Waste

Hazardous Waste
Hazardous waste production at PPL facilities in the U.S. is significantly lower than it was in 1990 and shows mixed trends in recent years, based on factors that change from year to year.

Radioactive Waste
As a normal part of operation and repair activities at a nuclear power plant, protective clothing, tools and other materials become contaminated with radioactive materials. At PPL, this “low-level” waste is disposed of properly using approved methods.

PPL's Susquehanna nuclear power plant disposed of 8,381 cubic feet of low-level radioactive waste in 2006. This was a 23 percent decrease compared with 2005. Low-level radioactive waste production shows mixed trends in recent years based on factors that change from year to year including length of maintenance outages and other plant operational factors.

Low-level waste does not include used uranium fuel, which PPL is storing safely at the plant until the U.S. government fulfills its obligation to provide a permanent fuel repository.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 requires the U.S. Department of Energy to locate, build and operate an underground disposal facility for used fuel from the country's commercial nuclear power plants. PPL has paid more than $340 million to the U.S. government's Nuclear Waste Fund since 1983 for fuel disposal.

The federal government is nearly a decade past-due on its commitment to dispose of used fuel. PPL is storing used fuel from the Susquehanna plant in storage pools and in a specially designed outdoor storage facility at the plant. Both storage methods have robust construction that protects the fuel and the public.

Beneficial Use of Coal Ash
PPL uses more than 95 percent of the coal ash produced at its coal-fired power plants for beneficial purposes, including economic development, recreation and environmental improvement.

Before 1996, most of PPL’s coal ash was disposed of in landfills and surface impoundments, which encompassed nearly 1,000 acres. Since then, PPL has used more than 7 million tons of its coal ash for mine reclamation and to produce Stabil-Fill™, an environmentally safe product used as structural fill in foundations for highways, an airport runway, industrial and commercial buildings, soccer and baseball fields, and a golf course. Stabil-Fill consists of moisture-conditioned fly ash that has been stabilized with hydrated lime.

Early in 2007, an ash separation facility was completed at PPL’s Brunner Island power plant near York, Pa., that will process most of the fly ash from that plant into a high-quality product that can be used as an alternative to cement in the manufacture of ready-mix concrete.

The facility is operated by Separation Technologies, which has other ash processing operations in North Carolina, Maryland, Florida, Mississippi, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Spills of Chemicals, Oils and Fuels
During 2006, PPL reported 77 spills totaling 1,032 gallons of chemicals, oils and fuels.

Martins Creek Release
In August 2005, there was a release of about 100 million gallons of water containing fly ash from a disposal basin at the Martins Creek power plant in eastern Pennsylvania.

Faced with this major test of its environmental principles, PPL pledged to protect public safety and to do whatever was necessary to make things right. A cleanup of ash from adjacent fields, a creek bed and the nearby Delaware River was completed in March 2006.

An independent laboratory tested more than 900 samples of residential water supply wells and found no samples with higher-than-allowed levels of substances related to fly ash. The U.S. Environmental Protection agency evaluated PPL’s response to the incident and determined that PPL was taking appropriate steps to address the environmental effects.

In June 2007, PPL submitted a report containing a thorough assessment of the Delaware River by Normandeau Associates and Arcadis BBL, with oversight by the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. The report concluded that the ash basin release has had no adverse impact on the river’s plant and animal life, human health and recreation. The report is being evaluated by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and a Natural Resources Damage Assessment team.

Throughout the cleanup, PPL maintained open communications with people who live near the power plant. A full-time cleanup director was appointed, a Web site was created to give the public access to information about the cleanup, an e-mail account and toll-free phone number were established for people to contact the cleanup director, and a newsletter was published to keep local residents informed of progress. When the cleanup was completed, the newsletter continued with general information about the plant and the nearby environmental preserve. PPL also has established similar newsletters for other generating plants in Pennsylvania, and for its Montana operations.

An internal investigation, which PPL released to the public, revealed that the cause was faulty fabrication of a stop log at the basin discharge structure. PPL has modified the Martins Creek ash basin and other basins of similar design to replace wooden stop logs with steel-reinforced concrete and installed emergency shut-off valves.

PPL has retired the two coal-fired generating units at Martins Creek. The ash basin will be closed and the land reclaimed for future use. A closure plan will be presented to the Pennsylvania DEP.

PPL’s current estimate of probable loss associated with the release is $37 million. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has asked the Commonwealth Court to approve a consent decree penalizing PPL for the release. The proposed penalty is $1.5 million, which would be the largest environmental penalty ever assessed against PPL. PPL will not contest the penalty.

Toxics Release Inventory
The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) is a federal program under which industrial facilities (including power plants) report their air, water and soil releases. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency maintains a database of more than 650 chemical substances emitted from industrial facilities under the TRI program. Some TRI substances occur naturally in coal. PPL's emissions of substances listed in the TRI have gradually increased in recent years due to an increase in power plant generation and use of increasing amounts of coal. As power generation increased, some previously non-reportable trace substances have met the reporting threshold requirements and have been added to the reportable quantities.

PCB Management
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are man-made chemicals that were used in certain electrical equipment because of their insulating qualities and their fire resistance. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has classified PCBs as a toxic substance. Production and sale of PCBs have been prohibited in the United States since 1977.

In the United States, PPL Electric Utilities has retrofilled equipment with non-PCB dielectric fluids or removed PCB equipment from its system as required by EPA regulations. PPL Gas Utilities has a program to evaluate its pipelines for PCBs that may have entered from the pipeline systems of gas suppliers, and is managing those PCBs as required by EPA regulations.

Under a consent agreement with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, PPL Electric Utilities has cleaned up 175 pole and substation sites that may have been contaminated with PCBs spilled from electrical equipment in the past.

Western Power Distribution (WPD) is required by U.K. government regulations to register holdings of equipment contaminated with PCBs over 50 parts per million. An extensive program in the 1990s eliminated nearly all PCB-contaminated equipment from the WPD system. U.K. regulations dictate that where it is reasonable to assume certain equipment is not PCB-contaminated above 50 ppm, that equipment does not have to be tested until the end of its useful life. Units are tested prior to disposal, and the very few that are identified as contaminated are then disposed of in compliance with regulations.

Two of three Latin American countries where PPL has operations do not have laws or regulations for PCB removal and disposal. PPL affiliates in Bolivia and El Salvador are voluntarily removing equipment that contains PCBs.

In Chile, a decree by the country’s environmental department effective December 2005 establishes how to handle hazardous waste and specifically details rules for its removal and storage and for the elimination of elements considered hazardous waste. PCBs are listed as hazardous under this decree. Therefore, Emel uses an approved facility for temporary storage of PCB equipment called Hidronor before sending containers to England or Finland for permanent disposal. Retired PCB containers are replaced by non-PCB equipment. 

In Bolivia, Elfec sends PCB equipment to a guarded storage facility that complies with the country's environmental requirements. Elfec has retired 51 transformers with PCB contents since 2003 and replaced retired containers with non-PCB equipment.

In El Salvador, DelSur sends PCB equipment to a storage facility approved by the Environmental Ministry and replaces it with non-PCB equipment. Since 1986, DelSur has removed from its system 224 transformers, 35 barrels, 28 PCB waste containers and two independent units that contained PCBs.


 This page addresses the following GRI indicators: 2.18, 2.19, EN11, EN13 and EN31