As of Friday, Illinois had no place to send and store its low-level nuclear waste. State officials can’t say they didn’t know this day was coming. They also have no excuses that it did.
Fourteen years ago, Congress passed the Low Level Radioactive Waste Act, commanding the states to take responsibility for their low-level nuclear waste, urging them to form alliances to locate disposal sites, and giving them until Jan. 1, 1993, to have the dumps in operation. Illinois joined in a compact with Kentucky, agreeing to host the site because its waste generation dwarfed that of its neighbor.
Most of the states-like Illinois, with one bungled effort to its discredit-missed the deadline. They-37 of them-relied instead on a convenient way out, sending their radioactive garbage to the storage site in Barnwell, S.C. Now it is closed to them.
State officials can’t say they didn’t know that day was coming. Eighteen months ago, weary of being a national nuclear dumping ground, South Carolina warned that as of July 1, 1994, it would accept waste only from its seven southeastern state partners.
Where does that leave Illinois? Nowhere. Though an effort is underway to find a disposal site, the solution isn’t close. The state Department of Nuclear Safety estimates that it will be at least the year 2000 before a dump is in place, and that may be optimistic.
It is no consolation that Illinois is no more nor less guilty than most of the states, none of which relished dealing with the volatile political consequences or community opposition to designating a nuclear dump. It is guilty nonetheless of abdicating its responsibility.
It isn’t that the state didn’t try; it just made a shameful mess of the attempt. After five years and the squandering of more than $85 million-paid for by the waste producers-it settled on a site in Downstate Martinsville, eager to have the dump because of the jobs and revenue it would produce.
The choice raised such a hue and cry locally, and such disturbing questions about the integrity of the research, that a special commission-headed by former Illinois Supreme Court Justice Seymour Simon-was appointed to review the state’s decision. In October of 1992, it dumped the dump, finding the choice flawed to the extent that a possible leak from the site could have contaminated the water supply.
That prompted new legislation to streamline the process, chiefly by creating a task force to recommend potential sites and eliminating local veto power so the choice would be made on scientific, not political, grounds. For all that, the state is still essentially where it was 14 years ago.
Now all the burden is on the waste producers, such as hospitals, research institutions and Commonwealth Edison. They must find the room and bear the cost of storing the waste on-site. Though for the most part the stuff isn’t dangerous, there always is risk with radioactive material, and storing it at hundreds of sites instead of one increases that risk.
Caring for it safely is the state’s duty, and it has run out of both time and excuses.
