Hosting dump more costly than judgment

The Eighth Circuit panel decision upholding a $151-million judgment against Nebraska regarding licensing a "low-level" radioactive waste dump was a jolt. In response, some urge settlement.

While this judgment is an unwelcome cost, it is small change compared to harm to Nebraskans' health, environment, economy, and pocketbooks if a nuke dump is sited in Nebraska.

LLRW is neither innocuous nor necessarily less dangerous than "high-level" radioactive waste. The hazardous life of LLRW can range from hours or months, like most medical LLRW, to millions of years. LLRW includes virtually everything from a nuclear reactor, including the reactor, except spent fuel.

Sen. Ben Nelson correctly noted that building a radioactive waste dump is serious business, with far-reaching and long-lasting health and environmental concerns. It also raises long-lived financial liability concerns -- the real issues that drive where developers seek to site dumps.

Leak-proof technology for radioactive waste disposal is not yet proven. Three of the nation's seven dumps that have disposed commercial LLRW closed decades early because of severe leakage. Nuke dumps, cumulatively, cost taxpayers in their states millions of dollars yearly in monitoring, maintenance, and remedial action costs.

Because disposal capacity is adequate at currently operating LLRW dumps, a dump in Nebraska is unneeded and would be financially unviable. No other state has built a new dump under the federal law that encourages, but does not require, states to develop regional dumps.

It is a grave mistake to conclude that hosting a nuke dump protects Nebraska taxpayers' resources better than paying the $151-million judgment. Nebraska's laws leave taxpayers vulnerable to enormous costs and liabilities because they do not explicitly attach liability to any other state or out-of-state generator. Furthermore, Nebraska has a statute of repose that shuts off liability for responsible parties only ten years after the dump's initial operation. (If a Nebraska dump leaks on the same schedule as other failed dumps, leaks and contamination will not become evident until after 10 years.)

When the leaking begins, the problems are, by default, Nebraska's; nothing clearly ties liability to another party. By contrast, New York, which learned lessons from its West Valley dump's problems, strengthened its laws to require title to the waste to remain with the waste generators forever.

The Compact's relentless pursuit of a nuke dump in Nebraska continues. In January 2003, the Compact Commission enunciated intent to seek a license directly from the NRC once the "bad faith litigation" is completed. The waste generators, which fund the Compact, are not likely to give up easily in light of state laws that readily allow transfer of the generators' enormous nuclear waste liabilities to Nebraska taxpayers.

The most important steps now to protect Nebraska taxpayers from further liabilities are to resist any type of dump in Nebraska and to strengthen Nebraska's statutes affecting LLRW management, particularly, liability provisions. It may be prudent to attempt settlement to reduce the $151-million judgment, but it would be shortsighted and very unwise to agree to a nuke dump in Nebraska as part of settlement.

-- Lynn Moorer is a Lincoln attorney. A former environmental consultant, she was one of the leaders of the 1988 initiative petition drive to withdraw Nebraska from the Central States Compact and require voter approval for nuke dump siting