Group Disavows Pamphlet Supporting Moratorium On Nukes

The group trying to convince voters to reject Gov. Phil Batt’s nuclear waste deal with the federal government on Tuesday disavowed a pamphlet distributed at a recent fund-raiser advocating a moratorium on the movement on nuclear waste nationwide.

Former state Sen. John Peavey, who heads Stop the Shipments, said the charge by Batt supporters that his organization backed the moratorium was an attempt to divert attention from the specifics of the agreement.

Backers of the deal, led by Get the Waste Out, used the pamphlet distributed at a Magic Valley fund-raiser two weekends ago to support their claim Stop the Shipments had misled voters who signed the initiative to put the agreement to a referendum by not telling them it backed a moratorium.

Peavey said the fund-raiser was held by an independent group that merely donated the proceeds to the campaign and that Stop the Shipments does endorse its support of the moratorium on waste movement.

It contends that the deal essentially takes the pressure off the government to come up with a permanent solution to nuclear waste storage, leaving Idaho the nation’s de facto nuclear dump. Halting all waste movement under a nationwide moratorium would keep that pressure on, that group contends.

That is essentially the position Democratic Senate challenger Walt Minnick has taken in opposing the agreement. But Peavey said it is not part of the platform Stop the Shipments is promoting.

Batt’s 1995 agreement with the federal government limits dumping to 1,133 shipments of radioactive waste at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory over the next four decades and provides a courtenforced timetable for cleanup and removal of most waste by 2035.

Prior to negotiating the deal, the federal government wanted to dump nearly 2,000 shipments at INEL in a shorter period.

Batt’s critics, however, claim the deal is so riddled with loopholes that the government will never abide by the cleanup and removal schedule and will eventually circumvent the dumping limits.

Trent Clark of Get the Waste Out maintained that a moratorium on waste movement undermines the provisions of the agreement for cleanup and removal of waste at INEL provisions he contends are critical since there is already five times as much waste stored at INEL as would be brought in under Batt’s deal.

Peavey charged that if there is any support for the moratorium that Clark fears, it is in the Congress, where Senate-passed legislation creating a temporary dump in Nevada where Idaho-stored waste could be moved apparently will die in the House.

In the Senate on Tuesday, the energy and water appropriations bill easily won approval.

It includes the money to fully fund provisions of the Batt agreement for the next year, Idaho’s two Republican senators said.