In an average week, more than five tons of waste from across the state is trucked into an unassuming, one-floor brick building on the edge of the University of MinnesotaâÄôs Minneapolis campus.
The Thompson Center for Environmental Management is not the final destination, but rather a sort of purgatory for chemical waste ranging from latex gloves that have been in contact with chemicals to low-radioactive materials from research labs.
Similar waste was previously handled at locations in UMore Park in Rosemount, Minn. and in the Como neighborhood, but safety concerns rose to the state Legislature.
The debate concluded in 1994 with the $8.1 million University building that processes more than 600,000 pounds of toxic trash every year, consolidating nearly all of the stateâÄôs hazardous waste.
Since its construction, the area around the Thompson Center has transformed from parking lots and open space. The center is now in the shadow of TCF Bank Stadium and the proposed sites of several new University buildings. Like the waste it processes, the Thompson Center might be temporary, but Phelan said itâÄôs the best location available.
âÄúWe couldnâÄôt get a good spot on the Mall,âÄù facility director Andy Phelan said jokingly.
A prison of radioactivity
Twice every week, and once a week in St. Paul, specially marked trucks pick up chemical waste from the campus and bring it to the Thompson Center.
âÄúIt really is just like common household trash, except that it is research lab trash âÄî like gloves and paper,âÄù Phelan said. âÄúThe radioactive material is usually absorbed into it, and extracting it would be impossible.âÄù
The facility is filled with 500 sealed containers of low-radioactivity gloves and paper, the byproducts of more than 1,000 laboratories on campus.
âÄú[The labs] have materials, some common, which might have special hazards,âÄù Phelan said. âÄúIf we just hold it on shelves for a couple of years, all the radioactivity will be gone.âÄù
While the vast majority of the waste at the Thompson Center is made up of gloves and sheets of paper, there are also low-radioactive materials.
A cancer researcher, for example, might use low-radioactive materials in pursuit of new forms of chemotherapy, said David Paulu, who started at the lab as a University student nine years ago. That waste, arriving in special drums or boxes, is sorted on rows of shelves until radioactive decay runs its course and the items no longer pose a threat.
The waste will sit for 15 to 20 half-lives, Paulu said, referring to the amount of time a substance takes to decay to half of its size. The common half-life for the substances that are stored in the facility ranges from eight to 90 days, said Paulu.
Wastes take a couple of months âÄî but sometimes as long as a few years âÄî at the Thompson Center before being picked up by a third-party vendor. A truck comes once a year to transport radioactive waste to a facility in Tennessee for additional processing before being dumped in a special radioactive waste landfill in Utah.
A good 30 miles from civilization, the Clive Disposal Facility, owned by nuclear waste company EnergySolutions, is surrounded by the Utah desert, essentially in the middle of nowhere, said Mark Walker, spokesman for EnergySolutions.
The location was selected by the U.S. Department of Energy after researching 29 locations in that state, Walker said.
The trash is compacted and stored on just a square mile of property where it is stacked to 38-foot-tall pyramids.
Fully equipped safety features
Equipped with layers upon layers of safety, very few accidents have occurred at the lab in its 16 years.
Maybe once a year, Phelan said, someone at the facility will drop a bottle of a gas.
Even if waste gas is released, negative air pressure in the facility contains the gases and ventilates them harmlessly into the atmosphere.
âÄúAs soon as that bottle hits the ground, the sensors go off, the message goes to a remote centralized monitoring center and they call me,âÄù Phelan said.
Large ventilation fans constantly change the air in each room up to 18 times an hour.
Two fire suppression systems and a water sprinkler system guard the offices and storage areas. Designated hazard areas are protected by a foam-based system that better addresses unstable solvents.
Floors in the storage areas have ramps and are raised to accommodate the foam in the event of an emergency, and special floor tiles in each storage room are chosen by evaluating its chemical resistances.
Besides having the responsibility for storage and repackaging of hazardous waste, the Thompson Center also responds to chemical spills on campus.
Last September, an on-call Hazmat crew from the UniversityâÄôs Department of Environmental Health and Safety, along with at least eight fire trucks, responded to a spill of a flammable chemical, pyridine, at the Phillips-Wangensteen Building.
The two students who spilled several liters of the hazardous chemical were sent to the hospital, and two blocks of road were closed because of the accident.
Phelan remembers long ago that chemical spills were a common occurrence at the University. Now, he said, spills are rare but still happen two or three times a year.
âÄúPeople still cut corners.âÄù
The future
Centrally funded by the University, school researchers do not have to pay for the services, but outside organizations can pay a fee to have their waste picked up and disposed.
âÄúThey have been the vendor of choice for a long time before I was here,âÄù said Erin Paulson, safety administrator for Winona State University.
Running the program costs about $1.6 million a year. The facility receives nearly $500,000 in fees from hospitals and schools.
âÄúThe amount of waste has been remarkably consistent [in 16 years] given the fact that research, which is our biggest customer, has skyrocketed,âÄù Phelan said.
One explanation he offers is a new way to conduct research called micro-scaling.
âÄúItâÄôs scaling down and getting the same quality of research using more sophisticated machines,âÄù allowing the use of smaller and smaller amounts of chemicals or none at all, Paulu said.
It is part of the âÄúgreen movementâÄù of chemistry, he said.
âÄúWeâÄôd like to think there will be no chemicals at the University,âÄù Phelan said hyperbolically of the future.
As more of the population continues to physically extend toward the facility, the possible relocation of the Thompson Center will come into question.
Moving to St. Paul is possible, Phelan said, but because more of the waste comes from Minneapolis, having the facility at its current location is more convenient.
âÄúI would like to see it stay here, but I donâÄôt know what the master plan is,âÄù Phelan said. âÄúThe value of this real estate might be deemed more amenable to a research laboratory.âÄù
Phelan, who also worked at the two now-defunct storage sites, has been at the Thompson Center since it opened. He said several academic institutions now have similar on-campus sites modeled, he thinks, after the Thompson Center.
âÄúIt was by far a unique facility for an academic setting.âÄù