The contractor chosen by the state to run its low-level nuclear waste dump has pulled out after a flap over who will pay damages if radioactive wastes stored at the facility leak into the environment.
Westinghouse Electric Corp. earlier this month notified the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety that it no longer was interested in running the proposed Illinois dump.
The company has hired former U.S. Atty. Dan Webb to limit its obligations under a $12.7 million contract signed last November that called for Westinghouse to develop plans for the radioactive waste-storage facility.
The contract also called for the company to prepare a license application for running it by the end of this year. The contract is only 25 percent completed.
Illinois is under severe pressure from the federal government to stop sending its low-level nuclear wastes to South Carolina, Washington or Nevada, the three states that operate low-level nuclear waste dumps. Federal regulations give the state until the end of this year to submit a completed license application that outlines the worker, community and environmental safety procedures that will be used at a new facility.
The Illinois dump must start operating by Jan. 1, 1993, or low-level nuclear waste generators in the state-power plants, hospitals, industry and university labs-will have to store their wastes on their own premises at tremendous expense.
”We may not get the application in,” said Terry Lash, director of the state nuclear safety department. ”Our site-information data collection is being delayed.”
To try and get Westinghouse back to the bargaining table, the state has opened talks with Chem-Nuclear Systems Inc., a subsidiary of Oak Brook-based Waste Management Inc. Chem-Nuclear`s bid on the initial contract was rejected. ”We have to get this resolved in the next two or three weeks,” Lash said.
The state is looking at two sites for the proposed facility: in Clark County near Martinsville and in Wayne County near Fairfield. The facility will serve Illinois and Kentucky, though Illinois creates 98 percent of the 150,000 cubic feet of nuclear wastes generated by the two states each year.
Initial plans for the dump, which will be in operation for 50 to 150 years, called for encasing the low-level wastes in metal drums and storing them in concrete vaults. State officials estimated it would cost $40 million to build the facility and that it would employ 100 people.
Users will pay an estimated $15 million to $20 million a year for operations. Though no state tax dollars are involved, the ultimate terms of the contract will be reflected in electricity rates and nuclear medicine bills.
When the contract was signed last November, state officials said they anticipated that Westinghouse would purchase $140 million in private insurance. The company and the state also would levy additional user fees to build a contingency fund for emergencies. Westinghouse was expected to own the facility, Lash said.
Westinghouse has a different interpretation of the initial contract and claims that the state has reversed its position from last November. ”They now want unspecified liability and ownership by Westinghouse,” said Roy Morrow, a spokesman for the Pittsburgh-based firm. ”We wanted specified liability limits and ownership by a third party.”
Countered Lash: ”They now want a change in state law to indemnify them for legal liability the way the federal government has indemnified them on their facilities like Fernald (Ohio). I said that`s unacceptable.”
Westinghouse isn`t interested in having its $5.7 billion in assets on the line should there be a financially costly catastrophe at a facility that generates only $20 million a year in revenue.
Chem-Nuclear, which operates the low-level nuclear waste storage facility in Barnwell, S.C., said it is willing to take on that risk. ”Chemical Waste Management (Chem-Nuclear`s immediate parent company) will guarantee that responsibility,” said Joe Pokorny, a spokesman for the firm.
However, Chemical Waste Management Inc. has only $876 millon in assets and is traded on the New York Stock Exchange separately from its parent, Waste Management Inc., which has $4.9 billion in assets.
Pokorny said Waste Management would not be responsible for its subsidiaries` liabilities.
