Waste uproar recalls Kodak's hush-hush reactor
A coalition of environmental and anti-nuclear groups filed suit earlier this week to block the shipment of high-level radioactive waste from a Canadian nuclear power complex to a disposal facility in South Carolina.
At least some of the liquid waste, in hardened containers carried by tractor-trailers, could enter the country via the Peace Bridge and through Buffalo. Other shipments might go through Syracuse and Binghamton. It's not clear if any of the routes would include the Rochester area.
The waste is coming from the Chalk River Laboratories, a nuclear research facility in the Canadian province of Ontario. The facility, located about 200 miles due north of Rochester, produces medical isotopes, among other things, and once turned out plutonium for use in U.S. nuclear weapons.
Authorities in the United States and Canada say the shipments, which are tentatively scheduled to begin in September and continue for several years, will be completely safe. Opponents beg to differ, saying the shipment method isn't accident-proof and a mishap could be catastrophic.
The public nature of the shipment plans, and the public argument over them, stand in sharp contrast to the time when another nuclear cargo — one that would have been just as controversial as this had anyone known about it — was spirited out of Rochester in the dead of night under armed guard.
And no one was the wiser.
The waste in that case was highly enriched weapons-grade uranium that had, quite improbably, existed in an underground chamber near Lake Avenue in Rochester for 30 years.
As I reported four years ago when someone finally spilled the beans, the uranium had fueled a small nuclear research reactor that Eastman Kodak Co. operated more or less in secret. The type of reactor and the nature of its fuel made it unique in this country.
► READ THE 2012 REPORT: Did you know? Kodak Park had a nuclear reactor
Kodak began to decommission the facility about a decade ago. Because highly enriched uranium can be used to make nuclear bombs, the company had to make special, very secure arrangements to transport it to the Savannah River nuclear processing and storage center in South Carolina — the same place that the Chalk River waste is to be sent.
The 3.5 pounds of Kodak radioactive waste apparently made it to South Carolina without incident. Whether the hundreds of pounds of radioactive material from Chalk River will be allowed to make the same journey seems likely to be decided in court.