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Article published May 9, 2004
Washington should keep its word to states with nuclear facilities

When the federal government located nuclear facilities in the states of South Carolina, Idaho and Washington, it made certain promises. Federal laws were passed that required the government to clean up radioactive waste on those sites.Now, federal officials have decided it would cost too much to keep those promises. They would rather break them.Of course, they don't say that. They say they want to reclassify the waste.It sounds like a technical action that would involve only paperwork. In reality, it would mean that millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste in these three states would stay in the ground, where it should not be stored, instead of being cleaned up.Federal law requires the U.S. Department of Energy to clean up all the highly radioactive waste from plutonium processing. But the department has studied that option. Obeying that federal law would cost billions just at the Savannah River Site in Aiken.So federal officials have another plan. They will simply dilute the waste in the ground and then reclassify it as low-level waste and leave it there.It would be a violation of the commitment made to the states, but it would save the government $16 billion in South Carolina alone.A federal judge has already prohibited the Energy Department from implementing that plan, correctly pointing out that it violates federal law. So the department wants Congress to change the law -- to change the deal it made with the states.U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham has been working on an agreement between the federal government and South Carolina. But officials in Idaho and Washington say his plan gives too much authority to the Energy Department and not enough to the states.Congress should do nothing that the three states don't approve. The states should have the final say in whatever changes are made. If the states can't or won't agree to a new plan, the federal government should be forced to pay for a complete cleanup. That is, after all, what was promised to the people of these states.The facilities where this waste is currently located are not designed, built or equipped for long-term storage of this waste. The potential for environmental damage is high. If the government can come up with a plan to stabilize and isolate the waste that is acceptable to state officials, that would be fine. But the burden should be on federal officials to satisfy the states. Congress must not simply vote to break these promises.