Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Cost estimates jump for nuclear weapons program cleanup

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

WASHINGTON -- Cleaning up environmental damage from the nation's nuclear weapons program will cost between $168 billion and $212 billion, or up to 44 percent more than the Energy Department estimated two years ago, a new agency report says.

Seventeen nuclear sites will take as much as a decade longer to clean up, while the department hopes to clean up five more quickly than its 1998 estimates, according to the report released last week.

Energy Department officials say their estimates changed because they now have a better idea how contaminated the sites are and what it will take to clean them up.

"The numbers this year were more accurate and realistic. That was the difference," department spokesman Tom Welch said Wednesday.

The current and former nuclear weapons sites include some of the most highly radioactive areas in the country, such as the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state, Savannah River in South Carolina, Rocky Flats near Denver and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. The department is responsible for cleaning up 1.7 trillion gallons of contaminated ground water, 100 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid, 2,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and 18 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium.

The Nevada Test Site is not on the current list because it plans to complete its cleanup between 2014 and 2017, DOE Nevada Operations spokesman Darwin Morgan said.

The DOE is requesting $90 million for 2001 to continue meeting state and federal environmental milestones at the site, which is larger than the state of Rhode Island. In addition, Gov. Kenny Guinn has asked the DOE for an extra $40 million to expand ground water analysis of possible radioactive contamination.

The Test Site and Hanford became regional sites for DOE's low-level radioactive wastes earlier this year, so radioactive soils, equipment and clothing could be buried there from the other sites.

The increased cost estimates are no surprise, said David Adelman, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"The DOE has had to admit some failures ... and be a little more realistic about the complexity of the problem," said Adelman, who monitors the nuclear cleanup for the environmental group. Those failures, he said, included attempts to use new cleanup technology at Savannah River, Hanford and Idaho that did not work.

The cleanup schedules also do not include the long-term monitoring and security needed at the sites after the department's planned cleanups are finished, Adelman said.

"The way we look at it, the dates for cleanup have been absurdly optimistic given the complexity of the issues and the magnitude of the problems," Adelman said.

New estimates for some of the major sites include:

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