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variety of alternatives; no one is a desirable one. Politically, the Governor and I believe it
will be very desirable to treat our own waste even if there are no economic benefits. But then you
still come back to where do you site it? Where is it going to be put? How do you make that
decision? What's the fairest way to do that? Let me say to you if you don't know it the Hazardous
Waste Treatment Commission of the State of North Carolina was created by the General Assembly in
1983 and has the power of eminent domain to locate a hazardous waste facility anywhere in this
state. Why? Because the Legislature understood the political game of each community yelling and
screaming with their legislators had to be overcome by choosing someone on a rational basis. Now
the question is, how do you do it? It is fairly impossible. How can you do it with as much benefit
and compensation as possible, and what is the least worst way out? So that is where we stand, Mr.
Chairman. We stand now having cited nothing, having no legislation on the books to site anything,
looking at writing legislation for the next General Assembly, having the General Assembly let us
stay in or out, and then going through a two-year procedure of trying to be fair and equitable in
siting.
I would be glad to answer questions afterwards. I know you have a series of speakers. They
may dispute what I've said; I don't think you can dispute what I've done.
Dr. Mac Cormac invited the audience to attend the Interdisciplinary Committee at the Dorothea
Dix Campus, Raleigh, Wednesday, November 12, 2:00.
He added that a geological survey may be done in 1987. It will probably cost $500,000.
$75,000 has been appropriated for the initial survey at this time.
Chairman Hedrick inquired about a timetable for site selection beginning and taking
approximately how long? _..._.
Dr. Mac Cormac said the whole procedure of drafting legislation, site selection, permitting,
and operation will take approximately six years at the best. By Federal law, it will have to be
available by January 1, 1992. That's the target date, so we're at the very beginning of our target.
JESS RILEY: You're entitled to know my background. I have Bachelor's Degree in Chemistry and
Physics from Northwestern University, a Master's Degree from the University of Chicago. I worked
for the Celanese Corporation for 37 years in Research and Development until I retired six years ago.
I am still a consultant for Celanese. The most recent two titles I have with Celanese are Senior
Research Associate and Staff Scientist. I incidentially did some work over a period of two years
with radiation. What I'm trying to do is to equip myself with information which, to the best of my
judgment, appears to valid given the situation with respect to low-level waste.
Mr. Riley gave a definition of low-level nuclear waste. I would not say that radiation is
benign. I'd say that we are here and operating in part because of radiation in the past, not in the
present, and in spite of radiation. There isn't much of it, but we can't avoid it. We live with
it. How do we live in spite of these? We live in spite of these because there are gene repair
mechanisms, and when a radioactive particle fouls up, ionizes the DNA, in a body cell, there are
specific enzymes in that cell that repair the break. And this is the thing that explains how come
some people can get a dose of radiation and not even get sick and other people will years later
develop cancer. What we're looking at is a lottery, the lottery involved in individual's gene
repair mechanism. If the mechanisms are working hard, you can take more radiation. If they're not
working too well, you may be in trouble with things just as they are. Take a look at the medical
textbooks and see the numuers of monsters (mal -formed fetuses) and stillbirths that occur. Some
reasonably large part of that is attributable to this unavoidable radiation. So I insist that it
isn't good for us. We can live with it if we've got good gene repair mechanisms we can live with it
better than if we don't. How many of you have got good gene repair mechanisms?
Now let's stake out where we are in terms of this low-level waste which includes everything,
including your spent reactors. While I'm saying reactors, let's put the radioactivity that is at
present,---------. 97% of the --------in North Carolina in 1985 came from nuclear power generation.
There's something called a half-life which characterizes radioactive maturity. That half-life can
vary from a few thousands of a second to something like ten trillion years. But the ones that
bother us are the ones that are in between. The things like ------- 137, which has a half-life of
30 years. That means when you start off with a pound of it, 30 years, you've got half a pound of
it. It's still pretty potent.
Remember now, we're describing the waste we're getting right now. When Three Mile Island, Unit
2, is recognized to be inoperable for the future and is decommissioned, to use the NRC's words for
it, somebody is going to catch that and it's going to be low-level waste. A very important thing to
bear in mind. Now who'll catch that? The Southeast Compact provides that a majority, that's 11 of
16 commissions, can rule to accept waste from any other state provided that the host state's two
commissioners ---------- Oh, we hear about all this money that's kicking around, and we realize how
sensitive political people who are in charge are to liking to lay it out but not having to tax for
it, we have a real opportunity for getting waste from more than eight states. It will depend upon
what our commissioners veto.
MAC CORMAC: There is also a cap. Twenty years or 32 million cu. ft.
JESS RILEY: Well, on the other hand, by the time you've got 32 million cu. ft., you've really
got something on your hands. Here is the NRC definition of waste classifications. It recognizes
three categories:
A. The most modern
B. Ten times as potent '
C. Different