Alternative plan for waste criticized

Wednesday, May 24, 2000 | 11:26 a.m.

A still experimental technology that promises to reduce the amount and danger of radioactive waste is coming under fire in the scientific community.

Department of Energy scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico have successfully changed highly radioactive materials into less harmful substances through a process called transmutation.

But today a group of independent scientists is releasing a report that says transmutation may create more radioactive hazards for people and the environment. It was the first salvo in what is likely to become a spirited debate within the larger controversy over what to do with the nation's nuclear waste.

So far the key strategy is to build a high-level nuclear waste repository where 77,000 tons of spent fuel from nuclear power plants and defense waste can be stored for tens of thousands of years. Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being studied for the repository.

Transmutation is extremely expensive and changes only a small portion of the wastes while actually increasing the amount of toxic material requiring disposal, the report released today by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research says.

In addition, the transformed materials increase risks to workers, the public and the environment because of potential exposures from uranium, plutonium and other hazardous radioactive elements. The wastes could also promote more nuclear weapons development around the world, the institute said.

The report, titled "Waste Transmutation: The Nuclear Alchemy Gamble," was written by Arjun and Annie Makhijani and Hisham Zerriffi. Arjun Makhajani, a nuclear physicist, is president of the institute, which is funded through foundation grants.

"Our main finding is that transmutation schemes will not solve long-term waste management problems," the authors concluded. After transmutation, the radioactive remains still must be disposed of in a "carefully selected and engineered repository," they said.

They recommended that the DOE abandon transmutation.

Their conclusion was supported by Massachusetts Institute of Technology nuclear engineering Professor Lawrence Lidsky, who reviewed the report. The transmutation process proposed by Los Alamos is "too rudimentary," Lidsky said, and can be more dangerous than conventional reactors.

But nuclear engineer Anthony Hechanova of UNLV's Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies fired back at the report, saying the institute scientists did not understand the latest Los Alamos National Laboratory advances in research, which were presented at a conference in Las Vegas earlier this month. The institute scientists and Lidsky did not attend the conference.

"Their criticisms are harsh and uninformed with respect to the project being proposed by Los Alamos scientists," Hechanova said.

Transmutation would render highly radioactive wastes benign enough to store at reactor sites in ceramic casks, he said. "The process would completely change the nature of the wastes," said the Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate.

"At the very least, if you transmuted the wastes, you remove 94 percent of the volume destined for Yucca Mountain," Hechanova said.

As for the costs, Hechanova said, the $1 billion needed to prove that transmutation is feasible is much cheaper than the $6 billion already spent to study a repository at Yucca Mountain.

"You could put the uranium right back into the uranium mines where it came from, where it could become an energy source in 100 years," Hechanova said.

"If only some of those promises and potentials can be met, then it will mean a lot to Nevadans for a relatively small price compared to Yucca Mountain and the economics of nuclear power generation," Hechanova said.

Despite its opposition to transmutation, the institute does not like the idea of a national nuclear waste repository either, noting that that solution "still faces immense scientific hurdles and intense public opposition."

"One of the biggest problems facing the nuclear industry is what to do with the highly radioactive wastes generated by the reactors," said Arjun Makhijani.