Baker: Why add to radiation we can't avoid? (RACE / Memphis)

[struggle4progress]

James H. Baker is conservation chair for the Chickasaw Group of the Tennessee chapter of the Sierra Club.

July 31, 2005

The clock is ticking toward the Memphis City Council's decision on issuing two special-use permits to Radiological Assistance, Consulting and Engineering (RACE). <snip>

In a newsletter on its Web site earlier this year, RACE stated that it had brought millions of pounds of radioactive waste into Memphis for processing and disposal, including a contaminated nuclear reactor head. Until recently, many people in Memphis did not know this.

Equally quietly, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation's Division of Radiological Health (TDEC-DRH) has amended RACE's radioactive materials license numerous times to allow more radioactive wastes, including wastes from overseas, to be on site with no legal notice to the public. The radiological health division told me in a letter last month that no requirements exist for legal notice before a radioactive materials license can be issued.

And where does some of that waste go after being processed at RACE? The newsletter, referring to shipments of contaminated soil and debris from a Department of Energy site in Ohio, states: "RACE then manifests the material and sends it to a local sanitary landfill for disposal where the containers are emptied and the waste is immediately covered." In another section of the newsletter, RACE states it will use "specified Subtitle 'D' landfill sites in the state of Tennessee" for disposal of "low-activity waste materials." <snip>

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