DATE: Tuesday, June 17, 1997                TAG: 9706170308

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:   84 lines

NUCLEAR SHIPMENTS WILL CONTINUE

An environmental group is crying foul in the wake of news that more shipments of nuclear waste are planned this summer through the Portsmouth Marine Terminal, on the Elizabeth River.

The Sierra Club of Virginia says the U.S. Department of Energy is breaking an unwritten agreement reached earlier this year to bypass Portsmouth with hundreds of spent nuclear fuel rods on their way to South Carolina for storage.

The highly radioactive rods - each containing traces of enriched uranium, but considered safe and a source of jobs and income by port officials - come from the Brookhaven National Laboratory, a government research facility outside New York City.

``The Sierra Club feels we were misled and that the public was misled,'' said Robert Deegan, a Virginia Beach resident and nuclear issues specialist with the state environmental group.

Deegan has long said that Hampton Roads, with 1.4 million residents and limited access into and out of the area, is not a wise place to haul and transfer nuclear waste. Smaller, more secure military posts are smarter, he has argued.

A federal energy official responded Friday that continued shipments through Portsmouth are necessary, if only temporarily, because of serious and unforeseen environmental problems at Brookhaven.

The bypass option around Portsmouth is not dead, just on hold until the crisis in New York is over, said Ken Chacey, director of spent-fuel management for the Department of Energy.

Tritium, a radioactive isotope in atomic reactions, is leaking into groundwater at Brookhaven, and a storage pool is suspected as the source, Chacey explained. The government, he said, wants to remove as many rods from the pool as possible so it can be drained and sealed.

The government has yet to complete its required studies and assessments of the bypass plan. Until it does, Chacey said, Portsmouth will continue to receive shipments.

``I can understand why the Sierra Club feels the way it does,'' said Chacey, acknowledging the pledge to stop shipments through Portsmouth. ``But we've got health and safety concerns (at Brookhaven) that have caused the department to change its scheduling.''

Deegan said, however, that if the government were serious about changing course, it would have done so by now.

``It (the delay) raises the question whether they're serious or just blowing smoke in our face,'' he said.

Deegan, a retired naval commander, won what he thought was a policy reversal in February when the Department of Energy agreed to skip Portsmouth and barge all Brookhaven fuel rods down the Atlantic coast to South Carolina.

Since then, however, one shipment has arrived in Portsmouth and two more are planned at the state-owned port by the end of September, government and environmental officials said.

In each shipment, the used fuel rods stay in Portsmouth for a few hours. They arrive from Brookhaven by barge in shock-proof steel casks, are set on 18-wheelers and trucked through southern Virginia and North Carolina to Aiken, S.C., for storage.

The Brookhaven shipments have been a source of controversy since last year, when state and federal officials forgot to inform Portsmouth City Hall that radioactive material would soon arrive.

After some apologies, the shipments were approved - 71 casks, containing 42 javelin-sized rods in each, over the next decade, government officials have said.

The first shipment, costing about $1 million, arrived in Portsmouth without incident in December. Then the Sierra Club objected, and negotiations for a routing change began.

Robert G. Merhige III, deputy executive director of the Virginia Port Authority, which owns the Portsmouth Marine Terminal, said nuclear wastes have long been handled safely at local docks. To him, if the government wants to bring wastes through Hampton Roads, workers are ready to service them.

``Somebody else makes the policy decision and the safety decision,'' Merhige said. ``The only decision left for us is a business decision, and we don't think it's good for business to tell someone we don't want this material.''

U.S. Rep. Norman Sisisky, who represents parts of Portsmouth, applauded Deegan this winter for persuading federal officials to shift the route away from Hampton Roads.

Kelley Ross, a legislative aide to Sisisky in Washington, said Monday that the congressman still objects to having the fuel rods come through Portsmouth and has written the Department of Energy to ask about the issue. He has yet to get a reply, Ross said.

``The congressman is opposed to this and other shipments where safer alternatives exist,'' he said.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu