Radioactive Waste Shipped to Nevada; Cleanup Continues Over Next 4 Years

By Kathy Kellogg

Federal officials were on hand at the West Valley Demonstration Project site Tuesday to mark one of many milestones in the cleanup of the 41-year-old former nuclear fuel reprocessing facility.

The occasion: shipment to the Nevada Test Site of some of the last of 20,000 drums, each containing 1,000 pounds of cemented low- level radioactive wastes, created in a proces ending in 2002.

The event served as a thank-you to West Valley Environmental Services workers who helped remove or prepare high-level wastes and other wastes for off-site disposal.

A trimmed-down work force of fewer than 200, under a $159.3 million contract, will spend the next four years decontaminating, dismantling and securing portions of the site, guided by tasks outlined in the two-part "Way Ahead" plan. The plan was developed with cooperation of federal and state agencies and incorporates the DOE’s accelerated goal of securing the less-contaminated portions of the site into an "interim end state."

It also will result in a preferred closing alternative in the final environmental impact study targeted for public release in 2009.

James Rispoli, the DOE’s assistant secretary of energy for environmental management, described stabilization efforts contained in the "Way Forward" plan.

A new interim cap and underground barrier wall will prevent more water from entering the five-acre radioactive waste-disposal area on the North Plateau. Other tasks include drying the liquids remaining in underground high-level radioactive waste tanks, while containing and eventually eliminating a plume of groundwater contaminated with Strontium 90 leaking from the Main Plant Process Building and relocating about 275 high-level waste canisters stored there and demolition of the building.

Rispoli said Alan Steinberg, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 2 administrator, was a catalyst in finding the "Way Ahead."

Steinberg said nuclear power will continue to be an energy source of the future.

"We need to show we can handle the challenge of nuclear power," he said. "We can do something here in West Valley that can be the model for the nation."

The plan’s second goal of setting a "preferred alternative" for the final environmental impact study, and working out some cleanup policy issues, has fallen to a group known as the "Core Team," made up of representatives from the EPA, DOE, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the state departments of Health and Environmental Conservation.

Negotiations on the preferred closing method were halted several years ago when the DOE and NYSERDA deadlocked on responsibilities for disposal costs, long-term site management and other issues.

But Steinberg said Tuesday the team has reached a consensus and is committed to moving forward despite unresolved issues.

Originally published by CATTARAUGUS CORRESPONDENT.

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