Fuel Ban Appealed By Navy Resumption Of Shipments Of Waste To Inel Requested

Failing to get satisfaction from a federal district judge, the Justice Department on Monday asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to immediately order resumption of nuclear waste shipments to the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.

“The national security will be threatened if the Navy is unable to make 12 shipments of naval spent fuel to INEL in June 1995,” the government said in its petition to the San Francisco-based court.

But the state, in a brief filed with U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge to dispute what it called the Navy’s dubious claims, persisted in citing the government’s failure to assure environmental safety and admit to its actual storage capabilities.

“A review of the course of conduct up to and including the Navy’s most recent submissions leads one to doubt both the credibility of their claims of compliance and the credibility of their claims of threats to national security,” the state’s brief said.

The Energy Department and Navy took the action because Lodge has refused to lift or modify his May 19 order barring any new waste shipments to Idaho until the state’s challenge to a federal environmental assessment of waste storage at INEL is considered.

Gov. Phil Batt and the state’s attorneys maintained that the government was wrong when it concluded that another 1,950 shipments could be safely stored at the INEL for up to 40 more years. The proposed shipments would increase waste now temporarily stored at INEL by two-thirds to 426 tons.

The Navy claims completing that assessment fulfilled its obligation under Ryan’s 1993 order, but the state argued that the environmental study failed to adequately consider existing environmental problems at INEL when it assessed the potential for problems from additional storage.

But Admiral Bruce DeMars, the head of the Navy’s nuclear propulsion program, said without at least the dozen shipments refueling of the USS Nimitz and its return to the fleet would be delayed and decommissioning of a cruiser and two submarines would be stalled forcing them to sit at dockside with spent nuclear fuel on board.

“The Navy’s fuel storage capacity for naval spent fuel outside the INEL is exhausted,” the Justice Department petition to the appellate court said.

The government made the same claim over two years ago before the late U.S. District Judge Harold Ryan halted all shipments.