Nuke waste cheaper to dispose of in Nev.

Friday, July 19, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Low-level nuclear waste producers are getting a great deal at the Nevada Test Site.

They can ship their radioactive material there for $12.63 per cubic foot. That's a bargain-basement rate compared with $300 per cubic foot at the commercial Barnwell, S.C., site to bury radioactive remains from weapons experiments.

Not surprisingly, the DOE loses money on the deal, although the losses have been covered by $7 million in carryover funds from last year, said Angela Colarusso, DOE project manager for environmental management in Nevada.

It costs the DOE $16 per cubic foot to dispose of the low-level wastes from labs and other defense facilities.

"What upsets me as a Nevadan is you're losing money and aren't covering closing costs or monitoring," said nuclear engineer Tony Hechenova, who works at UNLV's Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies.

The DOE is considering a $17-per-cubic-foot charge next year, Colarusso said.

"We have to look at better, more cost-effective ways so generators are paying more," Colarusso told about 20 people listening Thursday to a 10-year plan to clean up the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Colarusso admitted there wasn't enough money to close a pit already full of low-level nuclear waste at the site. The cost to cap that one pit is $7 million, she said.

The DOE's restoration plans were shortened to 10 years after Energy Undersecretary Al Alm drew the line at spending $6 billion a year for 60 years to clean up contaminated sites, said Leah Dever of the DOE's environmental management program in Nevada.

"He gave us 10 years to work ourselves out of a job," Dever said. "We don't know how we're going to get there yet."

But when the Nevada DOE staff looked at its enormous cleanup responsibilities ahead -- 2,400 sites in five states on $53 million a year -- it estimated that $427 million worth of work will be left to do by the year 2006, said Bobbie McClure, who's in charge of DOE's environmental restoration division.

"Obviously we can't (complete it)," she said. "To say the least, we gagged at the scope of the project."

The DOE's environmental cleanup efforts in Nevada and four other states are expected to receive $53 million a year, about 1 percent of the operations budget each year.

Consequently, Nevada's DOE environmental staff has been thinking about low-budget ways to clear away the radioactive and toxic messes. McClure said one suggestion would concentrate cleanup of soils laced with plutonium and other toxics to the southwestern corner of the Rhode Island-sized Test Site, leaving contaminated areas alone in case the U.S. resumes nuclear testing.

But Dennis Weber, another Harry Reid Center scientist, said by restricting cleanup to the southwestern section, 95 percent of contaminated soils are disregarded. "That will certainly lower costs," he said. "The question is, is it all right with the rest of the world?"

The DOE is preparing a plan due July 31 at its headquarters in Washington, D.C. From there, the agency will define the riskiest places needing cleanup and those most necessary to allow Test Site parcels to be used by others for experiments and tests.