Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Waste shipment raises concerns

Some officials complain that DOE didn't tell them of plan to ship irradiated fuel assemblies

WASHINGTON -- An activist group has asked an independent study board to evaluate how the Energy Department handled a shipment of high level nuclear waste last month after some local officials complained they were not notified of the transportation plan.

Public Citizen raised concerns with the DOE's shipment of 125 irradiated fuel assemblies from the West Valley Demonstration Project, a closed reprocessing facility in New York, to an Idaho disposal site.

Shortly after midnight on July 13, a seven-car train carrying the assemblies left the site 45 miles south of Buffalo, the group said. The cargo arrived in Idaho without reported incident four days later.

In a letter Monday, Public Citizen urged a National Academy of Sciences board that is studying nuclear-waste transportation to evaluate whether DOE complied with laws and regulations governing the shipment.

Public Citizen, founded by Ralph Nader, usually casts a critical eye on government nuclear-related projects including activities at West Valley.

"We don't have evidence that they violated the law or contravened regulations, but it gets back to the question of whether existing regulations are sufficient to protect the public interest and we think not," Public Citizen analyst Lisa Gue said Tuesday.

Public Citizen cited Bill King, a town supervisor in Ashford, N.Y., where the West Valley facility is located, as saying local volunteer firefighters were not informed of DOE's schedule to ship the radioactive waste.

Additionally, the local congressman, Rep. Amory Houghton, R-N.Y., has complained to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham that he was not informed. The DOE shipment and local reaction was reported last month in the Buffalo News.

A DOE spokesman in Idaho did not respond to a phone call on Tuesday.

Department officials had said earlier that security and emergency preparedness were coordinated with state and tribal officials along the 2,360-mile route before and during the shipment, and the danger of the materials warranted secrecy from the general public.

Gue said that officials in Missouri have confirmed they were notified of the shipment and that it passed smoothly through the state.

"But there's a missing link somewhere when neither the local member of Congress nor the selectman from that area were notified," Gue said. "To what extent was that the case in other communities across the route? It seems grossly irresponsible for whatever reason if those folks were in the dark."