No nuclear waste to be used officials say

A standing room only crowd was at the Dale County Commission meeting Oct. 25. The issue on their minds was news that a research firm plans to drill a three-mile deep hole on Waterford Road near Newton, on property owned by Alabama Power Company.

There will be no nuclear waste used in the drilling project, Battelle Memorial Institute Program Manager Engineer Steven Winburg told the crowd. “There will not be any nuclear waste brought on the site, there will not be any nuclear waste stored on the site and there will not be any nuclear waste that goes down the hole.”

Ohio-based Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit research firm hired to manage the U.S. Department of Energy project, submitted a proposal for the Dale County project to the DOE Monday. The federal bid is expected to be awarded in mid-January.

Public hearings with citizens in Dale County will be the next step in the five-year project, Winburg said. The next five months will be a permitting process. It will be about seven months to drill the well. At the end of the five years the well will be plugged and sealed off and the site returned to as natural a state as possible, Winburg said. “And the program will be done—again, no nuclear waste.”

After a similar project was rejected in North and South Dakota, Winburg said that Battelle committed to obtaining local citizen’s support first to head off rumors that the tests are a prelude to nuclear waste. “Our intent is to make sure that the first information that people hear about the project is from us,” Winburg said. “And to make the emphatic statement that DOE’s approach to nuclear waste disposal is to not use this as a site for disposal.”

Battelle approached Dale County after being rebuffed in North and South Dakota over citizen concerns that nuclear waste might eventually be stored there.

After discussing the Battelle proposal in an executive session, the Dale County Commission had signed a resolution last month in favor of the project. “Just like we would do with any other economic development project,” Dale County Commission Chairman Mark Blankenship said Tuesday, adding that State Rep. Steve Clouse and the Dale County and Ozark City Schools systems had also signed resolutions of support of the project.

“Today is not a public hearing,” Blankenship told the crowd as he asked Winburg to present a project overview.

Winburg said repeatedly that no nuclear waste will be buried in Dale County but many residents seemed skeptical. The hole bored would be used for research purposes only, but data from the tests could result in future bore-holes being drilled elsewhere that could be used to dispose of weapons-grade nuclear waste, Winburg said. “The only thing that will go down into that well will be test instruments.

“The ultimate goal is to see if we can store nuclear waste in granite,” Winburg told the crowd. “The reason that the Department of Energy wants to do this is that the United States has high-level, weapons-grade nuclear waste.

“It’s not commercial waste from power plants but rather it’s nuclear waste from the Cold War and we are storing that in different places around the country and have been for 75-80 years now,” Winburg said. “And the DOE is looking for an alternative to just storing it. There are several alternatives out there and they are in the investigative phase.

One of the alternatives that the DOE is considering is disposing of it deep underground. “This is the first test and there will be lots of tests over several decades to determine if this method of disposal makes sense,” Winburg said.

Battelle contributes to science education for school systems, Winburg said, adding that school students will be invited to the drill site. “We’re hoping that we can encourage kids to go in to science and mathematics.”

“We want to be upfront and open and honest and we only ask that you give us an opportunity and watch our actions,” Winburg said. “We need you to allow us to come here and do this science project.”