Ban on Hanford waste struck down
SEATTLE – A federal judge struck down a voter-approved initiative Monday that barred the government from sending radioactive waste to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, ruling that the measure infringes on federal authority over nuclear waste and interstate commerce.
Washington voters overwhelmingly approved Initiative 297 in November 2004. The initiative, now known as the Cleanup Priority Act, barred the government from sending any more waste to the Hanford site until all existing waste there is cleaned up.
The government immediately filed suit, arguing that the initiative violated its authority over nuclear waste under the Atomic Energy Act, as well as its authority over interstate commerce.
U.S. District Judge Alan McDonald in Yakima agreed Monday, ruling the initiative unconstitutional in its entirety.
“The court does not intend in the slightest to diminish the concerns of Washington voters regarding the present and future management of nuclear waste at Hanford. These are very legitimate concerns in light of the volume of waste already at Hanford and the existing contamination problems,” McDonald wrote.
“Congress has said, however, that it is the federal government which must address the issue of nuclear safety” concerning nuclear materials covered by the Atomic Energy Act, he wrote.
The state attorney general’s office, which defended the initiative, had argued that the state’s authority to regulate hazardous waste extended to mixed waste that includes radioactive materials. The state also argued that the federal government could not strike down a law without first seeing how it would be applied.
Attorney General Rob McKenna said state officials were still reviewing the 62-page decision, but disagreed with the court’s interpretation of the initiative.
“We are mindful that Initiative 297 was enacted by Washington’s voters by the widest margin of any initiative in state history and we will be carefully considering every option available to the state, including the option of appealing today’s decision,” McKenna said in a statement.
Hanford was created in the 1940s as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, then continued to produce plutonium for the nation’s nuclear arsenal for 40 years. Today, it is the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup costs are expected to total up to $60 billion, with the work to be finished by 2035.
The Energy Department chose Hanford to dispose of some of the nation’s mildly radioactive waste and mixed low-level waste, which is both radioactive and hazardous.
Hanford also would serve as a packaging center for some transuranic waste before it is shipped elsewhere for permanent disposal. Transuranic waste is highly radioactive and can take thousands of years to decay to safe levels.
Last July, Washington’s Supreme Court ruled that parts of the initiative could stand even if a federal judge finds other parts are unconstitutional. McDonald, however, struck it down in its entirety.