While the world has been struggling with the Covid-19 epidemic, for some industries, it is business as usual. Polluting industries were recently given a break by the Trump administration to violate regulations about dumping toxic chemical into the air and water. The implication is that this will somehow help with fighting the virus but I fail to see exactly how.
Now there are advocates for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to relax some of its rules and permit radioactive waste to be dumped into municipal landfills instead of being disposed of in special facilities built and licensed for that purpose. Critics of the proposals say that the NRC should shelve the relaxation of regulations until the virus is under control.
On March 6th of this year, the NRC received an official request that would allow some nuclear waste to be disposed of in municipal landfills instead of licensed facilities. Critics say that the proposal could pose a threat to public health and that there should be an extended period for public input.
Dan Hirsch is the former director of the University of California Santa Cruz’s Program on Environmental and Nuclear Policy. He says, “What they’re trying to do is prop up a failing industry so that the cost of decommissioning these [nuclear] reactors is reduced so you don’t have to send it to a place that is expensive because it’s designed to safely handle it. I find it just astonishing that they would do that in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. How the NRC can look themselves in the mirror to propose massive deregulation and do it in the midst of the pandemic, I find it just ethically shocking.”
David McIntyre is a spokesman for the NRC. He said that the exemptions being proposed from NRC regulations would not be very broad or widely used. The NRC has already been planning for the extension of the public input from the current deadline of April 20th for an additional forty days. An even longer extension is being considered. He added, “It would just make it a little more efficient so that we or the state would not have to do a separate review for each case.”
Hirsch says that the forty-five days extension is not enough. “If they’re going to consider it at all, it should only be considered once the pandemic is behind us.”
Currently, the radioactive waste in consideration is usually disposed of in licensed waste disposal facilities where the staff has specific training and equipment to protect public health. The new NRC proposal would grant some exceptions to this regulation for radioactive waste with a cumulative dosage level of up to twenty-five millirem.
According to the NRC, the average American receives an average does of radiation of about six hundred twenty millirems per year. A chest x-ray would expose a patient to ten millirems. A full body CT scan would result in a dose of about one thousand millirems.
Jeff Ruch is the Pacific Director for Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. He is also a critical of the new NRC proposal. He said, “NRC’s action could transform most municipal dumps into radioactive repositories, with essentially no safeguards for workers, nearby residents, or adjoining water tables.”