Nebraska's $2,000 charge for transporting nuclear waste across the state is set to go up this year, likely in time to catch at least the end of an expected 30 radioactive shipments headed to New Mexic
NANCY HICKS / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Wednesday, December 3, 2008 6:00 pm
Nebraska’s $2,000 charge for transporting nuclear waste across the state is set to go up this year, likely in time to catch at least the end of an expected 30 radioactive shipments headed to New Mexico.
A public hearing on the proposed increase in the shipment charge — to $3,100 per cask — is scheduled for 1 p.m. today in the lower level of the State Office Building.
The state is raising its charges in the middle of a 30-shipment campaign to transport what is called transuranic waste.
The shipments are traveling from the Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago to burial —2,150 feet underground — at a waste isolation pilot plant east of Carlsbad, N.M., where it will stay in perpetuity, said Bill Mackie with the Department of Energy’s Carlsbad Field Office.
Nebraska charges fees for high-level and transuranic radioactive waste, which is the byproduct of research and includes lab material, clothing, tools and wood tainted with plutonium. It does not charge for low-level waste transported across the state.
Nine Department of Energy shipments have already crossed the state, after two years with no high-level shipments, said Julia Schmitt, manager of the office of radiological health for the state Department of Health and Human Services.
The DOE expects about another 20 shipments, usually one or two casks per shipment in this campaign, which ends in 2009, Mackie said.
And more than likely there will be another campaign, he said.
A campaign includes documenting everything that has happened to the waste, packaging it and moving it in the cask on trucks to the New Mexico site, he said.
The casks going through Nebraska on flatbed trucks look like a large dumbbell. They have two end pieces, called impact limiters, and a 10-foot-round cask in the middle. The exterior is made of stainless steel, lead and then more stainless steel. Inside is room for three 55-gallon tubs, which contain the waste, Mackie explained.
When the shipment gets to the WIPP (waste isolation pilot plant), the drums are robotically taken out of that cask and put into a disposal cask. Thus the initials RH or remotely handled in the cask’s name: RH-72B, he said. The B means licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, he explained.
The DOE handles two types of waste. Contact-handled waste, which has not gone through Nebraska, emits alpha radiation that can be stopped by first responders’ coats, pants, boots, gloves or helmets.
Remote-handled waste is moved robotically because the waste can penetrate cement blocks.
The lead lining of the casks keeps radioactive readings at the surface of the cask down to less than the maximum limit, 200 millirams per hour. Two meters away the readings drop to 10 millirams, or less than a chest X-ray, he said.
Three of the five states that these shipments move through — Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska —charge a fee. Colorado and New Mexico do not, he said.
Nebraska’s proposed higher charge for either high level or transuranic waste is based on an estimation of what it costs Nebraska agencies to oversee the shipments through the state, including increased potential costs for guarding the shipment should it have to be parked because of weather, according to Schmitt.
Five state agencies that might be involved in shipments — the state patrol, Department of Roads, Nebraska Emergency Management Administration, Health and Human Services, and Public Service Commission (for rail shipments) — were involved in the fee setting.
The original $2,000 per cask fee was set in state law in 2003. That law also allowed the state to raise the charge based on costs associated with shipments, Schmitt said.
Shippers — in this case the Department of Energy — must notify the state of the shipment and pay the fee. Then the agency gets a letter that must be shown to carrier enforcement at Nebraska’s borders, she explained.
Radioactive waste shipments across the state have not been controversial in recent years.
“It is packaged in very robust containers. And the five to nine shipments a year is a very small portion of the traffic across the state,” she said.
Actual transportation dates and exact route are not made public because of security issues, she said.
First responders along the route are offered training annually. This year about 100 people participated in the training, which included a practice exercise in North Platte, said Jon Schwarz, radiological programs manager for NEMA.
Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or nhicks@journalstar.com.