Michigan and Ohio are among 36 states that will have a greater buildup of radioactive waste after July 1 if a South Carolina landfill follows through with its plans to start turning them away.
But the two neighboring states won't likely exchange words as harsh as they did in the early 1990s, when both took turns scouring their landscapes for a possible site to bury tons of low-level radioactive waste from several Midwestern states.
"Like almost everyone else, we're hoping that Barnwell doesn't actually close next summer. But by all indications, it will," Thor Strong, chief of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality's radiological protection section, said.
He was referring to the low-level radioactive waste dump near Barnwell, S.C., one of only three in the country and one that almost all states outside of the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountain regions have relied upon for 36 years.
Open since 1971, the 235-acre Barnwell site has taken in all three classes of low-level radioactive waste at its facility near the Georgia line.
It is operated by Utah-based EnergySolutions, formerly Envirocare, the same company that operates a low-level radioactive waste dump in Clive, Utah, some 80 miles west of Salt Lake City.
The Utah dump is licensed to accept only Class A waste, which emits the least radiation.
Barnwell's only equivalent is the low-level radioactive waste landfill operated by U.S. Ecology Inc. at the federal Hanford Nuclear Reservation 23 miles west of Richland, Wash.
Low-level radioactive waste runs the gamut from medical clothing to nuclear tubing, virtually everything with radiation other than spent fuel that's been pulled from reactor cores of nuclear plants such as FirstEnergy Corp.'s Davis-Besse in Ottawa County and DTE Energy's Fermi 2 in Monroe County.
A 1998 report by the Government Accountability Office - then called the General Accounting Office - acknowledged that low-level waste should not necessarily infer low levels of radiation to the layman, though, because the definition is so broad.
Spent nuclear fuel is the only thing in civilian hands classified as high-level radioactive waste. Research continues into whether it should be buried inside Nevada's Yucca Mountain or some other repository the federal government might develop.
Nuclear plants generate most low-level radioactive waste. But it can be found in hospitals, medical laboratories, and other health facilities, universities, and certain types of industries.
For now, the waste likely will pile up on the various sites where it is generated or, in the case of medical facilities and universities, taken away by manufacturers or their contractors responsible for storing it elsewhere.
Mr. Strong said he doesn't "foresee a resurrection of the earlier Michigan siting process," one that fell apart in 1991 over consideration of 13,700 acres in Lenawee County's Riga Township across the state line from Sylvania and 15 miles from downtown Toledo.
Michigan, Ohio, and five other states - Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin - had united to form an interstate compact in response to a 1980 federal law that made states responsible for selecting and licensing sites.
Michigan, the compact's original host state, was to take the lead in establishing a site.
When it failed to do that - in part because of the backlash over the Riga Township land - it was ousted from the Midwest interstate compact.
Ohio, which generated the most waste among the Midwest compact's six other states, then was assigned the task. It never settled on a site, either.
The controversy fizzled in the Ohio General Assembly largely because South Carolina - despite repeated warnings to the contrary - kept the Barnwell site open to states outside of its Atlantic interstate compact, which includes Connecticut and New Jersey.
States found it easier to pay rate increases than risk the political backlash of developing sites within their compacts or on their own.
But such pressures intensified within South Carolina, leading to the current dilemma.
David Umphlett, a South Carolina legislator who at first supported a bill that would have kept the Barnwell site open to the rest of the country through 2023, told a South Carolina newspaper last spring that the 36 other states using that landfill "need to get up off their backsides and start doing what's right."
"They want to stomp us in the ground and beat us up and say, 'You bunch of country hicks.' I'm just getting tired of it," said Mr. Umphlett, part of a contingent that killed the legislation.
But Keith Sloan, chairman of the Barnwell County Council and owner of a South Carolina accounting and tax firm, said in an editorial posted at www.truthaboutbarnwell.com that the current situation has been exacerbated by fear mongering. He said it will be a mistake limiting Barnwell's clientele, one that will "create an economic crisis in my county."
The landfill provides 15 percent of Barnwell County's budget, as well as jobs.
"Limiting Barnwell to serving only Connecticut, New Jersey, and South Carolina makes no sense, unless your ulterior motive is to thwart nuclear power," Mr. Sloan wrote.
South Carolina's message apparently has gotten through loud and clear to the right people in this area.
Yet they seem to be relatively unfazed by it.
Bob Owen, chief of the Ohio Department of Health's bureau of radiation protection, said he's "not aware of any move afoot to keep it open."
Roger Suppes, assistant chief of the Ohio health department's prevention division, said waste generators have been preparing for years, incorporating methods to reduce their waste volume and operate more efficiently. There also have been advances in treatment technology to help minimize the contamination, he said.
"That's why we're in a better position than before," he said.
The two Ohio health officials, as well as Mr. Strong of Michigan, are keeping their fingers crossed for promising options on the horizon, including the possible opening of a new low-level radioactive waste dump in west Texas.
It would be operated by Waste Control Specialists LLC, of Pasadena, Tex., at its Andrews facility on 16,000 acres adjacent to the New Mexico border.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is deciding whether to issue a final license to the site for the disposal of tons of waste already at the site. It came from a former Energy Department uranium-processing plant in Fernald, Ohio, 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati.
Area officials also are hopeful Congress will offer some federal options, such as storage or disposal at secured U.S. Department of Energy laboratory sites, including the Nevada Test Site west of Las Vegas; the Energy laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the Hanford facility in eastern Washington.
"I don't think there's that emergency disaster problem," Mr. Suppes said, though acknowledging the radioactive material likely will pile up before a replacement for the Barnwell site is confirmed.
Mr. Strong said there are "a number of options, none highly likely in the short term."
"Clearly, there will be some that will need to be stored on site," he said. "Nobody is looking at it as a waste-management crisis if Barnwell closes down [to Michigan and Ohio]. For most entities other than nuclear power plants, it's a small amount of Class B and Class C waste."
Contact Tom Henry at:
thenry@theblade.com
or 419-724-6079.
First Published December 16, 2007, 2:43 p.m.
