Fernald waste shipment to Test Site uneventful

Martin Kuz

Friday, July 2, 1999 | 11:17 a.m.

MERCURY -- The flatbed semi-trailer carried a lone container of low-level radioactive waste toward its final resting place. As the rig chugged down a dirt road that winds to the bottom of a disposal pit at the Nevada Test Site, Department of Energy spokesman Darwin Morgan cocked his head. Then he tried to decide which is more exciting:

"Watching paint dry, watching this. Watching paint dry, watching this," Morgan said, moving his upturned hands up and down as if weighing the two. "I'd have to go with watching paint dry. This is pretty dead."

Not quite. It was way dead.

The Test Site played willing host Thursday morning to the media and a single load of low-level radioactive waste transported from a retired uranium manufacturing plant in Fernald, Ohio. The significance: The plant's shipment marked its first since trucks carrying containers from Fernald leaked two gallons of nonradioactive liquid near Kingman, Ariz., in December 1997.

In one respect, Thursday's demonstration of the disposal process represented the DOE's attempt to paint the Kingman incident as a fluke, a microscopic stain on a long record of safe transportation of waste. Fair enough.

But truth be told, the shipment felt more like a made-by-the-media nonevent, an abject example of something that barely qualified as a photo opportunity metastasizing into "news."

Consider: Since the mishap more than 18 months ago, the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has continued to accept low-level radioactive waste shipments from facilities throughout the Southwest. An average of 15 shipments a week have arrived during that time without incident.

Moreover, from 1984 to 1997, the DOE documented only eight other leaks in the 23,250 containers sent to the Test Site from Fernald. Radiation levels are so low in most of the waste that workers who dispose of the metal boxes don such rugged protective gear as jeans and T-shirts.

All of which leads to head-scratching over why the DOE would bother to bus a dozen TV and print media types to the Test Site to watch the undramatic unloading of a solitary waste container. Morgan offered the simplest of answers.

"Because," he said, "they've been calling."

And calling, and calling. DOE spokeswoman Nancy Harkess said a reporter with a local TV affiliate phoned at least once a week for the past four months to inquire when the Fernald shipments would resume. Such persistence, laudable as it is, sounds a bit like a child nagging mommy about the neighborhood ice-cream truck.

Is it here? Is it here yet? When's it coming? Is it here yet?

Make no mistake. The vigilance displayed by the media, politicians and other DOE watchdogs deserves applause. Public outcry over the 1997 incident compelled the agency to review its shipping procedures, and prompted the Fernald plant to discard the type of container that failed.

The DOE also reacted by putting pressure on truckers traveling to the Test Site to avoid routes that run through Las Vegas or over Hoover Dam. The agency cannot bar shipments along those routes, but Morgan said that all facilities now sending low-level radioactive waste to the Test Site have agreed to steer clear of the Las Vegas Valley whenever possible.

In the case of Thursday's shipment, that meant the truck traveled into Northern Nevada on Interstate 80 to Wendover, then took U.S. 93 to Ely, State Route 6 to Tonopah and finally U.S. 95 to Mercury. The route adds 68 miles to the trip on the leg from Salt Lake City to the Test Site, a small inconvenience if it eases the anxiety of Clark County residents, Morgan said.

Nonetheless, media coverage of one paltry container, when thousands from across the region have entered the Test Site in the last 18 months, seems misguided. It's akin to doing a story on traffic and reporting that a commuter managed to arrive home safely. Happens every day.

As DOE project manager Wendy Clayton noted, "For us that do this for a living, this is normal."

Yet there the media were, welcoming the container filled with 3,200 cubic feet of junk, including some old equipment from the Fernald plant, concrete chunks and other debris. The Ohio facility will send another 150 containers by the end of September, and thousands more as dismantling of the plant continues during the next decade.

If those future shipments prove as boring as the first -- no leaks, no explosions -- only the presence of protesters may convince the media to return. Alas, for reporters gathered Thursday, Harkess explained that demonstrators tend to drop by on Easter, Mother's Day and other holidays to observe their own peculiar rituals.

Among the most notorious of the regular protesters is a repugnant character known as Feces Man, who covers himself in human excrement to try to keep security from arresting him. "And it works," Harkess said.

Must be a relief that we reporters only smear egg on our face.