7/28/2019 Aging Defense Waste Storage Sites and Cleanup Efforts in States

1/3

Aging Deense Waste Storage

Sites and Cleanup Eforts in States

The Council of State Governments

CAPITOL ReseARCH

energy and environment

THe CounCil of sTATe goveRnMenTs

The Department o Energy confrmed in Febru-ary 2013 that six underground storage tanks at theHanord Nuclear Reservation in southeastern Wash-ington were leaking, with one tank estimated to be

seeping 150 to 300 gallons o nuclear waste per year.1

Gov. Jay Inslee reassured the public in a statementthere was no immediate public saety threat, but thetroubles at what is widely considered the nationsmost contaminated deense waste site underscoresthe burden placed on states and communities dealingwith the remediation and cleanup o acilities thathelped win the Cold War. It also adds more urgencyor a ederal strategy on interim storage o wasteas well as additional unding to help remediate andclean up these aging sitesa prospect that will provedifcult given Washingtons current and long-termfscal challenges. Letters rom the Department oEnergy (DOE) to governors warning o possible

urloughs and layos o ederal personnel due to thesequester have raised concerns that remediation odeense-waste sites may take even longer to completean already lengthy cleanup process.2

Nuclear Waste, Deense Waste and States In 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste

Policy Act, which directed DOE to develop andconstruct a permanent repository to store thenations nuclear wasteboth commercial wastegenerated rom power plants and deense waste.3

Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Actin 1987 and selected Yucca Mountain, Nev., as the

permanent storage site. It established a timetableor shipments o nuclear waste to begin arriving in1998a deadline that clearly has lapsed and is thesubject o intense political scrutiny and debate.

This long delay generated lawsuits rom statesthat have deense waste sites and utilities becausethe ederal government was supposed to takeownership o the waste.

Total volumes o civilian and deense nuclearwaste already exceed the statutory cap o 70,000tons that could have been sent to Yucca Moun-tain. Nationwide, an estimated 250 tanks are stor-ing roughly 2,500 tons o deense waste at ederalacilities.4

The Hanord Site The 586 square mile Hanord site, located just fve

miles rom the Columbia River, has 177 storagetanks that store more than 56 million gallons ochemical and nuclear waste.

Originally constructed in 1943 by the War Depart-ment, the site housed reactors and processingacilities that became the worlds frst plutoniumplant and provided the uel used in the atomicbombs that ended World War II. Notable sci-entists like Enrico Fermi supervised the workperormed by more than 50,000 peoplemany owhom had no idea what was being constructed.5

A series o presidents, beginning with Harry Tru-

man, expanded the size and scope o the acil-ity as the technological needs and capabilitiesrequired o the nuclear arsenal changed duringthe Cold War.

By 1989, Hanord became a Superund site andWashington entered into the Hanord FederalFacility Agreement and Consent Order, knownas the Tri-Party Agreement, with the DOE, EPA,and its own state Ecology Department to estab-lish a remediation plan.

According to the 2013 report issued by the Tri-Party pact, the liecycle cost o cleaning up Han-ord will be more than$114 billion and take morethan 75 years to complete.6

7/28/2019 Aging Defense Waste Storage Sites and Cleanup Efforts in States

2/32 THe CounCil of sTATe goveRnMenTs

Other High-Prole Deense Waste Sites DOEs Ofce o Environmental Management was

charged with overseeing the cleanup o more than100 sites across the countryencompassing an areathe size o Delaware and Rhode Island. Throughdiligent work, the number o sites is now down to17 spread across 11 states.7 Ater Hanord, the nextlargest deense waste sites are Savannah River andthe Idaho National Laboratory.

The Savannah River site sits on more than 300square miles between two metropolitan areasAiken, S.C., and Augusta, Ga. The Cold War-eradeense waste site frst came into operation inthe 1950s and housed fve reactors that producedtritium and plutonium-239 used in the abricationo nuclear weapons.

