Right now, Tennessee is on the verge of becoming the world's radioactive waste dumping ground.
In 2007, Utah nuclear waste corporation EnergySolutions announced that it intended to import 20,000 tons of Italian nuclear waste to be processed in Oak Ridge. Last week, EnergySolutions told the General Assembly that some of the Italian radioactive waste will be "downblended" in Tennessee. Downblending, also known as blending or dilution, involves mixing more dangerous Class B and C radioactive waste -- waste that isn't fit to be touched for 300 to 500 years -- into large amounts of less radioactive Class A waste.
By downblending B and C waste, a company can avoid more rigorous disposal requirements. An analysis of downblended waste has demonstrated that the annual radiation dose to an unprotected person would be 465 times greater than the permissible annual radiation dose. That's because downblending doesn't eliminate the B and C "hot spots." It is a little like mixing a few "red hots" into a big bowl of white jelly beans -- the "red hots" remain, well, red-hot.
The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently looking into downblending, but its final decision may take years. Meanwhile, no disposal site in the country will accept this volatile downblended waste. The only two potential disposal sites are in Utah and Texas, due to federal law regarding interstate nuclear waste agreements. The Clive, Utah, site owned by EnergySolutions, is designated only for the less radioactive A waste. Utah law prohibits the Clive facility from accepting Class B and Class C waste for disposal, so the commercial advantage for EnergySolutions to designate all low-level waste as Class A is obvious: the company could monopolize the market.
The other possible disposal site is in Andrews, Texas -- but it's designed for Class B and C only. Texas prohibits downblending, and requires that downblended material be categorized based on the highest level in the mixture -- Class B or C, with all the protections that come with that level of waste.
So where is this poisonous, blended mixture going to go? We don't know, but currently there is far too great a chance that it is going to stay in Tennessee. EnergySolutions already has had a state testing license for downblending, but the process is experimental and is not being done commercially anywhere in the world. We shouldn't take any chances that this out-of-state company would use an unproven process to produce toxic nuclear waste.
That is why Rep. Ty Cobb (D-Columbia) and I are co-sponsoring Senate Bill 2735/House Bill 2826, which, as amended, prohibits downblending highly dangerous nuclear waste to avoid standard regulations.
If Tennessee permits downblending, it could result in the mixed radioactive waste being stranded in Tennessee. Neither Utah nor Texas will accept downblended waste, and the approval of downblending would certainly facilitate the importation to Tennessee of nuclear waste from Italy and other foreign countries.
There's no reason to wait. We must stop Tennessee from becoming the world's nuclear dumping ground.
Democrat Andy Berke of Chattanooga is state senator from Tennessee District 10, which includes parts of Hamilton and Marion counties. He can be reached at sen.andy. berke@legislature.state.tn.us.