Beaumont Facility’s Nuclear Licensing Blocked

State health officials have decided to block at least temporarily Westinghouse Electric Corp.’s license to handle radioactive materials at its new facility in this Riverside County city until a public hearing can be held, a department official said Wednesday.

Joseph O. Ward, chief of the state Department of Health Services’ radiologic health branch, said the decision was made because the firm’s license application did not clearly address safety questions about the facility that is intended to service power plants, including nuclear generators, throughout the West and overseas.

Ward said in a telephone interview that in addition to requiring the hearing--a decision he described as “unprecedented”--health officials also ordered Westinghouse to hire an independent contractor to determine “whether there are pathways for radiation or radioactive materials to leave the plant.”

Officials Deny Threat

Company officials have consistently denied that the plant poses a danger to the community in Riverside County.

The state’s radiologic health unit in Sacramento annually processes almost 2,000 license applications from hospitals, universities and private industry for permission to handle radioactive materials, Ward said. He noted that this is the first time since the agency’s inception in 1962 that it has sidetracked a license application until a public hearing could be held.

The state’s decision on whether to grant the license--for which Westinghouse applied in February, 1984--will now be delayed for at least “a couple of months,” Ward said.

Informed of the decision on Wednesday, plant manager Jack J. Bastin declined specific comment. “I always try not to get upset because it just gives you heartburn,” he said. “You just have to do your job.”

Bastin noted, however, that last year the state had assured the Pittsburgh, Pa.-based corporation that “there were no major unresolved items” in its application.

Increasing Concern

But in recent months, the just-completed 50,000-square-foot plant has come under increasing fire from a handful of lawmakers and local residents concerned about its environmental effect. The plant, alongside Interstate 10 about 75 miles east of Los Angeles, was designed to service both non-nuclear and nuclear power units, such as California’s San Onofre and Diablo nuclear complexes.

The concerns arose because the tools used to repair and modify nuclear power plants would be returned to the Beaumont facility to be cleansed of nuclear waste.

Water used to clean the tools would be refiltered and then discharged into Beaumont’s sewage system, while leftover nuclear waste would be stored and ultimately shipped to a federally approved dump site.

Anti-nuclear activists, led by a small group called the Desert Pass Action Group, have complained to the state that Westinghouse was not forthcoming in its plant application to the City of Beaumont about the nature of the plant’s nuclear activities. Westinghouse executive Bastin has denied the charges.

“I am happy to see that the process has begun to ensure the health and well-being of the population,” Dollie Irwin, a leader of the Desert Pass group, said Wednesday.

Decision Praised

Assemblyman Steve Clute (D-Riverside), who has been pressing state health officials to delay granting the license until environmental issues are addressed, praised the state’s decision but said it did not go far enough.

“Anything short of an environmental impact report is still less than what should be done,” Clute said. “But this is better than granting the license without some kind of hearing process.”

In the past week, the Beaumont City Council has indicated that it might reconsider its decision of last year exempting Westinghouse from preparing an environmental impact report. On Wednesday night, council members directed their attorney to report back in 10 days after studying whether they could legally reverse the decision.