Senate Eases Rules on Defense Nuke Cleanup

["Stabin, Michael" <michael.g.stabin@vanderbilt.edu>]

Senate Eases Rules on Defense Nuke Cleanup 

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,121711,00.html

Thursday, June 03, 2004

 

WASHINGTON - The Senate on Thursday agreed to ease cleanup requirements

for tanks holding millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste from

Cold War-era bomb making.

 

Senate critics said the change would leave poisonous sludge in

underground tanks and risk contamination of groundwater. 



An attempt to block the change failed by the narrowest of margins.

Senators voted 48-48 on an amendment offered by Sen. Maria Cantwell,

D-Wash., that would have stripped the provision from a defense

authorization bill. 



The provision allows the Energy Department (search) to reclassify

radioactive sludge in 51 tanks at a South Carolina nuclear site so it

can be left in place and covered by concrete, instead of being entombed

in the Nevada desert. 



While the plan has been approved by South Carolina officials, it brought

sharp criticism from officials in Washington and Idaho who feared the

change would put intense pressure on them to agree to a similar cleanup

plan at nuclear sites in their states. 



The proposal also left South Carolina's two senators sharply divided. 



Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., who had put the provision into the defense

bill, said it will quicken waste cleanup at the Savannah River nuclear

complex (search) near Aiken, S.C., by 23 years and save $16 billion. He

rejected claims the waste would harm the environment. 



Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C., said the sludge accounts for more than half

of the radioactivity in the tanks of liquid waste and endangers future

generations. It's "not harmless sludge we can pour sand over and cover

with concrete" as the Energy Department proposes, said Hollings. 



The Savannah River tanks contain 34 million gallons of liquid waste.

Sludge accounts for about 1 percent of the waste volume. 



While supporters of the measure insisted it would apply only to waste at

the Savannah River site, opponents said the change in nuclear waste

policy would create a "clear precedent" that could force other states --

mainly Washington and Idaho where there also are defense waste tanks --

to accept less safe cleanup plans. 



Cantwell, who led the push to kill the measure, accused the

administration of trying to "sneak" the change in cleanup requirements

through Congress by tacking it onto a defense measure in closed-door

proceedings without hearings. 



Graham's provision was put into the $447 billion defense bill during

consideration by the Armed Services Committee without hearings. The

House panel refused to include the changes in its version of the defense

bill and, instead, called on the National Academy of Sciences to examine

the Energy Department cleanup proposal. 



The White House is trying "to blackmail my state to accept a lower

cleanup standard," declared Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. 



The tanks of nuclear waste are left over from decades of producing

plutonium and highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. A 1982 law

requires that all waste from such reprocessing must be buried at a

central repository planned for Nevada. 



But the Energy Department argues that the residual sludge should be

considered low-level waste and should not have to be removed. Instead,

the department wants to cover the sludge with cement-like grout, saying

that would be protective for hundreds of years. 



Last year a federal judge, acting on a lawsuit by environmentalists,

ruled that such an approach violates the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act

(search). To get around the ruling, the department wants to get the law

changed. 



There are 177 tanks with 53 million gallons of waste at the Hanford

nuclear site near Richland, Wash., and 900,000 gallons in tanks at the

INEEL facility near Idaho Falls, Idaho. 



Michael G. Stabin, PhD, CHP

Assistant Professor of Radiology and Radiological Sciences 

Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences 

Vanderbilt University 

1161 21st Avenue South

Nashville, TN 37232-2675 

Phone (615) 343-0068

Fax   (615) 322-3764

Pager (615) 835-5153

e-mail     michael.g.stabin@vanderbilt.edu 

internet   www.doseinfo-radar.com



 

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