Gordon: Foreign Nuclear Waste Has No Place In Tennessee
November 29, 2007, WASHINGTON – A Utah-based company with operations in Kingston, Memphis and Oak Ridge is seeking a license to bring foreign nuclear waste into Tennessee for processing and disposal, but U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon says that proposal is bad policy.
According to documents from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, EnergySolutions is seeking permission to import thousands of tons of radioactive nuclear material from Italy and bring it to Tennessee for processing. Some of the waste could then stay in Tennessee for disposal.
“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has never reviewed an application for importation and disposal of such a large volume of foreign nuclear waste,” said Gordon. “The NRC should deny this license.
“Bringing foreign waste here for processing and disposal is a terrible idea. I don’t care if it’s high-level or low-level nuclear waste. I don’t want Tennessee to become the nation’s – and now the world’s – nuclear dumping ground.”
EnergySolutions wants to bring 20,000 tons of nuclear waste through the ports of Charleston and New Orleans. The waste would be brought by rail, barge or truck to Tennessee for processing, and then it could go to Utah for burial or stay in the Volunteer State. The waste importation would begin next spring and continue for five years.
Gordon said he fears some waste could end up in Tennessee’s landfills under the state’s Bulk Survey for Release program, which allow low-level radioactive waste to go into Class A landfills.
“The U.S. already faces capacity issues and other challenges in treating and disposing of radioactive waste produced domestically,” said Gordon. “We should be working on solving this problem at home before taking dangerous waste from around the world.”
This is not the first time Tennessee has been mentioned as a destination for nuclear waste. In the 1980s, the Department of Energy proposed building a storage site at Oak Ridge for the nation’s highly radioactive waste. Ultimately, Congress designated the remote, unpopulated Yucca Mountain site in Nevada as the sole location for the waste. That facility has faced repeated delays and is now scheduled to open in 2017.
“I fought the Department of Energy’s proposal to build a nuclear waste dump in Tennessee because I didn’t want millions of Tennesseans to live with the hazards that come with transporting radioactive material,” said Gordon. “Using Tennessee as a nuclear dumping ground was a bad idea twenty years ago, and it’s a bad idea today.”
