Word: lowing
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...real solution, both Harvard and MIT safety officers concur, is to local, low-level dumping sites. There are hundreds of sites around the country that could technically qualify as low-level dumping sites, says Greenwood. But as experience all over the nation has demsonstrated, this is one idea that sounds great on paper but is nearly impossible to implement. The problem, in a word, is political: Shapiro says, "everybody is scared of the public." "There's been a major search in the state for location of dumping sites," says Coddington. "But nobody wants a dump in his backyard--or anywhere...
Last May's shutdown is only symptomatic of Harvard's most pressing waste disposal problem: low-level radioactive wastes. University labs produce all sorts of radioactive by-products--from chemicals to contaminated papers to glassware and animals used in experiments. In the medical area alone, says Coddington, labs and research experiments are producing more than 1000 gallons of toluene, a frequently used chemical that is both radioactive and highly flammable after experimentation. Each year, the labs must also dispose of more than four and a half million vials which come in contact with toluene...
...Boston-area colleges, Harvard contracts with the Interex Corporation of Natick, Mass. to haul away its gallons of radioactive sludge. Because it has jurisdiction over the entire medical area as well as portions of 15 Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals, the Unitversity is the area's largest college producer of low-level wastes, Interex spokesman Joseph Rosenberg explains. In 1978, Interex hauled away about 3500 30-gallon barrels of Harvard-generated liquid sludge, for about $50 a barrel. Now, says Jacob A. Shapiro of the University's office of environmental health and safety, Harvard is paying about twice that to haul...
Shapiro describes the problem as "an Alice in Wonderland situation." Universities, he explains, produce very low-level wastes but they must ship them across the country to a place "that should be reserved for high-level materials." With Barnwell effectively shut down, only Hanford and a site in Beattie, Nevada are still taking low-level deposits. At Hanford, officials are already concerned, because containers not meant for more than five-year storage are being misused. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) officials are considering only one new low-level disposal site--the Lion, Kansas salt mines, once ruled unfit to store high...
...alternative to shipping wastes away is on-site disposal. Timothy Johnson, project manager in the waste management division of the NRC, says the commission is currently looking for methods of solidifying and incinerating radioactive wastes. The University of Maryland, for example, is considering building a $150,000 incinerator for low-level sludge, Johnson says. Shapiro says Harvard has heard about such ideas, but has nothing on the drawing board at the moment. "Incineration is the way you're going to have to go," he adds. However, as Johnson explains, such techniques require a large capital investment and university budgets...