Radioactive waste can be handled safely at SRS, Neeses man saysMar 4 - Gene Zaleski The Times and Democrat, Orangeburg, S.C.
Dr. John Till has more than 30 years of experience assessing risks from radiation and chemicals, including time studying the Savannah River Site. So after reading a recent news report about the concerns of some environmental groups that SRS could become a disposal ground for the nation's high-level nuclear waste from commercial reactors, he took notice. Till says there is probably no finer, controlled site in the nation to handle the waste. "I am not concerned," Till said. "It is an extraordinarily fine operation and it has been from the beginning of that site in the early 1950s. Nuclear waste is very manageable. "In a relative sense, it is a very small volume and a small amount. It is concentrated, yes. It is highly radioactive, yes, but that does not mean that it cannot be contained and managed absolutely safely." Former U.S. Department of Energy senior advisor Bob Alvarez outlined the potential hazards of making SRS an interim storage site for nuclear waste in a study reported on by The State newspaper. The material was once destined for Nevada, but the Yucca Mountain site was abandoned due to environmental concerns. The Department of Energy now hopes to select a temporary site for the disposal of radioactive waste, and have a permanent disposal site chosen by 2048. In his report, Alvarez says waste at the SRS site would go from 280 million curies of radioactivity to 1 billion curies if waste from 17 closed U.S. reactors comes to the area. Till, who is the owner of Neeses-based Risk Assessment Corporation, said he knows SRS well through his research of the site. "We were hired by the Centers of Disease Control in Atlanta to go in and to look at the historical records and to understand the operations. We looked at what radioactivity could be released from the facility. It is a great facility," he said. The high-level waste is contained and packaged as it is transported, he said. "There is essentially no radiation to anyone while it is being transported in." Having the nuclear waste scattered about at individual sites it not a good idea, he said. "We may need more than one place," Till said. Individual sites where waste is stored now often don't have the adequate space for the long-term, he said. "We have to be thinking about the long-term, five, ten, 15 years out." While SRS would probably not be able to handle all the atomic waste from the 104 U.S. reactors, Till said the site could easily be a temporary storage facility. "There is a solution to handling the waste and we have not dealt with it in this country," he said. "We have put it on hold right now. It is all politics." Contact the writer: gzaleski@timesanddemocrat.com or 803-533-5551. http://www.energycentral.com/functional/news/news_detail.cfm?did=27797108 |