Nuke waste panel to visit Hanford but local rep says thanks for nothing

The nuclear waste blue ribbon commission announced today it will visit the Hanford nuclear reservation in Washington state as part of its re-examination of the nation's nuclear waste policies.

But Rep. Doc Hastings, the area's representative in Congress, did not sound too thrilled. Hastings would rather the Obama administration keep at work to open a repository at Yucca Mountain for the millions of gallons of nuclear weapons waste sitting in tanks at Hanford.

“I take this visit for what it is – a political endeavor," Hastings said. "The Blue Ribbon Commission was formed so that President Obama could terminate Yucca Mountain without having to answer the question of what next.

"The Commission exists to study a solution to a problem that already has an answer. Billions of dollars and decades have already been spent studying what to do with high level nuclear defense waste and commercial spent nuclear fuel – and Yucca Mountain was determined to be the answer. That’s why Yucca Mountain remains the national repository under the law.

“Continuing to study this issue until one Senator from Nevada gets the answer he wants is not an exercise in science – it’s an exercise in politics," Hastings said, referring to Sen. Harry Reid, who arranged with the White House to put the Yucca project on a path to termination.

“The fact that the commission does not already grasp the magnitude of the waste we have here, our communities’ views or the federal government’s legal cleanup commitments to our state is deeply troubling. My position and the views of the Tri-Cities community have been quite clear, the amount of waste at Hanford is widely known, and there is ongoing legal action.

“I understand the Commission has stated that it is not a site selection committee – however we know that one site (Yucca Mountain) has been arbitrarily taken off the table. Consequently we are left to assume that everything else is on the table.

Never mind whether the Hanford waste ever moves, some in the Tri-Cities area surrounding the site fear there may be an effort to import high level nuclear wastes from other parts of the country for storage at the site.

“I have spent many months trying to get simple answers from the Department of Energy about the Blue Ribbon Commission – including if Hanford is back on the table as a repository since the Commission is looking at various geological mediums that only exist in a few places across the country," Hastings said "No answers have been provided. Requests to the Department for a briefing about the Blue Ribbon Commission have been ignored."