THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, November 29, 1994 TAG: 9411290020
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
The new Republican majority in Congress has announced its intention to root out governmental waste, fraud and abuse. It need look no further than the program to deal with decades of deadly pollutants at nuclear-weapons plants.
Under Bush administration Energy Secretary James Watkins, a real attack on this festering problem was supposedly begun after years of neglect and denial. But recent reports suggest it has misfired badly.
Exhibit A is the plutonium manufacturing plant at Hanford, Washington, that produced the highly toxic substance from 1943 until the late '80s. In the process the plant was badly polluted, and wholly inadequate storage facilities were filled with a witches' brew of dangerous substances.
Now, though the plant is no longer in operation, 18,750 employees are assigned to research and manage the cleanup of radioactive waste at Hanford. Since 1989, $7.5 billion has been devoted to the project. That would be money well-spent if it were solving the problem created by years of mismanagement. But it is beginning to look as if a new round of mismanagement is being funded. Even the EPA manager on site admits it: ``There hasn't been any real cleanup. We don't have anyplace to put it.''
This isn't the first time the disposal of nuclear waste has foundered on the lack of a safe place to dump the long-lived pollutants. No one really has a handle on how to dispose of nuclear byproducts for the long haul, and at Hanford the government appears to have decided to experiment on a huge scale.
For example, $450 million has been spent trying to convert radioactive material into cement blocks or glass logs. An investigative report by the Spokane Spokesman-Review quotes a federal official who estimates that 75 percent of that money has been wasted.
Abuse doesn't come on quite so grand a scale as waste. But Westinghouse, which is ``managing'' the cleanup, has billed the government $13,721 for jewelry bearing the corporate logo and $910,000 for chauffeur service to and from the plant in 1991 alone.
It's been estimated that tens of billions will be needed to clean up Hanford; Rocky Flats, Colorado; Fernald, Ohio; and the rest of the radioactive monuments to arming for the Cold War without proper provision for the polluting consequences. How many of those billions are going to go for unneeded employees, expense-account padding and delusive cleanup experiments? A lot, apparently.
The sites should be secured. Immediate threats to the surrounding environment should be addressed, the seepage of stored waste into the water table for example. But research into long-term cleanup and storage solutions should be done on an experimental, not an industrial, scale until workable fixes are found. Perhaps idle weapons scientists at bomb labs like Los Alamos and Livermore could lend a hand in discovering how to clean up the mess they helped create.
The long-delayed search for a permanent storage facility for all such waste must be a top priority, as the Navy's decision to store spent fuel rods in Portsmouth has recently reminded us. But until a sensible plan and workable methods are found, the financial waste on nuclear waste needs to stop. And far better oversight is essential. by CNB