Batt Admits Concessions In Nuke Deal Idaho Agrees To Limited Radioactive Waste Storage
Gov. Phil Batt conceded on Tuesday that he made significant concessions to the federal government to get a deal that would require removal of most radioactive waste from Idaho in 40 years.
But the governor continued to defend the agreement with the Clinton administration that ends a 28-month moratorium on waste shipments from nuclear warships that the Navy claims was seriously jeopardizing national security.
“This agreement is unique, unprecedented, never heard of in the history of the states,” Batt said “The federal government is not used to obligating itself in the future.”
The deal was entered Tuesday morning by U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge as an order settling the state’s claim that more radioactive dumping could not be done safely at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, where 261 tons of nuclear waste is already stored.
But while the state’s legal challenge has ended, the anti-nuclear Snake River Alliance is contemplating pressing ahead with a similar safety challenge it filed before Lodge last summer just in case Batt cut a deal.
While Batt has agreed to allow 1,133 shipments - 110 tons - of high-level radioactive waste to be stored at the INEL through Dec. 31, 2035, he claimed a victory because he said the deal will protect Idaho from becoming the dump for another 92,000 shipments of commercial reactor waste the federal government must off the hands of utilities between 1998 and 2002. It also keeps out over 500 more shipments of waste stored in Washington that the Energy Department wanted to store at INEL.
“No other state has that kind of assurance,” Batt said.
Based on time-tables indicated by the Navy in the past, the first shipment of its spent fuel could arrive at the INEL before the end of October.
The deal also promises to pump nearly $800 million in federal money into operations of the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory over the next decade and sets out a specific schedule for removing most high-level nuclear waste and half the low-level waste by the beginning of 2035. If followed, that removes a severe environmental threat to the Snake River Plain Aquifer, the major water source for southern Idaho that lies under the waste sites at the INEL.
That combination, Batt said, “protects the aquifer, it protects Idaho and it protects the eastern Idaho economy,” which relies heavily on the INEL and its 9,000 jobs.
Assistant Energy Secretary Thomas Grumbly, who negotiated directly with Batt over the past five months, agreed that the deal, enforceable by a federal judge and subject to penalties for non-performance, is a departure from the kinds of agreements the federal government usually makes. National security - refueling key warships and defueling others - made the Idaho situation different, he said.
But while he said it redefined the federal relationship with states in the post-Cold War era, Grumbly refused to call the deal a precedent that other states might try to cash in on.
“We got what we needed to have in terms of meeting the national security needs of the United States,” he said. “All we’ve really done is accelerate the work we would have done in Idaho anyway.”
After a generation of broken federal promises and missed federal deadlines on waste management at INEL, however, Batt maintained the agreement was much more because it gives a judge the authority to force compliance with the waste removal deadline.
But to get that, Batt agreed to significant changes in what he told the government on Aug. 31 was he last best offer to settle the issue out of court.
He wanted to accept only 968 new shipments but agreed to 165 more. He wanted all high-level waste out in 2035 but settled for letting 1.8 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid remain with no guarantee for its removal although it will be stabilized. The same is the case for the last 20 shipments of spent navy fuel. And he wanted a daily fine if all the waste was not removed in 2035 of $100,000 adjusted for inflation, which would made it about $330,000. He agreed to $60,000 a day without an inflation adjustment.
“We started this process, in my opinion, with quite a weak hand,” Batt said. “We took what we could get. I think it’s the best we could do.”
Batt suffered a severe public backlash last January when in his first week in office he did not vigorously fight eight waste shipments the Navy had essentially negotiated with his predecessor Cecil Andrus. Then he took on the same anti-waste view Andrus held since he launched the confrontation with the federal government in October 1988.
But he was pushed into negotiation when it became clear that while he had managed to win a few rounds in federal court to keep more waste out, those victories were only temporary and would either be overturned on appeal or by Congress.
Without a deal, Batt warned the state would have eventually been forced to take at least the 1,940 shipments the government planned to make without any guarantees for waste removal and it ran the risk of having at least some of the commercial waste dumped at INEL.
xxxx Nuclear waste agreement The agreement reached Tuesday includes the following provisions: The Navy and Department of Energy will seek millions of dollars in funding for projects in Idaho, including $7 million to build a Ships Model Engineering and Support Facility at the Navy’s Acoustic Research Detachment at Bayview in 1997. Other funds include $30 million starting in fiscal year 1996 for such ventures as the Boron-Neutron Capture Therapy project, which seeks to use nuclear technology to treat cancer. 1,133 shipments of waste will be allowed into the state; the U.S. Department of Energy had proposed 1,940. No commercial waste allowed. Waste already stored at the INEL would be moved out, with the first shipments to leave Idaho no later than 1999. Liquid waste stored over the Snake River Plain Aquifer would be converted to dry waste. Hundreds of millions of dollars would be spent to clean up and reprocess waste at INEL. If the Navy or the DOE fail to meet requirements of the agreement, shipments into Idaho would stop. If waste is not removed from Idaho by 2035, the federal government would pay Idaho $60,000 per day in fines. - Betsy Z. Russell