Posted on 06/04/2004 5:14:53 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
SUN WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- The Senate voted Thursday to give the Energy Department authority to reclassify nuclear waste in South Carolina, a move that has split Nevada's senators and has some state officials concerned about the precedent set by the decision.
The move would ease waste cleanup regulations, which would allow the Energy Department to add cement or grout to high-level nuclear waste in South Carolina and leave it in tanks at a former nuclear weapons facility.
Supporters, including Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., argue the change, if enacted into law, could mean less nuclear waste coming to the Nevada Test Site and the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Opponents, including Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other Nevada officials, are concerned that the vote paves the way for changes in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the law that governs Yucca Mountain, and wouldn't do anything to limit the amount of waste coming to Nevada.
Ensign said he worked hard to make sure the policy change does not adversely affect the state in any way.
"The bottom line is this is less nuclear waste for Yucca Mountain," Ensign said. "We made sure the language doesn't sent any kind of precedent."
But Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., believes the change would override 30 years of nuclear waste clean-up legislation.
"DOE (the Energy Department) is notoriously incompetent when it comes to clean up and oversight and we shouldn't let them get away with it by changing the rules," said Reid spokeswoman Tessa Hafen. Even more troubling for some state officials, the change would override a federal court decision that said the Energy Department could not change the classification of the waste.
Nevada officials are trying to stop the Yucca Mountain project and have sued the Energy Department. With the case pending in federal court, state officials worry about the change.
Bob Loux, executive director of Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects said he thinks the change "sets a bad precedent of changing the law to satisfy the needs of the Department of Energy."
"It's not right for DOE (Energy Department) to just change the law," Loux said.
Gov. Kenny Guinn sent a letter last year objecting to this type of change when the department originally pushed for it, Loux said.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act now specifically defines liquid waste from spent nuclear fuel reprocessing as high-level radioactive waste that needs permanent geological storage, which Congress has designated as Yucca Mountain.
But the 2005 Defense Authorization bill, now in debate on the Senate floor, includes a provision by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., that says in South Carolina, the law's definition of high-level waste does not include anything the Energy secretary decides does not need geological storage or has had the "radioactive radionuclides removed to the maximum extent practical."
This will allow the department to leave some waste in underground storage tanks at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina instead of moving it to Yucca Mountain.
A tie 48-48 vote Thursday defeated an amendment offered by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., to strip Graham's language from the bill. Cantwell led an almost four-hour debate on the amendment since she fears this could leave million of gallons of high-level waste at the Hanford Site in Washington.
"Basically it (the policy change) would reclassify nuclear waste that is in existing tanks in my state, in South Carolina, in Idaho, and in New York, and basically say that waste can be covered over with cement, with sand, and could be grouted,"' Cantwell said. "Basically, it says we can take high-level nuclear waste and grout it.
"For most Americans, grout is something they see in their bathroom, not something they do with nuclear waste."
Ensign and most Republicans voted against the amendment while Reid and most Democrats voted for it.
The department has been trying to get Congress to give it the power to reclassify waste since a federal court in Idaho sided with the Natural Resources Defense Council last year.
The court ruled that the department's plan to deem some radioactive waste in underground storage tanks in South Carolina, Washington and Idaho as "incidental," mix it with concrete and leave it in the tanks violated the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. The case is on appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Joe Egan, an attorney who represents Nevada on nuclear waste issues, compared the department's plan to classify some of the tank waste as low-level to "calling a pit bull a poodle so they can release it from the pound and let it play with the kiddies."
Deputy Secretary of Energy Kyle McSlarrow thanked Graham for his work on the issue and said in a statement that the final disposal of waste in Idaho and Washington still needs to be solved.
Graham, who added the policy change during closed-door meetings of the Senate Armed Services Committee last month, said it puts into affect an agreement between the department and the state to leave one and a half inches of waste at the bottom of the tanks to "prevent people from unnecessarily risking their lives to go get that last inch and a half."
"It means that some things that were going to go to Yucca Mountain don't have to go because to send them to Yucca Mountain is not environmentally necessary and it is not financially sensible," Graham said. "All I am asking is that South Carolina be allowed to execute this agreement that is good for South Carolina and the nation and will move forward and clean up in a sound manner."
Ensign says this means 100,000 fewer containers destined for Yucca.
"None of the language in there (the bill) did anything bad to Nevada," said Ensign, who also sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee that creates the Defense Authorization bill. "And it will save the government $16 billion."
Ensign worked with Graham to specify that if the state decides to move any of the waste the department opts to leave in the tanks, once it crosses the state line it would be deemed high-level waste again. This would prevent it from going to the Nevada Test Site, which can store low-level nuclear waste, an Ensign aide said.
But critics of the provision say it has nothing to do with more or less waste coming to Nevada since the site's 77,000-ton limit on nuclear waste will be reached with or without the South Carolina waste.
"We find it amazing that Ensign voted to allow DOE to override a court case when we have these Yucca cases pending," said Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Geoff Fettus, who argued the original case in the Idaho court. Fettus also argued one of the six legal challenges the state brought against the project. The outcomes are still pending.
"DOE has constantly tried to change the rules of the game. This is one of the primary rules Congress set 20 years ago on what is high-level radioactive waste."
Fettus said the department could now start playing the same game everywhere and attempt to change other portions of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act or ask Congress to change the law to overrule court cases the state may win.
"This is not just about Yucca, but the Nevada Test Site as well," Fettus said.
He said under the change, South Carolina would not have any control over radioactive material left in the tanks since the department has control over it. He pointed out that South Carolina is only singled out in one portion of the bill language, which makes it easy to strip out so it would apply to all states with contaminated department sites.
Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, who is running for president, did not vote. Sens. John Edwards, D-N.C., Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo. and Max Baucus, D-Mont. also did not vote.
Gee, I thought the oversight was CONGRESS'S JOB, what idiots.
DOE actually provides oversight of the contractors who operate their facilities. DOE doesn't do any actual "work" themselves - they're just regulators and auditors.
It makes sense to immobilize the last little bit of waste in those tanks rather than burning out a bunch of people with high radiation exposure trying to clean out all the sludge. But I guess it's hard to explain that to most legislators.
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