The Department of Energy plans to bring radioactive waste from what was once an enriched uranium plant to the Nevada Test Site, and state officials say there is no way to stop it.
The Fernald plant near Cincinnati once made enriched uranium for warheads, among other things. Production stopped in 1989 and disposing of waste contained in three silos there is one of the final tasks in cleanup of the site.
Carl Gertz, representing the test site, said the waste, although more radioactive than most of the material the test site is burying each year, qualifies as low level.
But Nevada's nuclear projects director Bob Loux said it shouldn't be.
"It has a higher activity level and, in the Atomic Energy Act, it separates this out from low-level waste," he said. "How did it get from a separate category in the Atomic Energy Act to managed as low level? I'd like to see the analysis that allows you to do that," he told Gertz.
Loux said after the meeting that Fernald is a Superfund site, as designated by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which makes it immune from legal action. He said Nevada's best hope is an ongoing court case challenging the uses to which the test site can be put. He said he doesn't think storage of waste is a legal and legitimate use for the test site under the purposes for which it was turned over to the military and nuclear regulatory agencies 50 years ago.
He said he would like to see the judge in the case halt all waste shipments to the test site while the issue is resolved.
Gertz said because Utah's commercial plant rejected the waste as too "hot" for its existing permits, there isn't any other place to put the 14,000 cubic yards of waste material.
"The bottom line is, right now, there is only one place in this country for this waste to go to," he said.
John Sattler, of the Department of Energy's Fernald management project, said that will mean 3,750 trucks carrying waste into Nevada over the next 18 months. Loux said it will double the number of waste trucks passing through West Wendover, Ely and Tonopah heading for the test site each day. Last year there were 2,460 truckloads to the site from other low-level waste producers.
The Fernald clean-up project is costing an estimated $400 million. Sattler said 80 percent of the waste generated by the plant during its years of operation has already been taken care of and that bringing the 14,000 cubic yards of material to the test site is one of the last steps in that clean-up.
He also pointed out that while they were presenting the plan to Nevada officials for review, they don't actually need the state's permission to move the waste to Nevada.
"Our plan is to move forward," he said.
"We're the only game in town," said Loux.
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