Radioactive Waste Shipments to Hanford Halted
The federal government has agreed to temporarily halt some shipments of low- level waste bound for burial at Hanford if it can reach agreement with Washington state on a schedule for a court decision.
Monday evening the state sent documents to federal district court suing the Department of Energy over its June 23 record of decision calling for Hanford to become a regional disposal site for up to 62,000 cubic meters of low-level waste and up to 20,000 cubic meters of low-level waste mixed with hazardous chemicals.
Attorney General Christine Gregoire is asking for a federal court ruling to prevent the shipment of wastes covered by the record of decision while the case is being heard. About $2 billion of work annually is done at Hanford to clean up contamination caused by the production of plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons during World War II and the Cold War.
The state contends that the decision to ship the solid waste to Hanford was based on a flawed and incomplete environmental analysis. It's amending a 2003 lawsuit against [Department of Ecology (DOE)] to add complaints about low-level waste to previous complaints about transuranic waste, or waste that's typically contaminated with plutonium.
Monday morning, attorneys for the federal government and the state held a status conference by telephone with Judge Alan McDonald in federal court in Yakima.
The federal government and the state agreed to try to work out a schedule of court activities, said DOE spokeswoman Colleen Clark, of the Richland Operations office, after the conference. The news media were barred from the proceedings.
"If we reach an agreement on the schedule, then we would not ship waste during the schedule period," Clark said.
Continue reading this story from the Tri-City Herald
DOE to halt waste shipments
To learn more about issues associated with Hanford Nuclear Reservation, please visit the website of the following Earth Share groups:
Heart of America Northwest Research Center
Government Accountability Project