State to sue over nuke shipments

Suzanne Struglinski

Thursday, April 15, 2004 | 9:33 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Nevada will file yet another lawsuit against the Energy Department if it does not halt its plan to ship radioactive waste from Ohio to the Nevada Test Site, Attorney General Brian Sandoval said Tuesday.

The department's plan to move waste from a former uranium processing plant in Fernald, Ohio, violates its own rules on disposal as well as state and federal law, Sandoval said in a letter sent Tuesday to Jessie Roberson, the department's assistant secretary for environmental management.

Shipments are set to start in May and last for about 18 months, but Sandoval set an April 30 deadline for the department to tell the state it will not ship the waste to the Test Site or "Nevada intends to seek prompt judicial redress." The suit would be filed in the federal district court in Las Vegas.

Some waste from the Fernald site has been shipped to Nevada for years, said Fernald spokesman Gary Stegner but the waste in question is from a different "waste stream" or source.

At issue is 153 million pounds of waste that now sits in three concrete silos at Fernald, 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati. The department used the treated uranium for nuclear weapons.

Silos 1 and 2 contain uranium ore residue from when uranium was extracted during processing at Fernald and another department site. The department wants to treat the waste, mix it with concrete and send it to the Test Site. Silo 3 contains powdery, metallic production wastes that are to be removed with a large vacuum device, treated and bagged for shipment.

But Nevada says this waste is not the type that can be stored at the Test Site.

"There appears to be no legal, regulatory, or scientific justification whatsoever for DOE's plan to dispose of massive quantities of Fernald's most hazardous and radioactive waste at (the Nevada Test Site)," Sandoval wrote. "DOE's plan is reckless and unsafe, and it flagrantly violates the law."

The makeup of the waste should not let it be classified as low-level waste, but the department has opted to ship it to the Nevada Test Site anyway, Bob Loux, executive director of the state Office of Nuclear Projects, said. The Test Site can store low-level waste.

"They (the department) are substituting their determination that it is low-level waste and under their control for Congress' determination that it is not and should be controlled by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," Loux said.

Department rules say it can reclassify a small quantity of waste, but Sandoval points out that the 14,000 cubic yards, which could equal 7,000 containers, is not a small amount.

"Two specific examples given by DOE of 'small quantities' were 'a few vials' and '100 cubic meters' of non-eligible wastes," Sandoval said.

Sandoval wrote that the department does not have the authority to change how waste is classified and "magically exempt" it from all federal and state hazardous waste rules. He points to one law that says this material should be moved only to a Nuclear Regulatory Commission facility, which the Test Site is not, and a department decision that says uranium cannot be classified as low-level waste.