August 23 1999
The Dangers of a Contemplated Incinerator
What INEEL Plans
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) plans to build a new nuclear waste incinerator at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory near Idaho Falls, Idaho. What is unique about this new incinerator is that it will burn radioactive waste containing plutonium and other long-lived isotopes heavier than uranium, whose toxic radioactivity will be deadly for hundreds of thousands of years. This waste is mixed with hazardous chemicals which current regulations restrict from direct disposal without treatment. Landfills in the sky, however, should not be an option because it violates the cardinal rule of pollution containment.

The DOE attempted to build a radioactive waste incinerator at its Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California but were forced to cancel the project because of public opposition. Livermore reported what the public already knew, that "incineration as a violation of the cardinal principle of radioactive waste treatment; namely, containing radioactivity rather than spreading it around." The planned incinerator slated for the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) has Wyoming residents justifiably concerned. Not only because INEEL has an abysmal operating record for managing the most dangerous of hazardous materials, but as attorney Gerry Spence said, "while the real dangers from emissions here in Wyoming, nothing was done to protect the rights of Wyoming citizens."

Is It Dangerous?

Since the incinerator has not yet been built, the predicted emission numbers are only estimates that could radically change when the actual operating data are analyzed. A review of the publically available INEEL operating history for the last decade reveals thirty nuclear facility emission control system breakdowns, eight of which involved filter failures.

Earl Budin, M. D. associate professor of Radiology at University of California, Los Angles Medical Center notes in a recent article that "a alpha particle from a single plutonium-238 atom can cause lung cancer." It is not fair to citizens of Idaho, Wyoming, and other downwind populations to be subjected to hazards from nuclear waste treatment that other states will not allow within their borders. John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D., credited for first isolating plutonium, and professor emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California , Berkeley notes that: "I have studied the biological effects of ionizing radiation -- including the alpha particles emitted by the radioactive decay of plutonium. By any reasonable standard of biomedical proof, there is no safe dose, which means that just one decaying radioactive atom can produce permanent mutation in a cell's genetic molecules ... .. Mutation is the basis not only for inherited afflictions, but also for cancer."

When asked whether there is such a thing as a safe dose of radiation, Gofman says: "There has never been in the history of science any evidence that there's a safe dose of radiation .... There is no threshold. There has never been a shred of evidence for it, and you can expect cancer or leukemia or chromosome injury harm all the way down to the lowest conceivable dose."

The relevance of these credible medical opinions to the proposed incinerator is that in spite of all the emission control systems one can expect health effects on the surrounding populations as a result of these operations. This risk to the general public is unacceptable. Wyoming residents need to be concerned because the prevailing winds blow over INEEL toward Wyoming. Pollution particles in the air can "rain out" with precipitation. Since the Yellowstone region gets enough precipitation to support forests and ski areas, more may be coming down with the snow than moisture.

In addition to radioactivity, the incinerator permit acknowledges some 43 chemicals and heavy metal contaminates that will be released to the air, eleven of which are known carcinogen . The Permit acknowledges over 30 tons of hazardous materials will be released every year to the atmosphere.

Another attempt in 1992 to incinerate nuclear waste at INEEL was canceled due to design problems which resulted in emissions exceeding regulatory limits.

Who Will Operate This Incinerator?

DOE signed a $1.18 billion contract with British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) to build and operate the incinerator to treat approximately 85,000 cubic meters of waste currently stored at INEEL. The facility will likely treat an additional 120,000 cubic meters of waste from INEEL and other DOE sites.

BNFL currently operates a mixed radioactive waste incinerator at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee that is similar to the plant BNFL wants to build at INEEL. Workers and residents around this incinerator say that its emissions exceed regulatory limits. The State of Tennessee is not conducting its own monitoring and relies on BNFL's "self monitoring" reports. Investigative news reports by the Tennessean newspaper document that in 1996, the emergency vent in the incinerator opened four times in three months releasing unfiltered gases to the air. Residents attribute extensive health problems experienced by downwinders to the incinerator. The actual operating emissions of this Tennessee incinerator offer a truer picture of what the likely INEEL emissions will be, because the proposed INEEL incinerator emissions are just projected estimates based on optimistic assumptions.

Similar operating or proposed DOE radioactive waste incinerators at Rocky Flats in Colorado, Los Alamos in New Mexico, and Lawrence Livermore in California, were shut down as a result of successful litigation against DOE by environmental organizations.

The Rocky Flats mixed waste incinerator was scheduled for a trial burn of mixed plutonium waste. The Sierra Club took DOE to court and the court ruled in 1990 that DOE could not proceed without producing an Environmental Impact Statement and gaining a state hazardous waste treatment permit. Recognizing the extent of public opposition, DOE permanently shut-down the incinerator.

The DOE site at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), in 1989, planned on incinerating waste contaminated with plutonium as a means of reducing its volume. Due to wide spread public opposition to the incinerator and successful litigation by the State of New Mexico, DOE dropped the LANL incinerator project completely.

Clearly, DOE is required to "treat" its mixed radioactive waste to meet regulatory requirements. These legitimate regulations forbid burial of liquid and flammable chemicals without treatment. There are other credible treatment options other than incineration that need to be utilized. This waste must be safety stored until an approved non-incinerator option can be developed.

In summary, the proposed INEEL incinerator must not be built because the current state of applied emission control technology has not evolved to the point where radionuclides and/or other hazardous material are adequately filtered out. Once the incinerator is built it will be very difficult to shutdown because of lax state monitoring to tell the whole truth about what is going out the stack.

What Can You Do?

A legal challenge to this incinerator must be made and your contribution to a special trust fund are needed to hire the experts required to be successful in court.

Make check payable to:

Stop the Incinerator Fund
c/o Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free
P.O. Box 4838, Jackson, WY 83001

For more Information contact:
Environmental Defense Institute
P.O. Box 220, Troy, ID 83871
208-835-6152
http://home.earthlink.net/~edinst/