Less nuke waste may be moved

Monday, Oct. 11, 2004 | 11:42 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

WASHINGTON -- House and Senate conferees have agreed to let the Energy Department leave some highly radioactive waste in tanks in South Carolina and Idaho, instead of pumping it out and preparing it for deep burial.

The move effectively reverses a court ruling in a case brought by environmentalists last year and could mean less waste destined for the federal nuclear waste storage site planned for Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

However, Nevada officials have been critical of the plan because it signifies another attempt by the Energy Department to change rules it does not like.

Bob Loux, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Projects Office, called the idea "a bad policy decision" because it allow the department to go against what is spelled out in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

"It's another reason not to trust what DOE (the Energy Department) says," Loux said.

Loux said it is hard to say what this means in light of the department's statement that it will live with another federal court's opinion throwing out the radiation standards for Yucca Mountain. The department has said it will work with the Environmental Protection Agency on a new regulation and will not proceed with any appeals.

A U.S. District Court judge in Idaho ruled last year, in a case brought by the Natural Resources Defense Council, that the department did not have the authority to reclassify liquid radioactive waste stored in underground storage tanks in South Carolina, Idaho and Washington.

The Energy Department had defined some of the salts and sludges in the tanks, left over from the production of plutonium for bombs, as "waste incidental to reprocessing," which under law is not high-level waste that would be required to go to Yucca.

The Senate approved an amendment earlier this year that would overturn the court ruling and grant the department the ability to redefine the waste in South Carolina. The final bill includes the amendment and included Idaho.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said the law could mean less nuclear waste coming to the Nevada Test Site and Yucca Mountain and it would be up to the other states to decide what to do next in its dealings with the Energy Department. It will also save the government $16 billion. He said he made sure the language does not set a precedent for Nevada and the waste could not come to the Test Site.

But Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other Nevada officials, are concerned that the vote paves the way for changes in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the law that governs Yucca Mountain and wouldn't do anything to limit the amount of waste coming to Nevada.

The law limits the site to 77,000 tons spent nuclear fuel, but the department may go to Congress in 2007 with a plan on what to do with waste beyond that amount. Opponents of the change say even without the department waste, the commercial nuclear power plants produce enough waste to fill the mountain.

The environmental group said that leaving the waste in place would arbitrarily create "national sacrifice zones." Geoffrey Fettus, who brought the suit, said, "Congress is trying to throw out more than two decades of nuclear waste cleanup law, in flagrant disregard of public health. Congress did this behind closed doors, with no debate or public input, attaching it to an unrelated bill, one designed to support our troops."

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a statement that the new provision "will allow the Department of Energy to move forward with safe and sensible environmental cleanup of nuclear waste storage tanks." The department will be required to work with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the states to set appropriate standards, Abraham said.

The department said no one ever contemplated that it would be able to get all of the waste out of the tanks, and that the issue was its ability to set standards. It plans to put grout over the remaining wastes to stabilize them.

But at another environmental group, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Brice Smith, a physicist, said government agencies have raised questions since 1991 about the stability of the grout. Among the problems, he said, is that the waste generates heat, and that the temperature in the environment around the tanks varies greatly by season. The resulting temperature differences could create cracks in the grout, he said. The group had previously calculated that if as little as one part in 1,000 of the radioactive cesium in the tanks were allowed to escape in the first 100 years, local drinking water supplies would be polluted above allowable standards.

The tanks with the largest volume of waste are in the government's Hanford nuclear reservation, in Washington.

Staff reporter Suzanne Struglinski and the New York Times News Services contributed to this story.