclear materials from regulation.
For more information contact:
Diane D'Arrigo, Nuclear Information
and Resource Service (NIRS), 1424 16th Street NW Suite 404, Washington, DC
20036, dianed@nirs.org, 202 328-0002 ext
16. See NIRS website under Campaigns at www.nirs.org
for more info and actions. The proposal
was published
Summary of EPA Proposal
1) First, EPA would allow mixed radioactive and hazardous wastes to go to facilities permitted for hazardous waste only (RCRA C hazardous waste dumps & processors).
2) Second, radioactive waste (not mixed with hazardous) could be permitted to go to places that do not have radioactive licenses or regulations, such as regular garbage dumps or incinerators or hazardous sites. Since the nuclear waste would no longer be regulated for radioactivity, it could go to regular recyclers. EPA justifies this by claiming they will provide an acceptable level of protection from radiation risk. It seems obvious this would be a problem for communities around the waste sites, many of which already leak.
3) Third, EPA suggests that a “non-regulatory approach” to management of radioactive waste is an option and requests creative ideas for “partnering” with waste generators or other schemes to relieve the regulatory burden. Nothing would prevent radioactive materials from going to recycling facilities and being mixed with the normal recycling streams which are made into everyday household items like toys, cookware, personal use items, cars, furniture and civil engineering projects like roads and buildings.
4) EPA’s rule threatens to preempt
and supercede existing state laws that prohibit nuclear waste in solid waste
landfills or other sites. VT, ME, OH,
WI, IL, MN, CO, OR, PA, CT, WV, NM, IA, are among states that have passed
such laws and regulations. OK, GA and VA
passed resolutions in one or both houses and counties and towns in many other
states have resolutions against this action. Notify your state and local officials to comment and uphold your
protections against nuclear power and weapons wastes!
5) This dangerous proposal dovetails neatly into the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission's rulemaking to deregulate and release radioactive material from control, ironically called "Control of Solids." The NRC is considering several options for nuclear waste deregulation including continuing the current case-by-case release procedures, starting new release procedures that are based on projected risks, sending the waste to sites that are not licensed for nuclear materials. NRC is claiming they could approve "restricted" release of nuclear waste meaning certain conditions would apply but that NRC would not enforce them--someone else, as yet un-named would.
The upshot is that NRC and EPA are joining forces to allow nuclear power and weapons waste which is now generally required to be regulated and controlled, to be released to waste sites and processors never designed to take radioactive materials and to the marketplace where it will come into routine daily contact with us, our kids and environment.
6) To make matters even worse, the US
NRC and US Department of Transportation on
7) Finally, the Department of
Energy is in the process of a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement
on releasing radioactive materials from its sites. In 2000, DOE halted the
commercial recycling of potentially radioactive metals from certain
contaminated area on its sites, but could resume it. DOE continues to allow
radioactively contaminated metals out for unregulated disposal and to allow
other radioactively contaminated materials out for recycling or unregulated
disposal—soils, concrete, asphalt, plastic, wood, equipment, buildings, sites
and more. EPA’s