Rocky Flats Nuclear Wastes Cut by Half

The volume of radioactive waste generated at the troubled Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado has been cut by half in recent months. It should be reduced by half again next summer, easing a storage crisis building for more than a year, Energy Secretary James D. Watkins told the nation’s governors here Monday.

If the projected summer reduction works out, the storage limit in Colorado would not be reached until late fall of 1991, giving federal officials another chance to clear a new $1-billion permanent storage site for operation in New Mexico.

“So we now have the possibility,” Watkins said, “that we need not impose on the governors for any sort of help in the future.”

Late last year, the government faced a crisis in disposing of plutonium-contaminated clothing and equipment from Rocky Flats because the state of Idaho, after more than 20 years, refused to take any more of it for “temporary” storage, and Colorado Gov. Roy Romer imposed a limit at the plant site outside Denver.

Because of environmental problems, the plant--which reprocesses plutonium for nuclear weapons triggers--was shut down late last year, but cleanup operations continued to generate waste.

Watkins told a National Governors’ Assn. committee on energy and the environment that the waste problem had been brought under control in recent months by aggressive “waste minimization” and should be cut by half again next August with the installation of new compacting equipment.

By the end of April, he said, the Energy Department hopes to have completed 20 of the 22 steps required for the opening of the long-delayed Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N. M., where waste from government nuclear facilities across the country is supposed to be permanently stored.

The site, planned more than a decade ago, was supposed to have been opened in 1983, but it has been repeatedly delayed.

Idaho Gov. Cecil D. Andrus brought the issue to a head in the fall of 1988, closing Idaho’s borders to further shipments of nuclear waste. Half a dozen other states followed suit.

Romer praised Watkins Monday for the easing the problem, but he emphasized that opening the New Mexico site is critical.

Watkins said he hopes to be able to announce in June when the facility will be ready to begin receiving the material stockpiled in Idaho, Colorado and elsewhere.

Environmental officials must determine that there is no possibility that water in the New Mexico salt deposits can allow the material to “migrate.”

While he announced progress toward resolving the Rocky Flats waste problem, Watkins also expressed confidence that a new operating contractor is resolving safety problems that caused plutonium reprocessing to be suspended.