THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 5, 1995 TAG: 9504050013
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
The federal government has created one of the worst messes in history at its nuclear-weapons plants. Cleanup will cost hundreds of billions and take decades, but there's no way to just walk away.
Dozens of sites are involved but the worst are the bomb plant at Rocky Flats, Colorado and the uranium and plutonium producing plants at Oak Ridge, Tenn., Savannah River, S.C., and the Hanford Reservation in Washington.
Hanford is the worst of the worst. It made plutonium for bombs as part of the original Manhattan Project and continued through the Cold War. The operation was shockingly negligent with the extremely hazardous byproducts of the process.
For several years, the plant has been closed and a cleanup under way. If possible, the cleanup has spawned another mess: The cleanup is a disgraceful grab for pork, a local jobs program, a classic boondoggle. Meanwhile, the poisons seep and the environment degrades.
The witches' brew at Hanford includes 11 metric tons of plutonium. Even a pinch is deadly and a few pounds suffice to make a bomb. Tanks of stored waste are corroding. As many as 100,000 rusting, radioactive fuel rods are an immediate threat. Eight 16,000-ton reactor cores have to be disposed of. No one knows how to solve the problem.
That hasn't prevented contractors and local politicians out to replace jobs lost in the plant closing from exploiting the situation for financial or political gain. The cleanup employs 18,000 - more than when the plant was operating. Many do no meaningful work. So far, $7.5 billion has been spent. Little has been accomplished.
The U.S. Department of Energy came up with an estimated cost for cleaning up Hanford and the other polluted atomic sites - $400 billion. DOE was told that was too high and to come up with a lower figure. The new estimate is $230 billion, unless boondoggles like those at Hanford continue, in which eventuality the cost could be as high as $350 billion.
As this jiggering of the figures suggests, only guesses are possible. Engineers haven't a clue how to accomplish much of the cleanup. Nevertheless, the most optimistic guesses call for spending more than the present $6 billion a year and say it could take 75 years to make the sites tolerably safe.
At this belt-tightening time, the will to spend money to correct monumental mistakes is lacking. Yet the sites can't simply be padlocked. These are volatile, toxic chemicals. Some can be turned into weapons of mass destruction. Many will remain a hazard for thousands of years. There are 117 underground tanks full of corrosive poison beginning to leak at Hanford alone. Turning out the lights is not an option.
Government created this horror and must deal with it competently. Both President Clinton and the Republicans say government has got to provide services without waste, fraud, abuse or pork. Here's a whopping challenge for them.
But, of course, this must be a bipartisan effort aimed at stabilizing these sites, even if complete cleanup isn't feasible, for the benefit of all. The choice is between continuing to squander money on a gargantuan scale without making a dent in the problem or doing the cleanup right. Tragic consequences will follow unless the cleanup genuinely cleans up. by CNB