Saturday, July 12, 2003 | 3:40 a.m.
A CONTROVERSY over a plutonium-tainted waste shipment through California was settled last week -- at least for now -- when the Energy Department gave in to objections from state leaders and agreed not to make the shipment.
The incident raised larger questions about the Energy Department's plan to ship far more dangerous high-level nuclear waste to Nevada's Yucca Mountain from sites nationwide, including sites in California.
Was the California case a preview of countless looming battles in states across the country over how to ship high-level waste to Yucca?
Nevada officials think so.
"There is enormous potential for fights between states, between states and the DOE, and between regions of states," said Bob Halstead, a waste transportation consultant for Nevada. "These transportation routes are not an easy thing to plan. The DOE is putting it off because they don't want the political controversy."
At issue in California was a shipment of transuranic waste that now sits at the Nevada Test Site. Similar waste stored at 23 sites across the country is ultimately bound for the nation's "low-level" waste dump in New Mexico, the four-year-old Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP.
The Test Site shipment bound last week for New Mexico, via a California route that avoided Las Vegas, never got under way pending objections by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Feinstein said the route had limited emergency response capability and wasn't engineered for heavy trucks.
The waste would have been shipped south on Nevada State Route 373/California State Route 127, west on Interstate 40 to Barstow, then back east again on Interstate 40.
On Wednesday the Energy Department agreed to indefinitely cancel the shipment until California and the Western Governors Association could come up with a solution. It's department policy to first obtain state permission for waste shipments, which states typically grant, department spokesman Joe Davis said.
Davis noted that Route 127 has been used 259 times since the beginning of last year for hauling low-level waste from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to the Test Site. He also noted that eight months ago a shipment of waste similar to the waste Feinstein blocked had been shipped out of California from a site near Burbank to Washington state.
"We didn't hear a peep from the senator then," Davis said.
Davis told the Associated Press that the California objection set a "dangerous precedent" for the future waste shipments.
The Energy Department aims to open Yucca Mountain as the nation's first high-level waste repository by 2010, despite budget cuts and project delays. High-level waste, in the form of solid "spent" uranium fuel rods from nuclear reactors, would be shipped to Nevada from reactor and U.S. Defense sites scattered across the nation.
But Energy Department officials still have not announced an official Yucca waste-hauling plan. So questions linger about whether the waste would be shipped mostly by rail or mostly by truck, and about which routes would be used.
Probable routes have already been published by the department, Davis noted. Final routes will be negotiated by federal officials and the states, and determined not long before the waste shipments roll -- years from now, he said. Routes also may change year to year, based on construction and other variables, Davis said.
The bottom line, according to Energy Department and nuclear industry officials, is that waste can be shipped safely.
But Nevada officials disagree. And they say the routes should be finalized far in advance of shipments, and that transportation planning should be much further along by now.
"It's foolish," Halstead said. "They spent 10 years arguing about routes to WIPP."
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., still says people across the country will be "up in arms" once they find out their homes, schools and hospitals are within a few miles of waste routes.
"The Energy Department knows as well as I do that the American people won't stand for it," Berkley said. "This is just the beginning."
But Davis told me that he didn't think the California case was a preview of countless battles to come over Yucca shipments.
Still, in an earlier interview Davis acknowledged that politicians may be tempted to engage in those battles.
"Anybody who thinks they can get press out of the issue probably is going to try," Davis said. "People need to make up their minds. Are we going to leave the waste where it is, or are you going to allow us to take it out and do our jobs?"
A note to readers: This is my last column for awhile. In a quest for some adventure beyond the Beltway, I'm moving Aug. 2 to Japan to teach English for a year. I plan to return to my job covering Washington for the Las Vegas Sun when I get back in 2004. My replacement is Suzanne Struglinski, a Washington-based reporter who has most recently covered Yucca Mountain and nuclear issues for Environment and Energy Daily, an online news service. Beginning Monday she can be reached at the Sun's Washington bureau at (202) 662-7245.
Benjamin Grove covers Washington for the Sun.
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