Feds might halt N-shipments to Hanford

The U.S. Department of Energy is willing to halt some shipments of radioactive waste to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation if the agency can agree with Washington state on a schedule to settle a legal dispute, the Energy Department said Monday.

The state wants to ban shipments of low-level radioactive waste from other states to the former nuclear weapons production site near Richland. State leaders contend the shipments violate federal law and a previous agreement.

During a conference call Monday with U.S. District Judge Alan MacDonald, the Energy Department agreed it would halt the shipments – temporarily – once a court schedule is agreed upon.

“What we did was agree to work out a schedule for court proceedings,” said Colleen Clark, an Energy Department spokeswoman in Richland. “If we can reach agreement on what the schedule is, we will not make any shipments during that time period.”

David Mears, an assistant state attorney general handling the case, said he hopes a schedule agreement can be reached as early as today.

“It’s not a major negotiation,” Mears said, because it mostly involves coordinating attorney time. “Both sides have committed to try to reach an agreement.”

The Energy Department’s last shipment of nuclear waste to the Hanford site was in June when 109 barrels of material from the Rocky Flats nuclear site in Colorado were sent there, Clark said.

The Energy Department contends the shipments of low-level radioactive waste and waste mixed with hazardous chemicals are legal and do not violate the Tri-Party Agreement, the Hanford cleanup pact agreed to by the Energy Department, Washington state and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Washington Gov. Gary Locke and Attorney General Christine Gregoire announced Friday they would seek to amend a 2003 lawsuit to ban shipments of low-level radioactive waste to the Hanford site, which contains the nation’s largest volume of nuclear wastes from the production of nuclear weapons materials.

That amended lawsuit was filed Monday, Mears said.

Last year, the state sued the Energy Department over shipments of transuranic waste – plutonium-contaminated gloves, rags, tools, dried sludge and other debris from nuclear weapons-making.

Low-level wastes include materials such as building rubble, contaminated dirt, tools and clothing that have less radiation than transuranic waste. Mixed low-level wastes contain hazardous chemicals.

Under the Energy Department’s plan, approximately 62,000 cubic meters of off-site radioactive waste – including 20,000 cubic meters of mixed low-level waste and 15,500 cubic meters of transuranic waste – would be shipped to Hanford.

An earlier proposal would have allowed as much as 219,663 cubic meters of low-level waste and 140,435 cubic meters of mixed low-level waste.

For 40 years, the south-central Washington nuclear reservation made plutonium for the nation’s nuclear weapons, beginning with the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb.

Today, Hanford is the nation’s most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup costs are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the work to be finished by 2035.