At least 36 million gallons o high-level radioac-tive waste was produced at the site and held in 49underground storage tanks. In April 2012, DOEannounced it successully remediated more than2.6 million gallons o radioactive wastethe frsttime underground storage tanks had been closed

in the U.S.8

In addition to housing the nations leading

nuclear research lab, the Idaho site also has a a-cility constructed in 1953 that was used to recoveruranium by reprocessing spent nuclear uel. Thecurrent 10-year, $4 billion dollar cleanup plan is acrucial part o protecting the Snake River Basinrom contamination, as it provides the sole sourceo drinking water or 300,000 people.9

A Possible Way Forward? DOEs Waste Isolation Pilot Project, located near

Carlsbad, N.M., contains deep caverns in ancient saltormations that are an ideal medium or perma-

nently isolating long-lived radioactive wastes romthe environment,10 according to a DOE act sheet.

The salt ormations located in a desert are im-permeable, ree o resh water and geologicallystable. The acility is the worlds only geologic re-pository or storing radioactive waste and alreadystores more than 85,000 cubic meters o low-leveltransuranic waste, which are man-made elementswith a higher atomic number than uranium,like sediment and debris that can be moved andstored with proper saety precautions.

In response to the emerging threat o continuedleaks at Hanord, the ederal government is con-

sidering moving high-level deense waste to therepository in New Mexico. That consideration hasdrawn scrutiny rom environmentalists and U.S.Sen. Tom Udall o New Mexico over the expan-sion o the permitted uses o the site withouturther public input.11

1Nuclear Waste Leaks Worse than Thought in Washington.William Pentland, Forbes. February 23,

2013.http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/02/23/nuclear-waste-leaks-worse-than-

thought-in-washington/2DOE Shares SRS Budget Cut Projections with Gov. Haley.Rob Pavey, Augusta Chronicle . March 5,

2013. http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/metro/2013-03-05/doe-shares-srs-budget-cut-projections-gov-haley 3The Nuclear Waste Policy Act.P.L. 97-425 http://epw.senate.gov/nwpa82.pdf4Poisons Cleansed from Savannah River Site Tanks.Sammy Fretwell, The State. March 29, 2012.

http://www.thestate.com/2012/03/29/2212937/poisons-cleansed-from-savannah.html 5Hanford Overview and History.U.S. Department of Energy.

http://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/HanfordOverviewandHistory 62013 Hanford Lifecycle Scope, Schedule and Cost Report.Tri-Party Agreement, February 2013.

http://www.hanford.gov/les.cfm/2013%20Fact%20Sheet%20Final%20_1-29-13_.pdf 7DOE Oce of Environmental Management, http://energy.gov/em/active-sites-additional-information 8DOE Oce of Environmental Management Press Release, October 1, 2012.

http://energy.gov/em/articles/savannah-river-site-celebrates-historic-closure-radioactive-waste 9Idaho Gov. Butch Otters Leadership in Nuclear Energy Commission Full Report, January 2013., p. 7

http://gov.idaho.gov/pdf/LineFinalReport.pdf 10Why WIPP?DOE Waste Isolation Pilot Project fact sheet.

http://www.wipp.energy.gov/fctshts/Why_WIPP.pdf11Feds Look to ship Washington State Radioactive Waste to New Mexico.Shannon Dininny,AP/Miami

Herald. March 3, 2013.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/06/3270774/feds-look-to-ship-wash-radioactive.html

RESOURCES

Brydon Ross, Director of Energy & Environmental Policy | bross@csg.org

http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/02/23/nuclear-waste-leaks-worse-than-thought-in-washington/http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/02/23/nuclear-waste-leaks-worse-than-thought-in-washington/http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/02/23/nuclear-waste-leaks-worse-than-thought-in-washington/http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/02/23/nuclear-waste-leaks-worse-than-thought-in-washington/mailto:bross%40csg.org?subject=mailto:bross%40csg.org?subject=http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/02/23/nuclear-waste-leaks-worse-than-thought-in-washington/http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/02/23/nuclear-waste-leaks-worse-than-thought-in-washington/

7/28/2019 Aging Defense Waste Storage Sites and Cleanup Efforts in States

3/3THe CounCil of sTATe goveRnMenTs

Map o Current DOE Oce o

Environmental Management Cleanup Sites

Source: http://energy.gov/em/cleanup-sites