THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 24, 1995 TAG: 9510240710
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 38 lines
It's never good to let trash pile up, especially when it's radioactive.
``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. Who could disagree?
The appropriate area for storing nuclear waste is someplace far away, and that place was announced last week.
Six containers of nuclear waste at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, plus radioactive material on six rail cars and a barge at Newport News Shipbuilding, will be hauled by rail to Idaho by the end of the year.
Steven S. Honigman, the chief Navy negotiator in the deal, said an agreement will allow the Navy to operate its nuclear-powered fleet without fear of insufficient storage space for the next 40 years.
Under the agreement, Idaho will get nearly $350 million over the next five years to take spent nuclear-fuel rods and other contaminated wastes from submarines, cruisers and aircraft carriers. The agreement ends a threat of large layoffs at the Naval shipyard and clears the way for the United States to import as many as 22,000 spent nuclear-fuel rods from foreign reactors. (The United States will import the rods to keep radioactive materials out of nefarious hands.) Some of those rods could pass through Hampton Roads, but at least they won't be stored here.
Honigman credited U.S. Sen. John Warner of Virginia with pushing the negotiations to the table. So a tip of the hat to Warner. It was beginning to look as if the nuclear wastes would be stuck here for years. by CNB