THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 22, 1995 TAG: 9507220252
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
Without any place to store more spent nuclear fuel from the warships it services, Norfolk Naval Shipyard may have to reduce its work force by about 600 workers as soon as October.
The shipyard in Portsmouth faces a delay in the deactivation of the nuclear-powered guided-missile cruiser Bainbridge, scheduled to begin in October, because of a court injunction prohibiting it from sending the waste to the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.
The Navy has no other place to put the highly radioactive fuel from reactors aboard the Bainbridge. For decades, the Navy has sent spent radioactive fuel to the Idaho facility to be tested and stored until a permanent storage site for the nation's nuclear waste is developed.
In a letter dated July 20, Rear Adm. Thomas J. Porter, the deputy commander for naval shipyards, directs the Norfolk Naval Shipyard commander to develop plans within two weeks to ``reduce the workforce'' in anticipation of a delay in the work on the Bainbridge.
The number of employees this might affect has not been determined, but it would have taken an average of 600 workers per day to defuel the Bainbridge and put it in mothballs, shipyard spokesman Steve Milner said. The job was to have taken a little more than a year.
Any layoffs would occur only if the Navy can't find a way to dispose of the spent nuclear fuel.
``Navy efforts to get relief from the injunction are continuing in order to avoid the need for workforce reductions,'' Porter said in the letter.
The Navy has already lost one appeal to end the injunction, ordered when the state of Idaho sued the Navy in 1993 to determine the safety of the shipments and storage. Further appeals could take several months.
Norfolk Naval Shipyard is one of the largest employers in South Hampton Roads, with 7,300 employees. Its work force has been slashed from more than 12,000 five years ago as the Navy has downsized since the end of the Cold War.
Any layoffs at the shipyard would have a ripple effect through the region's economy since shipyard workers, particularly nuclear workers, are among the highest-paid laborers and engineers in the region.
For every job lost at the shipyard, another job in the region's economy will also be lost in the next year, said John Whaley, chief economist of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission.
Laid-off workers would enter a labor market in Hampton Roads that is currently robust. But most of the jobs being created are in the lower-paying retail and service sectors, Whaley said.
Shipyard workers could be furloughed instead of laid off. That means they may be recalled if the nuclear-waste pipeline is unclogged and the work on the Bainbridge starts.
``Any potential reduction in the work force is dependent upon the extent that this deactivation is delayed,'' Milner said.
Union officials representing the shipyard's 4,000 blue-collar workers were unavailable for comment.
This latest crisis in the long saga of the Idaho lawsuit came when Idaho questioned the sufficiency of an environmental-impact study that was supposed to settle the nuclear waste issue. The study, which called the storage and shipments safe, was issued June 1.
Adm. Bruce DeMars, director of the Navy's nuclear propulsion program, in a letter to Rep. Norman Sisisky, D-4th, dated July 7, said that, by continuing the injunction, Idaho ``has not lived up to its end of the bargain.''
In addition to possibly delaying the deactivation of the Bainbridge, the injunction also could delay work on five submarines at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington state.
In DeMars' letter to Sisisky, he states that the injunction also has delayed preparations for refueling reactors aboard the aircraft carrier Nimitz at Newport News Shipbuilding, which is scheduled to start in 1998.
As a result of the injunction, the Navy is storing six containers of spent nuclear fuel at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. Six rail cars containing more spent fuel at Newport News Shipbuilding await shipment.
Most of the casks the Navy uses for shipping and temporary storage are full of spent fuel and sitting at these and other Navy yards around the nation. ILLUSTRATION: Color file photo
The Norfolk Naval Shipyard is one of the area's largest employers.
KEYWORDS: NUCLEAR WASTE HAZARDOUS WASTE by CNB