DOE: Energy Agency, States Clash on N-waste
WASHINGTON - The Energy Department is threatening to withhold $350 million that was to pay for disposal of some of the most dangerous radioactive waste from Cold War bomb-making. First, it says, Congress and state officials must accept a cleanup plan already rejected in court.
The issue has pitted several states against the Bush administration - raising concern that some of the millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste that are supposed to be solidified and buried by the government may, in fact, remain in place.
"I will not allow DOE to hold this work hostage, or to hold this budget hostage," Republican Sen. Larry E. Craig of Idaho told the head of the Energy Department cleanup effort at a recent hearing.
On Capitol Hill and in the states facing the cleanup task, critics are accusing the department of trying to force states to accept less stringent cleanup standards to save money and finish the job more quickly. The department argues that some of the waste has a low-enough level of radioactivity that it can be covered with cement and left in place.
Last year, a federal judge in Idaho said the Energy Department's plan to reclassify some of the waste in storage tanks as "low level" and not remove it for burial violated the law.
Plutonium waste
He said Congress specifically said all the waste, the byproduct of plutonium production during the Cold War, has to be treated as "high-level" waste and must be buried in a central facility, probably the planned Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.
The cleanup at sites in Washington, Idaho, South Carolina and New York is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars and take decades.
But the head of the cleanup program, Jessie Roberson, told congressional committees recently that the department has no plans to spend the $350 million earmarked for next fiscal year - and probably will not even ask Congress for it - unless it is allowed to reclassify some of the radioactive waste to make disposal easier and cheaper.
Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, reminded her that some people have characterized the department's strategy as "blackmail" in an attempt to get the federal nuclear waste law changed and circumvent the court ruling. The Energy Department is appealing that court case, but would prefer that Congress change the law.
"They didn't get their way in court, so now they want the law changed," Murray said in an interview. "Everyone is for accelerated cleanup as long as it's done in a way that protects workers' safety and we don't cut corners."
Poor records
The waste, some in leaking tanks, has been described as a "witch's brew of radioactivity" left over from nuclear reprocessing. Often only haphazard records were kept as to what was being poured into the tanks, according to cleanup engineers. Dealing with this material is at the core of a much broader waste-cleanup effort that Energy Department says will cost $273 billion.
The high-level waste includes 53 million gallons in tanks at the department's Hanford site near Richland, Wash., 34 million gallons at its Savannah River site near Aiken, S.C., and 900,000 gallons at its INEEL facility in Idaho. Also to be tackled are 600,000 gallons of waste left over from a short-lived civilian reprocessing program near West Valley, N.Y.
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