Hanford may not get waste
YAKIMA – The U.S. Department of Energy has proposed two alternate sites to accept radioactive trash from an Ohio nuclear facility, removing the Hanford Nuclear Reservation as its top choice but keeping open the possibility that the waste still could be shipped there.
In July, the federal government halted waste shipments from Battelle Columbus Laboratory in Ohio to the Hanford site after learning that a contractor had provided inconsistent data about the potential effects on Hanford groundwater. The discrepancies were discovered in a 2004 environmental impact statement governing solid waste disposal at the site.
At the time, the Energy Department said it was not withdrawing the environmental impact statement, but the agency indefinitely postponed shipments of Ohio waste to Hanford.
The Energy Department now has proposed shipping the waste to the Savannah River Nuclear Site near Aiken, S.C., or to Waste Control Specialists LLC, a commercial facility in Andrews, Texas. The proposal was announced in the federal register Thursday.
“This is a real clear step forward,” said Gerald Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, a Hanford watchdog group that has fought the shipments. “It’s still possible that they will try to ship it here at some point in the future, but it appears right now that they’re not going to ship it.”
The trash involves transuranic waste, typically debris such as clothing, equipment and pipes left over from nuclear weapons production that has been contaminated both with plutonium and hazardous chemicals.
Washington state had filed suit against the federal government seeking to halt waste shipments to Hanford, fearing the trash would be stranded at the 586-square-mile site.
In May, a federal judge kept in place a temporary ban on shipping some radioactive trash to the Hanford site, but ruled that the state must accept some transuranic waste from Ohio. The waste was to be temporarily stored at Hanford pending permanent disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
However, the Energy Department postponed plans to ship the waste to Hanford after discovering the inconsistent data in a 2004 environmental impact statement for a proposed nuclear waste burial ground not yet permitted by the state.
Until the questions in the environmental impact statement can be resolved, the Energy Department has decided not to ship additional waste from Ohio to Hanford, the federal register said. But the Ohio waste still must be removed from the Battelle site to comply with federal regulations and to meet a deadline to close the site in 2006.
The agency left open the possibility of shipping the waste to Hanford or nuclear sites in Idaho or Tennessee if either of the proposed alternatives fails to meet waste disposal requirements.
“It’s important that the department continue to meet its cleanup obligations at various sites around the country. As part of that, we are looking at several options,” said Mike Waldron, Energy Department spokesman. “However, our strategy to eventually dispose of this waste at WIPP remains the same.”
A spokeswoman for the state Department of Ecology, Sandy Howard, said state officials could not really comment on the proposal without more information.
“But I think it’s fair to say that the state of Washington has more than pulled its share of the burden of waste management left over from the Cold War, and we’re encouraged to see that the Department of Energy is looking at other options, rather than storage at Hanford,” Howard said.