THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 16, 1995 TAG: 9507160076
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 133 lines
The Navy, stung by a recent court ruling and growing anti-nuclear sentiment, faces an unnerving dilemma: How to get rid of tons of nuclear waste from its warships when no dump site is available.
While military leaders and energy officials scramble for an answer, stockpiles of highly radioactive waste languish at unintended way stations - including six containers at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth and six rail cars at Newport News Shipbuilding.
This wasn't supposed to happen. The health, environmental and security risks were too high.
Instead, the Navy had hoped Idaho would accept spent fuel rods and other contaminated materials from the Navy's nuclear fleet, until a permanent storage site could be built in the Nevada desert.
However, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an injunction this month blocking new shipments to Idaho until another nuclear-related legal challenge is settled. That could take months, if not longer.
Further entangling the waste issue, the House of Representatives voted last week to delay work on the permanent dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, a former bombing range about 100 miles from Las Vegas.
The vote came amid congressional frustration over delays and costs of the project. The U.S. Department of Energy has spent 13 years and $4.5 billion on the site so far. And a decision on its viability is still nine years away.
In the wake of these developments, Navy leaders are warning that they may be forced to delay maintenance projects on at least five nuclear submarines and one cruiser, possibly including the defueling of the cruisers Bainbridge and Mississippi at Norfolk Naval Shipyard.
In addition, preparations for refueling the Nimitz, a behemoth nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, already have been delayed, and Navy officials fear the Nimitz's 1998 docking at Newport News Shipbuilding may be at risk.
It can take up to three years to prepare the shipyard for a nuclear refueling, including plans for handling radioactive waste pulled from two nuclear reactors aboard the Nimitz.
``Our efforts for short-term relief have been unavailing, and we are now suffering impacts,'' wrote Adm. Bruce DeMars, director of the Navy's nuclear propulsion program, in a July 7 letter to Rep. Norman Sisisky, D-4th District.
``The longer this matter remains unresolved, the more severe and extensive those impacts will be.''
Delays could idle workers at the two local shipyards - especially if the court injunction is not lifted before October, when Norfolk Naval Shipyard is scheduled to receive a nuclear cruiser for defueling, spokesman Steve Milner said.
If the injunction barring shipments to Idaho remains in effect through 1996, Milner said, the delay could result in a loss of more than 650 ``workyears,'' a Navy term meaning the anticipated output of 650 employees in one year.
``The nature of these impacts threatens national security,'' DeMars declared.
After the court ruling, an angry DeMars also threatened to move the Naval Reactors Facility, along with its 1,000 full-time jobs, out of Idaho because of the western state's continuing resistance to nuclear shipments.
Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary quickly intervened, telling a congressional subcommittee last week that such a relocation was both unreasonable and too expensive.
Not everyone is convinced the Navy faces real trouble, however.
Robert Pollard, a nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said he would not be surprised if all the recent bluster was intended to scare Congress into appropriating more money for nuclear-waste issues.
``Every time the Navy gets blocked, they scream that national security is at risk,'' said Pollard, a former Navy nuclear submariner and engineer with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ``The Navy will find a place for this waste, if it's really important enough for them to do so.''
To Pollard, the biggest question these days is not over Navy waste, but with radioactive waste from commercial nuclear reactors, such as Virginia Power's nuclear plant in Surry.
Like other utilities, Virginia Power currently stores its nuclear wastes in temporary quarters. At Surry, 26 canisters built atop a concrete slab and surrounded by a chain-link fence are filled with spent fuel rods and other contaminated debris. An armed guard watches the makeshift storage yard.
Virginia Power, like the Navy, is waiting for Yucca Mountain to open in Nevada. But as Pollard pointed out, the mountain dump is expected to hold 70,000 metric tons of nuclear waste; commercial plants currently have about 30,000 metric tons in storage.
``Even if Yucca gets built - and who knows about that - we know it's inadequate,'' Pollard said.
Such assessments drive nuclear watchdogs crazy - people like Robert Deegan, a Virginia Beach resident and nuclear-issues specialist for the Sierra Club.
He argues that the U.S. government is ``absolutely insane'' for proposing to import spent nuclear fuel rods from foreign countries when there is so little storage space here for commercial and military nuclear waste.
In April, Hampton Roads was one of 10 ports picked by the Department of Energy to serve as a gateway for more than 22,000 spent fuel rods coming overseas from foreign reactors.
The material, to be shipped over 13 years, would not be stored locally but quickly trucked to one of five temporary storage facilities, the nearest being in South Carolina. Local officials and environmentalists are opposed.
``Given where we are today, it seems incredulous that we're now talking about bringing more rods into this country,'' Deegan said. ``Where are they going to put them?''
Not in Idaho, at least not now.
Republican Gov. Phil Batt has committed to fighting any new shipments into his state until a federal court settles an underlying question - whether the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory is physically capable of handling any more waste.
The lab already holds waste from the notorious Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania and the equally infamous Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver.
The U.S. government recently spent an estimated $50 million on an environmental impact study that said the remote laboratory in eastern Idaho is capable of receiving more wastes, including those from Navy ships.
Batt is challenging the study in court. Pressed by overwhelming voter opposition to accepting more nuclear waste, Batt argues that the study is incomplete, especially in regard to possible threats to a drinking-water aquifer running beneath the lab, spokeswoman Amy Kleiner said in Boise.
With a court ruling months away, Navy officials are now looking elsewhere for storage. In his letter to Sisisky, DeMars said the Navy has embarked on ``a multi-year process'' in search of interim storage.
Sisisky hinted that Congress may take another tack. Without making any commitments, the congressman recalled how he threatened to press an amendment through Congress overriding a court order in 1993 that stopped shipments to Idaho.
``Timing is very important here,'' said Sisisky, the ranking minority member of the House subcommittee on military readiness. ``This is too big an issue for the country, let alone Hampton Roads, to let dangle in the air for too long.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color drawing
KEYWORDS: NUCLEAR WASTE HAZARDOUS WASTE STORAGE by CNB