Fwd: nergy Dept. Seeks Power to Redefine Nuclear Waste to be handled as other material

[Guest guest]

Gee, it only remains hot and maybe need to store it for about 10,000+ years. And

they are not including that in any of the estimated expenses. That was real

bargain priced electricity or weapons, huh. It was sure a boon to the businesses

involved albeit at the taxpayers expense.

 

Frank

 

" luckypig "

Wed, 1 Oct 2003 23:07:08 -0400

nergy Dept. Seeks Power to Redefine Nuclear Waste

to be handled as other material

 

REad this very carefully and see what you think it says ......

********************************************

 

> Energy Dept. Seeks Power to Redefine Nuclear Waste

>

> By MATTHEW L. WALD

> 8e8cc45.jpg

> Published: October 1, 2003

>

> ASHINGTON, Sept. 30 The Energy Department has asked Congress to allow it

to

> redefine some nuclear waste so it can be left in place or sent to sites

> intended for low-level radioactive material, rather than being buried deep

> underground.

>

> Department officials say they thought they had flexibility in classifying

> what constituted high-level nuclear waste, but in July, a federal district

> judge in Idaho ruled that the department's plan for treating waste there

> violated the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, a 1982 law requiring the deep

burial

> of high-level waste.

>

> The argument concerns tens of millions of gallons of salts and sludges

left

> over from weapons production that are now in tanks in Idaho, South

Carolina

> and eastern Washington. High-level waste is supposed to be encapsulated in

> glass for burial. The department has chosen Yucca Mountain, Nev., as the

> repository site, but the site has not yet opened and when it does, it will

> not be big enough for all the solidified wastes and spent reactor fuel.

>

> In the Idaho case, the Energy Department had said that some of the

> high-level waste was " incidental " and need not be removed from the tanks.

> The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Snake River Alliance, a

local

> environmental group, along with two Indian tribes, successfully argued

that

> the order violated a longtime policy that high-level waste must be deeply

> buried.

>

> The ruling also could affect waste from a defunct civilian reprocessing

> plant in West Valley, N.Y., near Buffalo. The waste has already been

> solidified, and department officials said Tuesday that the resulting glass

> logs would be shipped for deep burial. But the officials said that

> contaminated buildings and equipment there might be left on site.

>

> " This is D.O.E.'s attempt to pawn off highly contaminated stuff on the

> state, " Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said on Tuesday.

> " We are fighting it. "

>

> Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, the ranking minority member

> of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said that " if the

> D.O.E. has the authority to change the classification of the waste at

will,

> that pretty much undercuts any Congressional control of the issue. " Mr.

> Bingaman said that one result could be wastes being shipped to the Waste

> Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad, N.M., that did not belong there.

>

> A department official said, however, that it would not change what was

> acceptable at the Carlsbad plant, which is designed for plutonium and

other

> long-lived materials.

>

> The Energy Department asked Congressional leaders in August for the

> authority to decide what constituted nuclear waste. A spokeswoman for the

> energy committee, Marnie Funk, said on Tuesday that the committee's

> Republican majority would not accept the Energy Department language, but

> opponents said that was just one of a series of proposals that the

> department would make.

>

> Spencer Abraham, the secretary of energy, said in August in a letter to

> Speaker J. Dennis Hastert that the Idaho case could mean decades of delay

> in removing the waste from the tanks, and cleanup costs could be 10 to 100

> times higher than the $39 billion now estimated.

>

> An Energy Department official said the ruling had left the department

> paralyzed.

>

> " The district court decision doesn't say which of the stuff from

> reprocessing has to go to Yucca Mountain, " the official said.

>

> Tom Cochran, a nuclear expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council,

> said, " Basically what they're doing is allowing the D.O.E. to abandon

> high-level waste and treat it under standards written for low-level w

>

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/01/politics/01NUKE.html?adxnnl=1 & adxnnlx=1065

017015-QIayzOFnRPkHFBSmEbiYOw

 

 

 

 

NEW WEB MESSAGE BOARDS - JOIN HERE.

Alternative Medicine Message Boards.Info

http://alternative-medicine-message-boards.info

 

 

 

The New with improved product search