Management of Commercially Generated Radioactive Waste - U.S. ...

G.2 CHARACTERISTICS OF REFERENCE SITES
G.2
To emphasize that the reference sites are hypothetical, they are simply labeled Mid-
west, Southeast, and Southwest. Each reference site consists of a single county. The
region within which the county is located is defined as the aggregation of all counties
falling substantially within a 50-mile radius of the facility. If more than half of a
county is included within that 50-mile radius, it is included in the region.
Regional populations are important for assessing site impacts because a sizable portion
of the site labor force may commute to work from regional localities. Fifty miles repre-
sents the maximum commuting distance that most workers are willing to undertake. Further-
more, population redistribution within the region may result in project-related impacts.
Table G. 2 .1 ( a) summarizes data for the site counties and surrounding regions. Two
types of comparisons can aid in the interpretation of these data. First, there are marked
differences among the sites, whether based on county or regional comparisons. Second, there
are important differences between the county and the region for each site. From the popula-
tion data it is evident that the Southeast and Midwest regions are highly urbanized when
compared with the Southwest region. Differences among the three counties are even greater.
While the Midwest site falls within the most urbanized region, the county containing that
site has the smallest urban component. In fact, each site county is less urbanized than its
corresponding region, reflecting the likelihood that waste repositories will be situated
away from urban centers and densely settled areas. The density figures also support this
observation.
The sites vary dramatically in terms of population change over the 1965 to 1970 period,
with the Southwest site showing a marked decline, the Midwest site a comparable increase,
and the Southeast site remaining relatively stable. From 1970 to 1975 all sites gained pop-
ulation, and the differences among the rates of change are smaller than in the preceding
5-year period. These changes over the decade can be attributed to two components: natural
change and net migration. Natural change is the difference between births and deaths. Net
migration is the difference between the number of persons moving into an area and the number
moving out. Each site has experienced an excess of births over deaths, thus serving to mod-
erate the population loss due to emigration from the Southwest and Southeast sites over this
period while increasing the growth experienced by the Midwest site. Population change has
important consequences in the capacity of a site to absorb impacts. Counties that are expe-
riencing rapid population growth may be more likely to plan to accommodate further demand
on local services than counties that are not growing. On the other hand, counties that are
losing population may have under-utilized service sectors, which would then be available to
serve the needs of project-related immigrants.
While the Southeast county has a high urban component compared with the Midwest county,
the Southeast county is only one-fifth as densely populated as the Midwest county. In the
(a) The population data used here are based on realistic locations covering the period 1970
to 1975. Analyses of future impacts are based on projections of these data to the year
1980 and beyond.