* A report written by the Institute for
Energy and Environmental Research
(or I-E-E-R) called Containing the Cold War Mess: Restructuring
the Environmental Management of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex
analyzes flaws in current Energy Department programs and outlines
a plan for restructuring DOE's clean-up work. The report points
out a "lack of coordination among DOE divisions, misplaced
priorities, and inconsistent data are causing needless problems
in a job that is already difficult by its nature." Other
problems are DOE's opposition to national environmental
remediation and waste management standards, which the
Environmental Protection Agency (or EPA) abandoned under pressure
from DOE, attachment to Cold War technologies such as
reprocessing, which is the extraction of plutonium from
irradiated fuel; and the absence of a meaningful technical review
process.'
Arjun Makhijani, IEER President and co-author of the report
said, "DOE seems incapable of learning lessons from its many
failures. It continues to rush into large projects without
adequate preparatory work grants huge budget increases without
engineering review, and repeats the same mistakes."
The report points out numerous examples of mismanagement of
plutonium-contaminated waste and cites conspicuous discrepancies
in DOE data. At Los Alamos National Laboratory the discrepancy
in the amount of plutonium in waste between two government
figures is nearly 1,700 pounds.
In conclusion, the document has three suggestions for
reorganizing the clean-up program: "First the creation of a new
federally-owned corporation with a majority of board of directors
and top executives chosen by the governors of the states which
host major DOE sites. Second, there must be a set of stringent,
national clean-up standards that are independently enforced.
Third, there must be external peer review of major
projects.
* On October 29th the Santa Fe City
Council voted to support/reject an Ordinance/Agreement which
would restrict the transportation of WIPP waste through Santa Fe
to the hours between 1 AM and 4 AM. This Ordinance/Agreement was
created to protect the citizens of Santa Fe in case WIPP opens
and shipments to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant begin before the
Santa Fe Relief Route can be completed. We would like to thank
our city councilors and everyone else who worked so hard to make
this Ordinance a reality. In the weeks ahead we will keep
bringing you WIPP updates.
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