Hanford Off Foreign N-Waste List

There is little chance that highly radioactive nuclear waste from abroad will wind up being dumped at the Hanford nuclear reservation, Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary says.

In a letter Wednesday to Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., O’Leary wrote that on May 30, the agency issued findings that listed the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory and the Savannah River nuclear complex in South Carolina as the only places where spent fuel from foreign research reactors would be sent. Murray’s office released a copy of the letter Thursday.

“We do not expect any of the foreign research reactor spent fuel to be sent to the Hanford site,” O’Leary wrote.

She added, however, that the findings are part of a draft environmental impact statement rather than the completed document and a final decision has yet to be made.

O’Leary was responding to a letter from Murray, who wrote on June 8 to ask that spent nuclear fuel shipments be sent somewhere other than Hanford and be handled only at military ports.

O’Leary’s reply did not mention anything about a choice of port to handle the shipments.

The highly radioactive material would be sent to the United States for disposal to reduce the possibility that it could be used to make nuclear weapons.