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Yucca
Mountain and Hanford Dear Senator Smith, I had the pleasure of meeting with your Deputy Director of Natural Resources, Martin Doern, yesterday with a number of other interested citizens who are trying to help lead the country toward nuclear sanity, be it from weapons, waste, or cleanup. I want to praise Martin for his ability to listen intently, to question, to get to the depth of the issues about which we are concerned. That was a treat. I am following up from that meeting because of my long-standing involvement with Hanford cleanup issues. I know that you have worked hard to support cleanup funding for Hanford and adherence to the Tri-Party Agreement. When I read the editorial in The Oregonian over the weekend endorsing your vote for Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository, I felt the need to talk with you about the benefits of Yucca Mountain to Hanford cleanup. The benefits are few in light of several perspectives. First of all, Yucca Mountain is only slated to house 10 percent of all nuclear defense waste, the other 90 percent set aside for commercial nuclear waste from nuclear power plants such as Trojan. The high level waste from 177 Hanford tanks (53 million gallons) and the K-Basins (2300 irradiated fuel rods) is only one stream of waste from the whole weapons complex. We are not going to be allotted all of the space left. Thus Yucca is not the "solution" to Hanford's problems. The next issue that you state as a large concern of yours is the transportation issue. You not only sat on the Oregon Hanford Waste Board while you were in the Oregon State legislature, but you and your family live near Hanford, near enough to be downwind on the right (or wrong) day. As you know, nuclear transport safety (emergency preparedness) has for years lacked the funds necessary to protect human health and the environment. Without consideration of this issue, transport to Yucca makes no sense. Add to that present concerns about nuclear terrorism and there is much that has not been adequately dealt with to garner public trust. The other issue that is tightly interwoven with the transport issue is the limited liability of the recently renewed Price Anderson Act. Nuclear accidents are only insured up to $10 billion. According to studies by the Sandia Nation Laboratories the consequences of a catastrophic nuclear power accident would not only cause thousands of early deaths and cancers, but as much as $600 billion in damages -- and an accident of lesser magnitude would cost at least $28 billion. None of us are covered for such catastrophes, no individual citizen can purchase protection if we own property along a route. There are obviously many things that need to be "fixed" if we are to venture on this perilous path. The issue that is at the forefront for many of us here in the Pacific Northwest is the issue of Hanford cleanup. We are, for the fourth time, very close to getting the necessary funding for a waste treatment facility for the 53 million gallons of tank waste that is sitting 7 miles from the Columbia River. And we have a new administration with a new plan ( a seemingly biannual event), which means that the former plan has thrown money down the drain because it is stopped dead in its tracks. This new "accelerated" plan proposes a cheaper and faster cleanup, which sounds good, but a question the public raised recently at the delayed annual budget meetings was, "How can you ask a contractor to ramp up considerably and do it for less money." This doesn't make sense to those of us who would like cheaper and faster. The old adage holds true that "you get what you pay for." The new DOE headquarters is talking about leaving waste in tanks, finding new technology with less funding (how many times have we heard this?), and changing environmental laws to hasten a new goal, all at the expense of our children. Yucca is no solution for the problems at Hanford. Cleanup is the first major step in the solution. While Congress is looking to take waste from Hanford and dump it in Nevada, the DOE is in the midst of public comment on the Solid Waste Environmental Impact Statement that outlines the tons of waste to be transported to Hanford and buried there. We invite you to attend the Portland hearing on July 30th. The citizens of the Northwest are adamant in their opposition to transport of more waste in while we are supposedly transporting (years down the road -- maybe) waste out and waiting for full funding of a waste treatment plant. It smells fishy to us. Radioactively fishy. I know you are looking for solutions such as a Yucca Mountain repository seems to offer. That is looking at a possible final solution. We are forgetting the steps along the way. The first step is to insure that the DOE cleans up their sites and contains their waste into more stable forms such as glass. The second step for both commercial sites such as Trojan and the 103 other nuclear power reactors in the U.S. is to insure that the billions of dollars are spent getting the spent fuel into dry cask storage that has been tested and proven safe. This waste is then less vulnerable to terrorists and ready for transport to an appropriate, scientifically proven site. If we do not rely on sound science for the site, our children or our grandchildren will be left with the burden of trying to remove waste from a deep geological repository and finding a new solution. By creating the nuclear waste policy act and politically and arbitrarily assigning a timeline for removal of waste from commercial reactors, we have ditched science for the politically expedient solution. We are shirking our responsibilities to our progeny. We need a sound nuclear waste policy. We have been asking for this across the country for at least the last 12 years. You have an opportunity to be a leader in this arena. We implore your focus and vision on a vibrant and healthy Northwest Region and on the perplexing problem posed by nuclear waste for the past 50 years. Sincerely, |