| Decision kills plans to dispose of waste AIKEN - An Idaho federal judge's decision late last week to torpedo an attempt to reclassify radioactive waste so it could be stored at the Savannah River Site and two other government nuclear reservations will have a broader and more expensive impact than initially thought, environmentalists and pro-nuclear advocates say. U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill rejected a Department of Energy claim that some wastes were exempt from the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. The ruling shatters the DOE's plan to avoid an estimated $8 billion to $12 billion environmental cleanup partly by mixing grout and concrete with about 49,000 gallons of sludge in underground carbon-steel tanks. The tanks store strontium-90, plutonium, uranium and other radioactive wastes from 49 years of making nuclear materials. The ruling also threatens a second cost-cutting measure at SRS - turning low levels of cesium into solid cakes of grout, fly ash and cement that can be stored in sealed concrete bunkers at the site's Saltstone unit. Tom Clements, an organizer with International Greenpeace, and Mal McKibben, the executive director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology, said Judge Winmill's ruling affects both attempts to accelerate cleanup of wastes from the Cold War nuclear buildup. "If I were a judge, I'd say it's all the same thing," said Mr. McKibben, a retired SRS employee who was senior manager of construction for the site's Defense Waste Processing Facility. "It's all high-level waste. According to the judge's ruling, you can't say that is waste incidental to processing." Mr. Clements said the ruling carries an expensive but unknown price tag. "That's the key question - how much this is going to cost and how it's going to affect the timetable." If Judge Winmill's decision survives a probable DOE appeal, it means the cesium-laced cakes and the sludge will have to be processed for eventual permanent storage. It and the rest of SRS's waste would go to a high-level radioactive dump in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. There are 85 million gallons of deadly nuclear weapons waste at SRS, the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington and the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. SRS holds 34 million gallons. In May 2001, Georgia Department of Natural Resources officials sharply protested DOE's plans to grout the sludge. "As you know, the State of Georgia is opposed to the disposal of high-level radioactive waste onsite at SRS and has expressed this opposition ... many times over the years, dating as far back as the administration of Gov. Jimmy Carter," wrote James C. Hardman Jr., the department's environmental radiation program manager. "We consider "Direct Disposal in Grout" to be nothing more than onsite disposal of high-level waste, and for this reason, we are strongly opposed..." Both grouting the sludge and making cesium cakes were attempts to avoid heavy costs. But they betrayed a promise made by both the current and former contractors who ran SRS for the government - Westinghouse and Dupont, Mr. McKibben said. "That's what bothered me most," Mr. McKibben said. "For 25 years, Westinghouse and Dupont said they'd get rid of all the waste and take it off-site. Then they said 'Oh, we're going to leave some of it behind."'
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