THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 18, 1995 TAG: 9510180379
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER AND CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
The Navy reached an agreement Tuesday to have Idaho accept tons of radioactive wastes from warships, ending the threat of layoffs at Norfolk Naval Shipyard and relaxing, for now, a storage space crisis for spent nuclear fuel.
The settlement also clears the way for the United States to import as many as 22,000 spent nuclear fuel rods from foreign reactors - some of which would pass through Hampton Roads on their way to storage sites elsewhere.
A Virginia Beach Sierra Club activist, Robert Deegan, had successfully sued the government to bar foreign shipments, arguing lax environmental controls and a lack of domestic storage space.
But that court-ordered moratorium appears to be coming to an end, although Deegan said the government still has not completed its environmental study of the move.
Under the agreement, Idaho will get nearly $350 million and other guarantees over the next five years to again take spent nuclear fuel rods and other contaminated wastes from submarines, cruisers and aircraft carriers.
Chief Navy negotiator Steven S. Honigman said the agreement will allow the Navy to operate its nuclear-powered fleet without fear of insufficient storage space for the next 40 years.
The money will upgrade the remote Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, which environmentalists claim is insufficient to hold more nuclear waste. The lab already houses material from the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania and the troubled Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver.
Until now, Idaho Gov. Philip E. Batt has blocked attempts by the Navy and the Department of Defense to re-open the lab for storage. He won a court ruling in July keeping tons of wastes at bay.
The stalemate forced the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth to
hold six containers of nuclear waste and Newport News Shipbuilding to safeguard six rail cars and a barge full of radioactive materials, yard officials said.
But because the agreement takes effect immediately, the wastes will be hauled by rail to Idaho before the end of the year, officials said.
That brought cheers from environmentalists and local officials, who have worried about such highly radioactive wastes accumulating for so long in the middle of a heavily populated region.
``A busy metropolitan area like Hampton Roads is not an appropriate area to store nuclear waste,'' said Marilee Hawkins, Portsmouth's director of environmental services. ``We're pleased that there is an agreement, and we're pleased that the material will be moving out.''
The stalemate had threatened important Navy projects at both shipyards.
The dispute caused no layoffs, naval shipyard spokesman Steve Milner said, but it might have forced the shipyard to furlough or lay off up to 600 of its 7,000 employees.
At Newport News Shipbuilding, the nuclear logjam threatened the proposed 1998 arrival of the Nimitz, an aircraft carrier, due in for maintenance and refueling.
It takes at least three years to prepare for such a massive overhaul, Navy officials have said. But with the agreement Tuesday, yard spokeswoman Jerri Dickseski said the Nimitz remains on schedule.
The agreement has been under negotiation since June, when it became clear Idaho was serious about its objections.
Talks were conducted mostly by telephone, Honigman said, although officials from Idaho, the Navy, the Justice Department and the Department of Energy met personally in Chicago and Minneapolis to hammer out details.
Honigman credited Virginia Republican Sen. John Warner for pushing the proceedings to the table.
Idaho was assured that all accepted wastes would be removed for permanent storage outside of the state by 2035. If not, Idaho will receive a $60,000-a-day payment from the government, officials said.
The materials will likely go to Yucca Mountain, a proposed permanent storage site in the Nevada desert. But the project already is woefully behind schedule, and there are questions now about its environmental stability.
The other option under consideration is construction of a new temporary facility. Rear Adm. Bruce DeMars, head of the Navy's nuclear-propulsion fleet, hinted that this may be the best option in a letter this summer to U.S. Rep. Norman Sisisky, D-Petersburg, who represents western Tidewater.
The agreement does not affect commercial nuclear reactors - except one in Colorado. Plants such as Virginia Power's Surry Nuclear Power Station will continue to store their wastes on site.
KEYWORDS: NUCLEAR CARGO & WASTE by CNB