RE: Hanford Site Cleanup Standards and CERCLA

["Franta, Jaroslav" <frantaj@AECL.CA>]

Some recent news on this front, FYI....



Jaro 

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NUCLEAR NEWS FLASHES - Wednesday, September 3, 2003

U.S. NEWS:

--DOE USED "JUNK SCIENCE" TO JUSTIFY LEAVING SOME HIGH-LEVEL WASTE in

underground storage tanks by reclassifying the waste as low-level residual

waste in order to save time and money, Tom Cochran of the Natural Resources

Defense Council (NRDC) told a National Academies board today. Patrice Bubar,

a DOE associate deputy assistant secretary, who was to have briefed the

Board on Radioactive Waste Management on the accelerated cleanup program's

progress, canceled her presentation yesterday afternoon. No other official

of the DOE cleanup program was at the meeting. DOE averaged the

radioactivity of residual waste in 1-million-gallon tanks at its Hanford,

Idaho National Engineering & Environmental Laboratory, and Savannah River

Site in order to arrive at the low-level waste (LLW) classification, Cochran

said. NRDC sued DOE over the reclassification and won in the U.S. District

Court in Idaho; DOE appealed that decision Aug. 27. Cochran stressed in his

presentation to the board that once all of the waste has been removed from

the storage tanks and treated, nothing in the court ruling prevents DOE from

sending the less radioactive waste to LLW disposal sites.