LATEST :
IUC/White Mesa, UT, Canon City, CO, and
Andrews, Texas sites also potential recipients
After keeping public in the dark, Congressmen now say it's 'too late' to remove clause.
Salt Lake Tribune story reports
Ohio Senator George Voinovich, Utah Congressmen behind this irrational
radioactive waste management deal.
NOTE : In a move similar to the
attempt to re-classify HLW at West Valley, Hanford,
Savannah River and Idaho, DOE wants to insert a clause in the massive
Energy Bill that would re-classify these highly hazardous wastes as "commercial
waste ", i.e. low-level waste. This would enable these wastes to be dumped at
the commercial Envirocare facility in Utah, further lining the pockets of this
politically well-connected waste company. Utah Rep.
Bishop is pushing the insertion of this clause.
Update : With the assistance of Rep. Bishop, it
appears DOE has been successful in this legislative
end-run around the existing, already inadequate, waste classification system.
Utahans future public health/economic welfare interests have been exchanged by
Rep. Bishop for immediate corporate gain. Will Rep. Slaughter be able to
prevent this across-the-board reclassification of all, including NFSS, K-65
wastes?
No Vitrification of Fernald's High-level K-65
Residues
Implications for NFSS?
DOE's cost-saving
decision not to use the best waste isolation technology currently available,
vitrification, for the K-65 residues stored in silos at its Fernald, OH former
uranium production facility sets a scientifically-insupportable precedent that
is extremely short-sighted. It is likely to result in similar or worse
mismanagement by Army Corps of Engineers of the K-65 materials at the Niagara
Falls Storage Site (NFSS) near Lewiston, NY.
After giving the community the rational 1994 silos ROD stating
that the K-65 materials should be vitrified, seven years later (after getting
an onsite tumulus for millions of cubic yards of contaminated soils - a tumulus
fated to eventually contaminate the underlying aquifer) DOE rescinded that
decision and switched to a "chemical stabilization" method, i.e. mixing the
waste with concrete, in a July 2001 Amendment to the original 1994 ROD. This
change markedly reduces the effectiveness of the remedy. It was based solely on
the higher cost of a proven vitrification technology - a cost deemed too high
by DOE. The amendment was approved by the EPA without satisfying the
public's right to further NEPA review - in the form of an SEIS (Supplemental
Environmental Impact Statement) - of such a significant alteration of the
original decision.
The National Academy of Science's National Research Council
studied the question of how best to manage these K-65 wastes to ensure
long-term safety using available waste stabilization and isolation
technologies. The NRC's 1995 report,
"Safety of the High-Level
Uranium Ore Residues at the Niagara Falls Storage Site, Lewiston, New
York", stigmatized the K-65 residues as virtually indistinguishable in
hazard from high level waste (HLW), and concluded that there is no technical
reason why the NFSS material should not receive the same management approach
chosen by DOE in its original 1994 ROD for Fernald's K-65 wastes and also the
RODs for the HLW at Hanford, Savannah River, and West Valley: namely, to
maximize the longevity of waste stability and environmental isolation by
vitrifying the residues. See Fernald background.
The 1995 NRC report notes that DOE's "interim actions" at
NFSS, i.e. the slurrying of the K-65 residues from the silo to the building
basement within the NFSS tumulus, may present additional difficulties not then
present at the Fernald silos, i.e. require more costly special excavation
techniques prior to proper waste stabilization. See ROLE
letter for a discussion of these earlier DOE violations of the NEPA process
that effected this relatively inexpensive but very unwise, band-aid remedy.
On the subject of cost, it is worth noting that $50 billion
dollars have been spent to date [July 2003] in the War on Iraq, with ongoing
monthly military costs tagged at $4 billion for the indefinite future, all in
the name of eliminating the Bush/Blair claimed but yet-to-be-discovered Iraqi
stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Meanwhile the known, huge
long-term public health hazards of our own WMD toxic legacy are being poorly
addressed because of "cost considerations".
