Abstract
Energy's new, incautious attitude toward cleanup at Hanford isn't going over well with Washington State and its citizens.
As a major facility in the Energy Department's former atomic weapons production complex, the Hanford Site in Washington State was extensively contaminated with radioactive and chemical wastes.
Hanford's mission was changed from production to environmental cleanup during the administration of George H. W. Bush, and during the Clinton administration significant progress was made in site remediation–including the removal of soil and structures contaminated during years of reactor operation, as well as the removal of corroding spent nuclear fuel from large water basins. This progress, and the administration's facilitation of public participation, did much to overcome the public's mistrust of Energy and its predecessor agencies, which for decades operated outside public control or accountability.
But with the current Bush administration, there has been a distinct change in attitude at Energy headquarters in Washington, D.C. Faced from the outset with large federal deficits exacerbated by the Bush tax cuts, the department has become less enthusiastic in pursuing environmental remediation at Hanford.
Some examples:
Cutting the budget. The Bush administration's first budget for cleanup at Hanford was $1.4 billion for fiscal 2002. Although a large sum, by Energy's own calculations this budget created a $500 million “compliance gap,” or shortfall from the amount deemed necessary to meet the department's regulatory commitments for the year. Much of the compliance gap was eliminated with subsequent congressional appropriations, but the administration's stinginess toward cleanup set a tone for actions that followed.
Bait and switch? As a result of an extensive public process during the 1990s, Energy had agreed to treat high-level radioactive wastes, currently stored as liquids in aging underground tanks, by “vitrification”–immobilization in a solid glass form, considered the most stable technical option available. But in December 2001, the chair of the Hanford Advisory Board, which was established to give the department independent advice on site cleanup, released an internal Energy Department memo urging changes in plans for the treatment of those wastes. To the advisory board's consternation, the department was now proposing that as much as 75 percent of the high-level wastes be treated by other measures.
Divide and conquer? In April 2002, Energy released a draft environmental impact statement, designating Hanford as a site to receive low-level radioactive and chemical wastes from other Energy Department sites. Hanford's advisory board–and similar advisory boards at other sites–had long recommended a “national equity dialogue” on the transportation of radioactive waste across the nuclear complex. These groups urged the department to reveal a comprehensive plan for waste transportation and to encourage broad public participation in the dialogue. The advisory boards were concerned that the department would shuffle wastes around its national complex in a piecemeal fashion, and in the process pit citizens and officials near any one site against those near others.
But Energy made no commitment to a dialogue. Instead, in late 2002 it began moving transuranic wastes, contaminated with plutonium or similar elements, from other locations to Hanford. Washington State's Department of Ecology asked Energy to provide information on all the wastes it expected to ship to Hanford, and for a timetable that would stabilize and remove existing wastes from Hanford faster than new wastes would be imported. When Energy refused, the state filed suit, obtaining a temporary restraining order in May 2003.
Energy's maneuvers sparked a public backlash as well. After the department started shipping wastes from other sites to Hanford, concerned citizens sponsored an initiative petition, calling for a halt in the importation of new wastes to Hanford until existing wastes are fully stabilized and treated.
In January 2004, Washington's secretary of state certified that the initiative measure had obtained more than enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in November. The initiative, I-297, is sponsored by Protect Washington, a broad coalition of non-profit organizations. Endorsers include the state's Democratic Party, which clearly hopes the measure's presence on the ballot will help bring out the party faithful in November.
An earlier vote on Hanford set a precedent. In 1986, a ballot measure opposing the Reagan administration's consideration of Hanford as a national storage site for high-level radioactive waste passed overwhelmingly and helped remove Republican Slade Gorton from the U.S. Senate. Today, most officials elected to statewide offices are Democrats, and a strong turnout in November may keep the state a solid Democratic blue. It may be too much to expect that a successful initiative would shock the current administration's Energy Department out of its arrogance. But if the initiative passes with a strong majority, it will send a clear signal that citizens will not tolerate any plan to cut corners in the Hanford cleanup.