Energy Department cancels plan to ship nuclear waste to Idaho

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

Energy Department cancels plan to ship nuclear waste to Idaho
Reuters
1 hour ago
By Laura Zuckerman

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - The U.S. Energy Department has canceled a plan to ship to the Idaho National Laboratory spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors out of state, a controversial proposal that drew protests from two former governors and a lawsuit from one of them.

Incumbent Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter and state Attorney General Lawrence Wasden in January expressed conditional support for two proposed deliveries of the high-level radioactive waste, saying it would raise the lab's profile and boost the local economy around Idaho Falls, where the facility is located.

But talks between the Department of Energy (DOE) and Idaho broke down amid mounting opposition to the plan by two of Idaho’s former governors, one of whom filed a lawsuit last month seeking information he said the federal agency was concealing about the proposal.

Cecil Andrus, a Democrat who served four terms as governor, said at the time that he suspected DOE's intent was to turn the sprawling research facility along the Snake River into a de facto nuclear dump in the absence of a permanent repository for high-level radioactive waste elsewhere in the United States.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/energy-department-cancels-plan-ship-nuclear-waste-idaho-015635192.html

[Tikki]

1. Substantial amounts of nuclear waste already stored in leaky barrels just over the state line....

in Eastern Washington State. The Northwest should not be the dumping ground for the D.O.E.'s
colossal mistake.


Good for former Governors standing up for their people.


Tikki

[passiveporcupine]

4. You must not live far from me

I assume you are referring to Hanford? It makes me ill to even think about it, and the leakage and exposure that has already happened there from the very beginning.

I agree, it's good that the governor stood up for this. Down in California (San Onofre), I think they just voted to allow them to store more (low level, I think) nuclear waste there...right on the coast in earthquake country. I just don't understand how people make the decisions they do.

And we used to dump barrels of nuclear waste near the Farrallon islands, off the coast of California.

So many things we've done wrong and continue to do wrong regarding nuclear waste.

[Tikki]

5. My husband and I grew up near Hanford...We were part of the Green Run..

We left nearly 50 years ago but care about the environment there. We have some family still in the area.

Personally, I believe that clean up is impossible, with the technology we have now, on any large scale.
Small scale Santa Susanna Lab site contamination clean up near Simi Valley CA still is not fully
completed after many years.

What the industry, the contractors and the D.O.E. hope is people will forget or get tired of fighting for progress.

Environmental issues important like what contaminants lie under one's feet don't
get the urgency they deserve and may never until it is too late.

The Tikkis

[passiveporcupine]

6. I agree, and I think it's criminal

And yet people still keep fighting for nuclear power...saying it's the cleanest way to produce energy that is cost effective. I can't wait till solar is being used everywhere.

[2naSalit]

2. Andrus was governor

when I first moved to Idaho and he was a good governor for that state. The DOE has a big nuclear site in the NE end of the Snake River Plain that has been a controversy for a very long time. Now I live downwind of it in Montana. There have been many a protest along the rail line that runs to the DOE site through several communities and the Fort Hall IR. Lots of localized cases of cancer in the region too, the water is hardly potable.

I'm glad Andrus filed the lawsuit, the nuclear waste could be damaging to some of the last remaining wild public lands in the continental US including Yellowstone NP, the Frank Church Wilderness River of No Return, several Indian reservations and some of the best salmon and trout fisheries in the west. They've already damaged enough of it, time for a new paradigm on how we deal with our long-lasting pollutants... like maybe stop creating them.

[MisterP]

3. wait, I thought there was a super-magic new reactor design that would eliminate waste forever

10 years down the road!

just like they said 10 years ago ...