Long Beach Refuses Nuclear Waste : Port Officials Cite Civic Fears Over Plan to Transport Fuel Rods

In response to strong protest from civic and anti-nuclear groups, the executive director of the Port of Long Beach said Friday that he will refuse to allow the Department of Energy to unload highly radioactive nuclear waste from Taiwan at the port.

Port Director James McJunkin notified U.S. Secretary of Energy John S. Herrington of his decision in a telegram that said, “After careful consideration we have reached the decision to decline these shipments.

“Although we would like to accommodate the Department of Energy, the grave concerns of the citizens of Long Beach and the surrounding communities make it impractical for the port to handle this cargo,” McJunkin said in the message.

His decision came one week after the Energy Department’s surprise announcement that the first of 18 shipments of spent fuel rods from a nuclear power plant would arrive at the Port of Long Beach in March, to be trucked to South Carolina for reclamation.

The Department of Energy declined comment Friday, except to say that it is reviewing McJunkin’s decision, which he said had the backing of the Harbor Commission.

The department has previously identified the Port of Oakland, which it said has handled nuclear fuel rods for years, as the government’s backup choice to receive the new shipments.

Can They Refuse?

In an interview Thursday, L. L. Turner, chief of the transportation branch of the Department of Energy’s reprocessing plant in South Carolina, the cargo’s destination, said he was not sure, but he believed a local port like Long Beach could not refuse the shipments.

The Energy Department must apply for port permits to unload a few days before each shipment arrives, Turner said. “But it’s a routine matter.”

McJunkin, however, said attorneys for the city-run port concluded that local ordinances give the port executive director the power to stop a shipment of dangerous cargo from being unloaded.

“They would have to go to court to force us to handle it,” McJunkin said.

On Thursday, Turner said the Department of Energy’s shipment of nuclear fuel rods had never been challenged in court.

“For some years, several hundred (shipments) have come through the East Coast without any problems,” Turner said. Others have been unloaded without complaint in Oakland and Portland, he said, but now “many people are suddenly concerned about these shipments.”

Federal officials say the nuclear rods--transported 13 at a time in steel-and-lead casks--are highly radioactive, but not explosive. No cask has ever released radioactivity during shipment, they said.

The rods are being returned to this country for reprocessing to limit access to nuclear material from which weapons can be made, the officials said. The reclaimed plutonium from the fuel rods would not be used to make weapons, they added.

Several Long Beach port officials said this week that they did not like the way the fuel rod plan had been sprung on them Jan. 17 without warning. “I’m amazed at the total lack of sensitivity of the Department of Energy,” said Harbor Commissioner James Gray.

Refused in L.A.

In refusing to handle the nuclear waste, the Port of Long Beach joins the Port of Los Angeles, which last May quietly rebuffed federal requests to route the cargo through its San Pedro Bay facility.

“We made it clear to them that we saw a lot of problems with them bringing it through the port,” said Jack Wells, chief deputy executive director at the Port of Los Angeles.

“We just told them we felt there were other avenues for moving the cargo back to South Carolina, and they ought to explore more thoroughly the possibility of moving it directly by water to the East Coast,” Wells said.

Los Angeles port officials were most concerned “about the possible community reactions and possible reaction by the longshoremen,” Wells said.

Strong public protest and government opposition also arose in the Pacific Northwest after federal officials said in September that they might unload the rods at the Port of Tacoma. Longshoremen in Seattle, reacting to reports that their port was also being considered, voted unanimously Jan. 9 not to handle the cargo.

Committee Opposed

The executive committee of Local 13 of the International Longshoremen’s & Warehousemen’s Union in Wilmington voted Thursday to ask the union’s international unit to oppose the unloading of the nuclear rods at any West Coast ports, said local President David Arian.

Despite McJunkin’s announcement, representatives of several Los Angeles-area anti-nuclear groups said Friday that they think the nuclear rods may still be unloaded at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard or the Naval Weapons Station in Seal Beach.

“The Department of Energy has been turned down before, and they continue to keep trying to get this in,” said Steven Aftergood, executive director of the Los Angeles-based Committee to Bridge the Gap. “I think this is a great victory for the community, but I think they may go to the Navy shipyard in Long Beach or to Oakland.”

Closer to South Carolina

Federal officials have said they chose Long Beach for the shipments because the distance to South Carolina is shorter than from the Northwest, and because good year-round weather along a southern route means a safer trip for trucks hauling the rods. Shipment overland, rather than through the Panama Canal, cuts travel time in half, they said.

Another factor officials cited for choosing overland transit was that all shipping companies that serve the East Coast from the Orient also dock in Japan, which does not allow ships with nuclear cargo in its ports.

An additional reason Long Beach was chosen, said Turner, was because a shipping line serving that port had agreed to carry the nuclear cargo. Lines that had agreed to unload the cargo in Los Angeles and Tacoma later backed out of those agreements, he said.