The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), a nonprofit organization, released a report on May 14 that exposes Department of Energy (DOE) practices of dumping nuclear-related waste in facilities that are unregulated and not designed for radioactive material. NIRS found that DOE's policies and procedures are geared toward the "release of radioactive waste, materials and property from regulatory control."

After reviewing seven DOE/NNSA (National Nuclear Security Administration) sites, NIRS' report discusses various loopholes through which these wastes have continued to be released into the environment.

• "Brokers" licensed to handle radioactive material sell or donate material to other processors not licensed
• Unchecked metal not directly part of nuclear processing (building structures, furniture) is regularly auctioned, exchanged to other federal agencies, donated or rented to public or private entities
• Radioactive waste is mixed with other wastes to be re-characterized as low-level radioactive waste with fewer or no release restrictions

In Tennessee, the leading state in licensing nuclear waste processors, four landfills have been approved to take "deregulated" nuclear waste from licensed processors. These processors frequently have the discretion to determine what waste they have to pay to have processed according to nuclear waste guidelines, and what waste can be considered deregulated. This creates a clear profit incentive for these processors to deregulate more waste.

NIRS found many examples of questionable material redirected into the public sphere. For instance, Los Alamos sends potentially contaminated metal to Rio Rancho landfill in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is regularly canvassed by Habitat for Humanity for supplies. The landfill does not ensure that the potentially contaminated material is not taken by Habitat for Humanity. Instead, the burden is placed on Habitat for Humanity to know which supplies not to choose.

When DOE holds auctions for excess property, scanning is considered too time-consuming and is instead done "statistically and in conjunction with 'institutional knowledge' about the likelihood the items ever came in contact with radioactivity."

What is a "safe" radioactivity level, and who has the authority to deregulate radioactive material, is less clear than one would think. DOE permits "a few milliards per year" to be released for an "unlimited number of releases." The NIRS determined that a person has a 1 in 28,571 chance of developing cancer with a milliard of exposure every year for thirty-five years.

One of the pervasive threats to communities remains their ignorance. Most have no way of knowing if radioactive material is in their local landfill. A 2000 DOE secretarial ban on recycling potentially radioactive metals included requiring "comprehensive and publicly available records" of radioactive releases. However, NIRS could not find any such records. Even more troubling, there is little information to discover even if it were accessible, as the NIRS report states that "there is no cumulative tracking, measurement, quantification, record keeping or reporting on all of the DOE's radioactive releases." Whether or not communities are safe remains unanswerable.