Comments and Testimonies

May 17, 2004

Comments on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: Improving the Safe Management and Disposal of 'Low-Activity' Radioactive Wastes
(Docket No. OAR-2003-0095)

These comments are made on behalf of Clean Air Council, a nonprofit environmental organization representing over 8,000 members. The Council operates out of offices in Harrisburg and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as well as Wilmington, Delaware. Established in 1967, the Council is dedicated to protecting the right of everyone to breathe clean air.

When it comes to the disposal of radioactive wastes, Clean Air Council believes that the precautionary principle should guide every step of the process. The Council therefore urges EPA to abandon plans that would allow radioactive waste to be disposed of at sites not licensed for radioactive materials.

The Council vehemently opposes plans to redefine the risks posed by certain radioactive wastes as "below regulatory concern." Not enough research has been conducted on the long-term health effects of low-level radiation, especially on children and people with pre-existing medical conditions, to prove that this plan is safe. To the contrary, what research has been conducted shows that low levels of radiation can lead to serious health consequences over time.

Radioactive wastes permitted to be disposed of in ordinary landfills will almost certainly make their way into the air, water and soil. Those radioactive wastes permitted to be sent to incinerators and recycling facilities will without-a-doubt expose people to radiation.

Allowing radioactive wastes to be disposed of in these ways would obviously make adequate monitoring virtually impossible. Permitting radioactive wastes to be recycled into consumer products is particularly inappropriate.

The Council believes that concentrating radioactive wastes in a relatively small number of well-regulated, monitored disposal facilities is considerably safer and more responsible than widely dispersing radioactive materials throughout the country at a large number of under-regulated, under-monitored sites. We ask EPA to withdraw any plans for a "non-regulatory" approach to radioactive waste management.

The Council also expresses concern that any rules based on this advanced notice of proposed rulemaking could threaten to preempt or supercede state law in Pennsylvania, and elsewhere, designed to ensure the safe disposal of nuclear waste. Clean Air Council has long advocated that wastes associated with electricity generation be disposed of safely. Failure to do so not only puts public health and the environment at risk-it creates a de facto subsidy for dirty forms of electric generation that give them an unfair economic advantage when competing with renewable sources of energy.