Friday, June 04, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

NUCLEAR SLUDGE: Senate OKs easing cleanup

Radioactive waste left over from Cold War

WASHINGTON -- The Senate on Thursday agreed to ease cleanup requirements for tanks holding millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste from Cold War-era bomb making.

Senate critics said the change would leave poisonous sludge in underground tanks and risk contamination of groundwater.

An attempt to block the change failed by the narrowest of margins. Senators voted 48-48 on an amendment offered by Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., that would have stripped the provision from a defense authorization bill.

The provision allows the Energy Department to reclassify radioactive sludge in 51 tanks at a South Carolina nuclear site so it can be left in place and covered by concrete, instead of being entombed in the Nevada desert.

The proposal left South Carolina's two senators sharply divided.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who had put the provision into the defense bill, said it will quicken waste cleanup at the Savannah River nuclear complex near Aiken, S.C., by 23 years and save $16 billion. He rejected claims the waste would harm the environment.

Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C., said the sludge accounts for more than half of the radioactivity in the tanks of liquid waste and endangers future generations. It's "not harmless sludge we can pour sand over and cover with concrete" as the Energy Department proposes, said Hollings.

The Savannah River tanks contain 34 million gallons of liquid waste. Sludge accounts for about 1 percent of the waste volume.

Nevada's senators also held differing views.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., voted to allow the Energy Department to process the nuclear sludge and leave it at the Savannah River complex.

Ensign said the more nuclear waste that can remain in South Carolina, Washington and Idaho, "then that much won't be going to Nevada and that's not a bad thing to me."

"Otherwise it would just be more waste and more pressure to build a Yucca Mountain repository and open it."

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., voted to force DOE to clean out the tanks.

Reid believed that to do otherwise "would override 30 years of nuclear waste cleanup legislation and we shouldn't set that precedent," spokeswoman Tessa Hafen said.

"DOE 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," Hafen said.

Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault contributed to this report.