WASTE MANAGEMENT RESEARCH AND MONDAY, JUNE 3, 1968 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON AIR AND WATER POLLUTION Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met at 9:30 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 4200, New Senate Office Building, Senator William B. Spong, Jr., presiding. Present: Senator Spong. Staff members present: Richard B. Royce, chief clerk and staff director; Leon G. Billings and Richard D. Grundy, professional staff members; and Bailey Guard, assistant chief clerk (minority). OPENING STATEMENT BY SENATOR SPONG Senator SPONG. The hearing will come to order. Today the Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution resumes hearings on waste management research and environmental quality management. Due to the press of business on the Senate floor the subcommittee had to cancel hearings scheduled for May 23. However, it is the subcommittee's intention to reschedule those witnesses later during this session of Congress. It is hoped that the testimony presented today will provide a comprehensive review of the concept of environmental quality management and the future needs of our society regarding waste management. The subcommittee is concerned with putting into perspective the current practices of waste management and disposal, and their destructive influences on the environment. Only when these destructive influences are known will the means be available to preserve the quality of our environment so that it is not only possible to live but also to make life worth living. A report prepared at the request of Senator J. Caleb Boggs entitled "Availability, Utilization, and Salvage of Industrial Materials," suggests that the industrial economy of the United States, and indeed that of the entire industrial world, should undergo a shift from the useand-discard approach to a system which includes methods of salvaging, reprocessing, and reuse. The report further suggests that the timing of this conversion need not be precise nor immediate but that it must occur or man in the future faces a continually degrading environment which will eventually be intolerable, but this is just one possibility. It is hoped that the testimony presented today will provide addi tional alternatives. Our first witness today is Dr. Glenn Seaborg, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. The experience of this agency in managing the waste with profound implications regarding the quality of our environment is most appreciated as an example of waste management in its broadest concept. Dr. Seaborg, we are very pleased to have you with us this morning. STATEMENT OF DR. GLENN T. SEABORG, CHAIRMAN; ACCOMPANIED BY JOSEPH A. LIEBERMAN, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR NUCLEAR SAFETY, DIVISION OF REACTOR DEVELOPMENT AND TECHNOLOGY, ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION Dr. SEABORG. It is a pleasure to appear before you today, and sitting with me is Joseph A. Lieberman, the Assistant Director for Nuclear Safety of the AEC Division of Reactor Development and Technology. I would like to devote my testimony today to two areas of discussion: one dealing specifically with the Atomic Energy Commission's work involving pollution and waste management related directly to nuclear power; and the other dealing with some more general, and personal, thoughts on the control of pollution and waste as it might be affected by nuclear energy in the future. WASTE MANAGEMENT PHILOSOPHY Let me begin by emphasizing the preventive philosophy that has guided the development of nuclear power since its inception 25 years ago. The fact that the atom was introduced to the world as a destructive force has had its drawbacks in advancing it as a constructive force, though time and education are helping us overcome this. But concurrently, the fact that we understood and respected the potentially harmful qualities of this source of energy as we started to work constructively with it has turned out to be one of our greatest assets in developing nuclear power. And perhaps, in addition to economic and technological reasons, this is a reason why nuclear power will show tremendous strides in the years ahead. In the early development of nuclear power the public's health and safety had to be a foremost consideration. This is still true today, and I think it will always be true-long after nuclear power stations have become the conventional powerplants of the day. Rather than dwell on development philosophy though, let me move directly to specific areas of interest to this committee-to nuclear power's relationship to air pollution and waste management. AIR POLLUTION Concerning air pollution, one of the great contributions the growing use of nuclear power to generate electricity will make to the environment is to reduce the rate at which combustion products are being pumped into our atmosphere. If we are fortunate enough to develop and put into widespread use some day, electric automobiles that are charged through nucleargenerated electricity, and if we can reduce waste incineration, through nuclear methods I will touch on later, the atom could dramatically reduce all air pollution. I should make it clear at this point that while nuclear powerplants do not produce any combustion products they do create small amounts of gaseous waste. These gases, most of them inert and having a short half-life of radioactivity, are usually contained in the plant-sometimes as long as 30 days-and then after passing through high efficiency filters, to remove 99.9 percent of air particulate matter, are discharged under favorable atmospheric conditions. Even in view of this limited and harmless discharge of gases from nuclear plants, our conservative approach, when it comes to public health, dictates that each plant continually monitor its effluents. And just as a further check, offsite monitoring is also provided by State and Federal agencies. Perhaps it would be further reassuring to state at this time that general environmental monitoring data indicates that there has been no significant increase in atmospheric radioactivity from nuclear powerplants. Taking all these things into consideration I hope you will agree that the growth of nuclear power will make a considerable contribution to cleaner air. WASTE DISPOSAL PRACTICES Now let me turn to another aspect of waste management related to nuclear power-the handling and disposal of liquid and solid wastes. created in nuclear plants. As several of the members of this subcommittee may know, in the processes of generating power nuclear fuels create fission products-radioactive elements that remain in the nuclear system until removed. By far the largest amount and potentially the most hazardous of this radioactive material remains within the