Plan Is Offered to Resolve Impasse Over Storage of Radioactive Waste

The Department of Energy and three Western governors outlined a plan Friday to resolve an impasse over the storage of radioactive waste from nuclear weapons plants.

However, the governors of Idaho, Colorado and New Mexico vowed they would keep up the pressure to ensure that the DOE keeps its pledge to speed the opening of a permanent storage plant in eastern New Mexico.

“We stand here today to say there is no way we can guarantee anything. There are uncertainties in the world, but I think we can bridge that,” Colorado Gov. Roy Romer said after the three-hour closed meeting, which also included New Mexico Gov. Garrey E. Carruthers and Idaho Gov. Cecil D. Andrus.

Andrus said he would reconsider his decision to close his state to further waste shipments provided the DOE takes steps to hasten the opening of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.

Andrus, who triggered the crisis by closing Idaho’s borders to waste shipments in October, said he would decide next month whether to reopen them.

The governor said he decided to reconsider when he was told during a classified briefing that keeping waste shipments from his state could harm national security by forcing the closure of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver.

Seven boxcars of radioactive material--and enough additional waste to fill 17 more--are sitting outside the plant. They were turned away in Idaho, and Romer has said he will close the plant when its temporary storage capacity is filled, sometime between March and May of next year.

Andrus said his promise to reconsider was not an assurance that the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory in eastern Idaho would again accept shipments of radioactive waste. Andrus said the Energy Department must first keep its pledge to introduce legislation and launch administrative procedures for a land swap with the Interior Department.