The Chicago Tribune
www.chicagotribune.com

U.S. TO SEEK NEW WAYS TO DISPOSE OF NUCLEAR WASTE

By Judith Graham
January 9, 2001

In one of his last major acts in office, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson on Monday said the department would pursue new ways to dispose of dangerous nuclear wastes.

In particular, Richardson said the government will investigate alternatives to burning nuclear wastes--a method of disposal that raised a huge public outcry in Jackson, Wyo., last year when plans for a nuclear incinerator in neighboring Idaho became public.

Under that proposal, the department would have burned "transuranic waste," which mixes radioactive elements such as plutonium with hazardous chemicals such as PCBs, at its 890-square-mile Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory in eastern Idaho. Critics charged that tiny particles of plutonium could be released in the process, drifting 100 miles east over the Tetons and Yellowstone National Park and harming animals and human health.

At meetings Monday in Wyoming and Idaho, Richardson reversed earlier statements by department officials that no well-established alternatives to incineration existed. The secretary, who leaves office after President Clinton's term ends Jan. 20, formally accepted a report by a panel that examined other waste disposal choices. The panel was named as part of the settlement of a lawsuit filed by several prominent citizens in the Jackson area, including lawyer Gerry Spence.

The panel reported there were several promising ways to dispose of transuranic wastes without the health hazards that appear to accompany incineration. These methods include plasma torching, thermal and vacuum treatments, and steam reforming.

Although none is ready for immediate use, several deserve testing over the next few years and could be in use as early as 2003, the panel said.

Researching new methods of nuclear waste disposal could cost nearly $91 million, the panel said, while warning against devoting insufficient resources to the effort.

With aides and political supporters on hand, Richardson promised to increase funding for the effort in this year's budget by $3 million to $9 million, and to transfer another $1 million to the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory for work on long-term environmental protection of department sites.

"We feel that we here in Jackson have changed the course of how the country is going to deal with this enormous problem of what to do about these wastes," said Sophia Wakefield, an activist and businesswoman. "Hopefully, other communities won't have to go through what we've gone through."

She added that the inauguration of Dick Cheney as vice president may well help the cause. Cheney hails from Wyoming, has a home in Jackson and has friends and close political allies throughout the area.

"We will be vigilant in monitoring how the Bush administration handles these issues," Wakefield said.

The Energy Department faces a time-sensitive problem, with 65,000 cubic meters of transuranic nuclear waste stored above ground in wooden boxes and metal containers in Idaho. According to a 1995 federal court order, the department has to begin treating that waste by 2003 and remove all of it from the state by 2018.

Most of the waste stored in Idaho comes from the Rocky Flats plant outside Denver, a key nuclear weapons facility during the Cold War.

Similar waste is stored at other Energy Department sites, including the Hanford reservation in Washington state, Savannah River in South Carolina and Oak Ridge in Tennessee, said Carolyn Huntoon, assistant energy secretary for environmental management. She said the department would continue to operate itsincinerator at Oak Ridge.

Meanwhile, problems associated with buried transuranic waste may be even more pressing, according to the panel's report. In Idaho, it noted, anywhere from 57,000 to 186,000 cubic meters of such waste has been dumped in trenches and pits--far more than the 37,000 cubic meters engineering and environmental lab officials told the Tribune was there in an interview last year.

Not only is this waste not contained in any fashion, no one knows the extent of it or even exactly what it consists of, and no clean-up plan exists, the report said.

The buried waste has the potential to migrate through the soil and into water supplies and "poses a substantial threat to the Snake River Plain aquifer underlying the site," the panel's study said. The Snake River aquifer is one of the largest underground water supplies in the United States and a vital water source for Idaho farmers.

"Buried wastes are a critical national concern, and the DOE has done a great thing in admitting that so publicly in this report," said Eric Ringelberg, executive director of Keep Yellowstone Nuclear Free.