Judge rejects DOE waste plan

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U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill said the Energy Department regulation directly conflicts with the provisions of the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said an appeal was being considered.

"If the decision stands, it could lead to a tremendous burden on the taxpayers and jeopardize our ability to clean up our sites sooner," Davis said.

At the Savannah River Site near Aiken, Energy Department officials had planned to remove most of the 34 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in underground tanks and turn it into glass logs, to be shipped eventually to the government's planned permanent repository in Nevada.

But environmental officials challenged DOE's plans concerning the remaining residue. The agency wants to fill the tanks containing the residue with concrete and cover them with soil, effectively burying the giant waste containers at SRS. Two of the 51 storage tanks at SRS have already been filled with concrete and sealed.

A spokesman for Gov. Mark Sanford told The Greenville News the governor was studying the decision.

"His feeling is that we've got to maximize the economic benefits SRS can bring to South Carolina while at the same time balancing quality of life considerations," spokesman Will Folks said.

Winmill did not issue an order requiring the department to follow the law, saying there was no indication the government would ignore his ruling.

Unless overturned, Winmill's 15-page decision, filed on Thursday, will require the Energy Department to remove all 85 million gallons of high-level liquid waste now stored in hundreds of tanks at federal installations in the three states.

It must be processed for permanent disposal at the federal dump for highly radioactive waste, now planned for Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

The government wanted to mix grout with about 1,000 gallons of residual material left in each tank after the rest of the highly radioactive liquid is removed. That residual matter would be left in place.

It claimed the material, a byproduct of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel for bomb construction, was exempt from the 1982 law - a claim Winmill rejected.

Officials in the three states had argued throughout that the government was using the rule to avoid the expense of dealing with the waste stored at Washington's Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory and at SRS.

"You can't just call a monkey a turkey and say it doesn't need to be in a cage," said Sheryl Hutchison of the Washington Department of Ecology. "They can't do cleanup on the cheap - they've got to deal with the high level waste."

The Energy Department's attempt to reclassify the material as low-level waste was originally challenged by National Resources Defense Council and the Snake River Alliance. The states of Idaho, Washington, South Carolina and Oregon and the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes supported them.

As much as 100 million gallons of material were stored over the years in 239 tanks in the three states. Some of it has been removed and processed for permanent disposal. But about 85 million gallons remains to be processed in some manner.

Critics contended that leaving any waste in those tanks will threaten the Snake River aquifer under the INEEL, the Columbia River near the Hanford site and the groundwater at the Savannah River Site.