Batt Asks Governors To Unite On N-Waste

A week after receiving a stunning validation of his unprecedented nuclear waste deal, Gov. Phil Batt has urged his fellow governors to develop a cohesive national policy on radioactive waste disposal.

“Those of us who believe states should be given more power are now obligated to recommend solutions to interstate problems,” Batt wrote in letters to the other 49 governors.

Last summer, Batt asked them to unite behind Idaho Sen. Larry Craig’s bill to locate a temporary dump near Yucca Mountain in Nevada only to see the bill die in the House as a number of governors objected to the federal intrusion into Nevada.

Batt conceded that position was persuasive but those who advocated it have a responsibility to offer an alternative “for meeting the crisis which is about to occur regarding nuclear waste storage.”

Congress made Yucca Mountain the preferred site for a permanent dump in 1987, absent a scientific justification for abandoning it. Craig moved to also designate the area for a temporary dump pending completion of the permanent facility partly to enable the federal government to meet its obligations under Batt’s deal.

That agreement traded dumping another 110 tons of nuclear waste at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory over the next four decades for a 40-year, court-enforced timetable for cleanup and removal of it and most of the other waste dumped at INEL since the early 1950s.

Batt contended the deal offered Idaho its only protection from unlimited dumping while his critics argued that loopholes essentially cleared the way for unlimited dumping. A week ago, nearly two-thirds of the voters sided with Batt and refused to void his agreement.

“Those of us who believe states should be given more power are now obligated to recommend solutions to interstate problems,” Batt wrote in the letter dated Monday. “To those governors opposed to opening Yucca Mountain, I simply ask, ‘What is your solution to this difficult problem?”’