THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 9, 1997 TAG: 9702090061
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: 85 lines
Under pressure from an environmental group, the U.S. Department of Energy likely will bypass Hampton Roads with future shipments of nuclear waste from a government research laboratory in New York.
``A lot of work still needs to be done, but we've made a commitment'' to skip Hampton Roads from now on, said Michael D. Holland, director of nuclear programs at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, located outside of New York City.
The decision would reverse plans to bring as many as 15 shipments of spent nuclear fuel rods from Brookhaven through the Portsmouth Marine Terminal over the next decade. From Portsmouth, the rods would have been trucked to a federal facility in South Carolina for storage.
The plans proved controversial, however, when state and federal officials failed to tell Portsmouth City Hall that highly enriched uranium rods would soon be traveling by.
After some apologies, the first shipment arrived without incident in December, Holland said. There has been no shipment since.
But the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club has continued to hammer away against renewed Brookhaven shipments, arguing that the atomic waste should be carried straight to South Carolina from New York.
That option, expected to cost the Department of Energy an additional $100,000 a shipment, is now being studied as the preferred path, Holland said. A single shipment costs about $1 million, he said.
The routing change would represent another victory for the Sierra Club in its efforts to block shipments of these used, radioactive fuel rods, each of which contains traces of highly enriched uranium, through local commercial ports.
Led by Robert Deegan, a retired naval officer from Virginia Beach, the Sierra Club stopped the importation of foreign fuel rods from 1988 to 1991, proving in court that federal officials had not done sufficient environmental studies.
Then last year, when the overseas shipments were about to resume, Deegan helped persuade government officials to import foreign research rods through military outposts in South Carolina and California, not Hampton Roads.
``My argument has always been that we need to keep these highly radioactive materials - however protected they might be - out of civilian ports in heavily populated areas,'' Deegan said. ``To do otherwise has never made much sense to me.''
Deegan's success, however, has rained on the state-supported ports in Portsmouth, Norfolk and Newport News, which held a virtual monopoly on handling radioactive fuel rods through the late 1970s and '80s.
At that time, other coastal cities passed ordinances banning their ports from receiving highly enriched rods, whose uranium remnants could conceivably, through much sophisticated reprocessing, be converted for use in atomic weapons. Cities in Hampton Roads remained open for business, and thrived.
But in court, through subtle negotiation with government officials and in loud public statements, the Sierra Club has slowly won its case that spent fuel rods, whether from overseas labs or domestic research institutions such as Brookhaven, are better handled at closely guarded, protected military ports.
``Why should you put citizens through the psychological risk of being exposed to radioactive material?'' asked Portsmouth City Councilman Cameron Pitts. ``True, there isn't much health risk - that's what we're told by the experts - but I'm inclined to say we're making the right decision here.''
To Pitts, if the local ports were going to accept these materials, they should ``make it an industry, be the experts, make some real economic gain.'' But piecemeal shipments, he said, don't make enough money to compensate for the public anxiety.
Public relations was one reason for Brookhaven deciding to seek a new route that did not include Hampton Roads, Holland said.
``We have an overall policy of working with our stakeholders, and the Sierra Club is certainly one,'' he said. ``We listened to Mr. Deegan, and when we sat down and looked at his options, we thought it might be better to try that.''
It could take several months to re-draw plans and obtain necessary approvals to switch travel plans. As envisioned, the fuel rods would be barged down the Atlantic coast to Charleston Naval Weapons Station in South Carolina and then carried by rail or truck to the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., where they would be stored.
Given the time needed to complete the change, Holland said one more shipment, probably late this spring, may be taken through Portsmouth.
Deegan opposes that last shipment, too, arguing that the government, if serious, can switch its plans by then.
KEYWORDS: HAZARDOUS CARGO RADIOACTIVE PORTSMOUTH MARINE
TERMINALS SIERRA CLUB PROTEST