The Nation - News from Feb. 9, 1989

The Department of Energy’s $81-billion plan to refurbish the nation’s aging nuclear weapons plants leans too heavily toward modernizing production facilities and proposes too little for cleaning up 40 years of accumulated chemical and radioactive wastes, the congressional General Accounting Office said. The DOE’s 21-year plan would result in a “revitalized weapons complex,” Comptroller General Charles A. Bowsher told the House Budget Committee, but “the plan does not adequately address the cleanup . . . and decontamination of facilities as they are retired from service.” Environmental restoration of weapons plants will extend beyond the year 2010 and may cost $40 billion to $70 billion, Bowsher said.