Charleston.Net: Opinion: Editorials No 'cleanup on the cheap' 07/09/03

Story last updated at 6:57 a.m. Wednesday, July 9, 2003

No 'cleanup on the cheap'

A federal judge has correctly rejected the U.S. Department of Energy's attempt to reclassify high-level liquid radioactive waste at a lower category so it wouldn't have to be removed, as required by a 1982 law. Last week's ruling potentially affects about 2 percent of the 90 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste, including 37 million gallons at South Carolina's Savannah River Site.

The DOE expects to turn most of the waste to glass and ship it to a permanent storage site in Nevada. The judge's ruling dealt with DOE's attempt to reclassify hard-to-recover radioactive material in the bottom of storage tanks. DOE had hoped to eventually fill the tanks with a concrete slurry, thereby stabilizing the remaining material on site.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill requires the department to meet the standards for the disposal of radioactive waste set forth in the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Or, as a Washington state environmental official put it, in comments to The Associated Press, "They can't do cleanup on the cheap -- they've got to deal with the high-level waste."

South Carolina, Washington and Idaho supported a lawsuit against the DOE by the National Resources Defense Council and Idaho's Snake River Alliance.

A spokesman for the DOE said an appeal is possible, predicting that the ruling could increase the expense of cleanup and jeopardize other projects. In South Carolina, at least, DOE resistance to the ruling would more likely risk public support for a plutonium reprocessing project planned at SRS. The state and DOE officials resolved a dispute over plans to send plutonium to South Carolina for reprocessing as nuclear fuel, after state officials and members of the S.C. congressional delegation complained there was no exit plan for the material if the reprocessing project were somehow derailed.

A spokesman for the state Department of Health and Environmental Control tells us that the judge's ruling last week will require the DOE to reach an agreement with the state on the radioactive waste question before it proceeds with disposal. Such an accord between state and federal officials should be the rule.

DOE should be required to meet public expectations and legal responsibilities as it deals with radioactive waste disposal and environmental contamination dating from the Cold War. Public confidence in new missions for former weapons plants will depend, in part, on how DOE handles longstanding problems at those sites.