fuel elements and is removed only when the reactor is refueled—when the spent fuel is taken out of the reactor for reprocessing. A smaller amount of radioactive waste, primarily in liquid form and for the most part of a low and intermediate level of radioactivity, is also produced in the plant. I will not go into detail on the handling and disposal of this low and intermediate level waste other than to say that we have developed safe and reliable methods to remove it from the plant and dispose of it so that it presents no hazard to the environment. The handling and disposal of high-activity waste from the chemical processing of the reactor's irradiated fuel naturally presents greater difficulties. But we have managed this material safely to date primarily by concentrating such waste and storing it in underground containers in areas away from man and his natural resources. In our current research and development programs, however, we are perfecting new handling and disposal methods that will vastly improve our management of this type of waste. RADIOACTIVE WASTES Our most promising R. & D. programs in the management of high activity waste involve the considerable reduction of the volume of this type of waste by its solidification into a powder, a granular form or a glass-like substance and permanent disposal of such material in salt mines. I would like to point out that these and other improved fuel reprocessing technologies already in use offer such a reduction in the volume of high-activity waste from nuclear systems that even with the currently projected nuclear power growth rate, such processed waste from nuclear plants, accumulated between now and the year 2000, will only be comparable in volume to the amount of highactivity waste we have successfully managed in our operations to date. So we are confident and optimistic about the future of waste management in the nuclear power field, and we hope you share some of this confidence and optimism. WASTE MANAGEMENT But now, as I stated I would in opening my remarks, let me extend my thoughts to a more general consideration of nuclear power's effect on waste management and environmental pollution, and for a moment speak more broadly of the atom's possible future role in these areas. As this subcommittee well knows, because of its deep involvement in studies relating many of the natural sciences to man-made problems, we are in the midst of what might be called an "ecological revolution" in our scientific and social thinking. SYSTEM STUDIES With what seems to be a sudden burst of insight, almost everyone from nuclear physicists and microbiologists to urban planners and international bankers are thinking and talking about "systems." In fact, it is getting increasingly difficult these days to argue a subject without someone interjecting a totally irrelevant point and then proving how relevant it might be if we think broadly enough. So at the risk of going a little beyond the immediate concern of this subcommittee, let me inject some far-out thinking on how the extended use of nuclear energy might affect us environmentally. ENERGY Basically, human beings have progressed through the acquisition and application of two things-knowledge and energy. Today we are experiencing an incredible growth-an explosion-and as AEC Chairman I always use that word hesitatingly-an explosion in both knowledge and energy. But in the use of energy we have just begun to tap the possibilities because we have just begun to tap the vast potential of the atom. The fullest development and application of abundant and very economic nuclear energy could have the most dramatic effect on our lives-possibly revolutionizing the way we use our water and air, grow our food, extract and use our raw materials, manufacture our products, recycle our waste, build our cities, and live our daily lives. NUCLEAR POWER While there is not time to sketch out the way all of this might come about, let me catalog some of the things that nuclear power could accomplish economically as it becomes both more available and cheaper. Generate electricity at competitively decreasing costs. Desalt seawater and brackish water. Pump up vast amounts of underground water for agricultural use in some areas of the world. Manufacture steel via electric furnaces. Produce ammonia and phosphorus fertilizers. Process magnesium at the cost of today's aluminum. Economically extract the variety of chemicals in seawater brine. Produce pipeline gas from coal. And ultimately supply general purpose industrial heat. No doubt the members of this subcommittee have heard of the studies on agroindustrial energy centers that have taken place at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. These studies have concentrated on the way in which large nuclear centers in tropical coastal areas might use nuclear power to desalt seawater and produce fertilizer to support highly scientific farms-food factories and produce large yields of crops on previously unproductive land. An extension of this concept can be carried out to affect our thinking on the use of very cheap nuclear power in more developed areas—in industrialized and urban regions. RESOURCE RECOVERY If the cost of nuclear power can be reduced low enough it becomes, in effect, an abundant raw material with which to perform large-scale alchemy on other materials. It may give us a new dimension of control over our environment by allowing us to economically recycle much of our solid waste, to relieve nature of much of the intolerable burden we have placed on her-and now on ourselves-by returning to her in such large amounts, so rapidly, and often in unabsorbable form, the materials we have borrowed and used. Or in simpler and less euphemistic terms-it may let us economically eliminate much of our pollution and junk. In addition, there is the important consideration that in the not-toodistant future the increasing demand for source materials in a highly industrialized world, with a better living standard for all people, will require that we recycle material as well as search farther and dig deeper for new natural resources. I should also add at this point that in the future, when we think in terms of the fullest, most productive use of cheap nuclear energy, the excess heat from the reactor cooling system, now considered somewhat of a liability, will no longer be totally in excess or a liability. It should become in large part a great asset-an important form of energy used productively for industrial processing, space heating, and perhaps for other uses we cannot foresee now. NUPLEX CONCEPT Some members of this subcommittee may be familiar with the futuristic concept of the nuplex that I have included in many of my talks during the past year or so. For those of you who are not, I might |