Tribe Lets Navy Continue Nuclear Waste Shipments But Sho-Ban Leaders Express Safety Concerns For Fort Hall

Shoshone-Bannock leaders will let the Navy keep shipping spent nuclear reactor fuel by rail across the Fort Hall Indian Reservation to the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

Details of an agreement signed by the Navy and Shoshone-Bannock officials on Thursday were not disclosed. The tribes said in a statement that the agreement recognizes their role in regulating and monitoring shipments to protect land, resources and residents on the reservation.

When negotiations began, tribal leaders sought an unspecified amount of federal money to train and equip emergency response crews and conduct environmental monitoring of stored and buried waste at the INEEL. Fort Hall Business Council Chairman Arnold Appenay said Thursday that those concerns were addressed, but he would not elaborate.

The Navy also has declined to disclose specifics of the deal.

“All we can say is the Navy is comfortable with it, and we hope the tribes are,” said Richard Guida, associate director of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program.

Tribal leaders and the Navy started negotiating the agreement two years ago after tribal police blocked a train load of Navy spent fuel for six hours as it crossed the reservation.

The Oct. 25, 1995, action came in the wake of Gov. Phil Batt’s landmark agreement with the Navy and U.S. Department of Energy allowing limited additional storage of nuclear waste at the INEEL in exchange for guarantees that most waste would be removed from the state by 2035.

Tribal leaders at the time expressed safety concerns and skepticism about whether the government would meet its commitments under the agreement.

Navy officials made it clear they were prepared to go to court to argue blockades are illegal, Guida said, but they also assured Sho-Ban leaders they were willing to negotiate.

Since 1957, the Navy has shipped 686 containers of spent reactor fuel from nuclear ships and submarines to the INEEL, including 79 since the 1995 agreement with Batt. Of more than 260 metric tons of spent fuel now stored at the site, 14 metric tons are from the Navy.