• Pinpointing the projected volumes of waste (and numbers of shipments) that the DOE plans to bring to Hanford over the long-term. Is your vision that Hanford becomes a perpetual nuclear sacrifice zone?
• Disclosure of cumulative impacts of imported waste and waste already sitting at or in the Hanford site to all life systems for the next several generations.
• Spelling out the logic and impacts of trucking more waste onto the Hanford site for treatment and burial while trying to move forward with the promised cleanup of the Hanford site. (How do these two disparate  plans impact each other?
• Explain in quantifiable ways the impacts of further groundwater contamination on the already existing, unmonitored, and uncharacterized contaminated groundwater at the Hanford site as well as the effects of all current and future resulting contamination to the Columbia River.
• The long-term, really long-term stewardship of all existing and added waste to the site.
• The rationale behind DOE thinking that you, with a history of mismanagement, can treat and manage imported waste, when we are presently unable to treat and manage our own waste.

We need a real answer to the question of how the DOE can implement a piecemeal plan for faster, cheaper, accelerated cleanup at our site and across the nation, without considering all worst case scenario impacts (to groundwater, transportation, inadequate or nonexistent treatment facilities and FUNDING) on the long-standing promised mission of CLEANUP at Hanford?

In case you want to write off these and other comments as being nay-says, let me refer you to two documents that spell out some solutions to the nuclear waste problems we have created for ourselves that have some suggestions that go beyond the recent Top-to-Bottom Review and Program Management Plan from DOE Headquarters:

• Makhaijani, Arjun; Short-and Medium-Term Management of Highly Radioactive Wastes in the United States
• Makhaijani, Arjun; Considering the Alternatives: Creating a framework for sound long-term management of highly radioactive wastes in the United States

Even though these two articles deal with high level waste, there are some solid ideas that could lead to some new thinking about low level and mixed low level wastes.

Sincerely,
Paige Knight