For the week of July 16 - 22, 2003

Highly radioactive liquid waste must go

from The Idaho Statesman

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High-level nuclear waste by any other name is just as radioactive.

And it’s not acceptable to leave some of it sitting above the source of water for thousands of Idahoans. If the federal government has to spend more money to meet its cleanup commitments, then so be it.

Give U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill credit for refusing to buy the federal government’s attempts to change the definitions of cleanup along the way.

At issue is some of the nastiest nuclear waste at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory: the residue from about 1 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid waste, stored in underground stainless steel tanks.

The Energy Department plans to process the bulk of the wastes in these tanks; no method has been selected yet. The processed wastes would leave Idaho for a permanent nuclear waste dump elsewhere.

That wouldn’t drain the tanks entirely. Left behind would be a little less than 2 percent of the waste, according to The Associated Press. In his ruling, Winmill describes this residue as a sludge, including radioactive particles that sink to the bottom of the tanks.

The Energy Department wants to mix up these leftovers with grout, keep them in the tanks, and call it "incidental waste" — a euphemistic term at best. Fortunately for Idahoans, Winmill wasn’t having it. He said a 1982 federal law governs the cleanup of all the waste in the tanks — including the so-called "incidental waste."

The Energy Department defends its plan. No one has made a serious argument that the grouting proposal is unsafe, said Tim Jackson, an Energy Department spokesman in Idaho Falls. And the costs of complying with Winmill’s ruling, while as yet undetermined, would slow down other cleanup work.

It’s hard to have much sympathy on the cost issue. Yes, cleanup is expensive. But when thousands of Idahoans get their water from the aquifer running under the site, and much of Idaho’s farm industry relies on clean groundwater, the cost is worth it.

If the Energy Department appeals, we hope the next judge remembers the realities of science. Cleaning up waste is a tougher job than just renaming the stuff.

"You can’t just call a monkey a turkey and say it doesn’t need to be in a cage," Sheryl Hutchison of the Washington Department of Ecology told The Associated Press last week. Her agency, the state’s environmental watchdog, is contending with more than 53 million gallons of high-level waste in tanks at the state’s Hanford nuclear site.

Idaho’s high-level waste "tank farm" has been open for almost 50 years. Idahoans deserve to see cleanup completed — not curtailed.

 

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