A dangerous gamble on nuclear sludge
Changing the rules is the hallmark
strategy of President Bush’s administration when confronted with laws it doesn’t
like.
Don't want to provide lawyers to suspects
in the war on terror? Classify them as "enemy combatants" and lock ’em up. Don't
like the system of counting wild salmon to measure species attrition? Throw in
hatchery salmon to boost the numbers. Don’t like scholars pawing through
presidential papers? Issue an executive order sealing them from view. Want to
start a war? Claim weapons of mass destruction from halfway around the world
threaten the nation. And on it goes.
Now the administration wants to apply this
sort of fudging to millions of gallons of radioactive nuclear sludge, and let
the public health take the hindmost.
The Energy Department’s rationale? To save
time and money, it claims, even if Americans could be at risk for generations to
come.
The issue is this:
Hundreds of underground tanks at
weapons-making and waste-disposal plants at the Idaho National Engineering and
Environmental Laboratory, Washington state’s Hanford Site and the South Carolina
Savannah River Site contain radioactive nuclear sludge.
The Energy Department wants to downgrade
the sludge as low-level risk, mix it with grout—better known as a household
sealant—and leave it, rather than ship it to the Yucca Mountain storage site in
Nevada as required by law.
Standing in the way, happily, is U.S.
District Judge Lynn Winmill of Boise. In August 2002, the judge sided with
allegations in a lawsuit brought by the National Resources Defense Council and
ruled that "(I)t is inconceivable that Congress intended to allow the DOE
unfettered discretion in the management of radioactive waste ... ."
So, the Bush administration is pressuring
Congress to change the law to give DOE discretion in reclassifying the waste as
virtually harmless so portions of it can be left in the tanks.
Not only is gambling with public wellbeing
involved in this cavalier attitude, but also breaking decades-old promises to
the public that the waste would be removed and stored at the Nevada site.
Americans understand and are sympathetic
to reasonable and logical efforts to use public funds prudently. This is not one
of those cases, however.
Just as the administration has tried to
conduct the war in Iraq on the cheap by deploying troops without proper and
sufficient equipment, now it hopes to risk exposure to nuclear waste by cutting
corners on costs.
Enough. Despite their willingness to
endure absurd politics, Americans have no tolerance for risking their health in
the name of dubious budget belt tightening.