Tennessee has been asked by a company, Energy Solutions, for a permit that would let it make our state the first and only dumping ground in the world for mid-level nuclear waste – waste that has a radioactive lifespan of 300 to 500 years, waste that may well remain in Tennessee forever.
A bill in the Legislature, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Andy Berke, would ban that sort of business. The ban would stop cold Energy Solutions’ initial plan to import 20,000 tons of nuclear waste from Italy, process and store it in Oak Ridge, and eventually – but only wishfully – truck it out to Utah.
Its business proposition is too dicey. It proposes to mix, or “downblend,” Class B and Class C nuclear waste, which is radioactive for 300 to 500 years with Class-A waste (100-year radioactivity), on the idea that that would qualify the blended waste for storage in Utah.
An unsanctioned, lethal mix
Yet the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not sanctioned that process. And it is not being done anywhere else in the world, for good reason. The so-called down-blending would not reduce the radioactivity of its most highly radioactive material. But allowing such a business in Tennessee would facilitate importation of nuclear waste from around the world, and Tennessee likely would be stuck with it because no other state wants lethally radioactive nuclear waste.