THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, April 4, 1995 TAG: 9504040327
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE SERVICES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines
Cleaning up contamination at the nation's nuclear weapons plants will take longer than the Cold War that created the problem and cost between $230 billion and $350 billion, the Energy Department reported Monday.
The largest environmental cleanup ever undertaken still is expected to leave hundreds of acres contaminated with buried debris and cordoned off from the public.
The Energy Department review, which was sent to Congress, estimates that it will cost $230 billion to decontaminate more than 80 facilities in 30 states over the next 75 years.
But that scenario envisions productivity gains of 20 percent over the next five years among waste cleanup contractors. Such improvements in efficiency are considered by many to be optimistic.
Thomas P. Grumbly, the department's assistant secretary for environmental management, said Monday that if such improvements are not achieved the costs would soar to $350 billion over the life of the cleanup effort.
``This is an attempt to put into perspective the cost of the legacy of the Cold War,'' Grumbly said, likening the costs to a mortgage that must be paid.
The cost estimates are substantially higher than the energy department's proposed budget for cleanup and environmental restoration, which has been around $6 billion a year. Over the next five years, the cleanup estimate exceeds the department's planned spending for cleanup by $7 billion. And Congress has indicated it wants to cut, not increase, spending on the program.
Most of the cleanup costs would occur over the next 40 years, but work at many of the sites would continue until 2070.
The department said 70 percent of the cleanup money would be spent at five sites: the Hanford reservation in Washington state, the Savannah River facility in South Carolina, the Rocky Flats plant in Colorado, the Oak Ridge reservation in Tennessee, and the Idaho National Laboratory.
The most costly cleanup tasks are expected at the Hanford reservation and the Savannah River complex, which together account for 42 percent of the expected cleanup spending.
The cleanup estimates are by no means all inclusive.
Some nuclear sites and radioactive material aren't even included in the cost figure. Cleanup of soil and ground water at the government's nuclear bomb test site, for example, is not part of the plan because there's no technology available to do the job within reasonable cost, officials said.
And the figures do not account for the government's future management of some 50 tons of plutonium still needed as part of the Defense Department's active nuclear stockpile. Eventually some of that likely will be declared excess and come under the cleanup program.
Returning all the sites to a ``green field,'' or pristine, condition would cost $500 billion, DOE officials said.
DOE officials could only name two facilities - the Fernald plant in Ohio and the Pinellas plant in Florida - that might be restored to a ``green field'' state. But even those plants would be restricted to heavy industrial use, with some areas walled off from public access.
While DOE officials said the numbers were the most precise ever derived, they cautioned that the numbers remain estimates and will be updated annually.
Grumbly warned Congress that failure to appropriate enough money would worsen the problems. ``Waiting will only make it more expensive,'' he said. ``This is the poison pill of the nuclear weapons legacy.''
In all, the department estimates 33 million cubic yards of radioactive waste, including used nuclear fuel, plutonium dust, and various liquid wastes will have to be disposed of. Much of it is expected to be encased into glass and buried in specially designed vaults.
Hundreds of tons of equipment and debris from contaminated buildings - often the entire structures - will have to be torn down and disposed of or buried in place, officials said. At other less contaminated sites buildings will be cleaned and in many cases turned over for civilian uses.
The cleanup plan assumes construction of a centralized underground disposal site for high-level nuclear wastes, although no such site has yet been approved, much less built. A proposed site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is being vigorously challenged.
The DOE estimates that cleanup work would cover 120 million square feet of buildings and 2.3 million acres of land, an area larger than Delaware, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia combined.
The cleanup would involve such things as removing radioactive fuel rods from storage, cutting them into pieces and safely disposing of them. It would involve pumping billions of gallons of ground water to the surface, scrubbing it free of chemical and radioactive contaminants and returning it to aquifers. In some areas, slightly radioactive waste that was put in cardboard boxes and dumped into landfills would be exhumed and placed in more-secure containers. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
THE FIVE MOST EXPENSIVE CLEANUP SITES
ROBERT VOROS/Staff
[For a copy of the graphic, see microfilm for this date.]
by CNB