Retired Gov. Exposes Plans for Further Nuclear Dumping over Nations Largest Aquifer

[Arrowwind]

Dangerous and Short Sighted

By Cecil D Andrus

Beginning in the e1950s, the government of the United Statesbegan disposing of nuclear waste in Idaho. No one asked our permission. No onediscussed the consequences of positioning thousands of tons and millions ofgallons of nuclear contaminated material less than 700 feet above the largestfreshwater aquifer in North America. Our government wanted this material out ofsight and out of mind and the eastern Idaho desert seemed remote enough tonicely fit the bill.

Had Idahoans known then what we known now, there is no waywe would have agreed to be chumps for such a dump. No, some folks – well meaning,but I think misguided, are getting ready to play Idaho for the chump again.



Officials in Idaho state government and at the Idaho NationalLaboratory are hatching a secret scheme to “initiate a negations to produce aRevised Settlement Agreement” that would open the borders for Idaho to becomethe disposal for 3,000 metric tons of commercial spent nuclear fuel from allover the United States. They want to “revise” the hard-won nuclear waste agreementthat I began and Gov. Phil Batt completed in 1995.

I have seen their slick presentation and, while I must givecredit for the audacity of their proposal, it would be the absolute height offolly to gut an agreement that protects Idaho from becoming the home for morewaste, and delay the critical deadlines for cleaning up and removing thematerial we’ve been storing on an “interim” basis for close to 50 years.

Idahoans with long memories know that I have had battleswith the U.S. Department of Energy for years and years. The battles aren’t apartisan matter with me; I’ve taken issues with Democratic and Republicanadministrations that have attempted time and again to keep Idaho a nuclearwaste dump.

In my first term as governor in the early 1970s, then-AtomicEnergy Commission Chair Dixy Lee Ray promised that “interim” storage in Idahowould cease by the end of the decade. It didn’t happen. In the late 1980’s, the admiral in charge ofthe nuclear Navy passed off my concerns by saying the best place for high-levelspent fuel was “in a sparsely populatedarea.” Now with court-enforced deadlineslooming to process and remove nuclear material from Idaho, some are suggestingthat deadlines be “extended” for 15 years, while we take more of the nation’snuclear waste for what the proponents call “interim dry storage.”

The argument will be made soon, just as it’s been made toIdaho time and again since the e 1950s, that there are economic opportunitiesjust over the horizon if only we agree to become even a bigger nuclear wastedisposal site. The promise will be held out to us that if we go along with morecommercial waste storage – the type of materai, by the way, that isspecifically not allowed under Gov. Batt’s 1995 agreement – the Idaho NationalLaboratory will be the beneficiary.



Here is the bottom line: Idaho’s court-enforced settlement agreementprotects us from any storage of commercial nuclear waste and establisheddetailed timelines for when waste already here must be processed and removed.No amount of economic development should get in the way of holding the federal governmentto the terms of that agreement.



No conceivable benefits for future generation of Idahoanscan possibly outweigh protection of the Snake River Aquifer. Idaho has been lied to, abused, misled andtaken advantage of for too long. Don’t let those who would bring more nuclear wasteto Idaho get away with such dangerous and short-sighted thinking.

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This column was published in the Idaho Statesman on May 20,2012. Adrus was elected governor of Idaho four times – 1970, 1974, 1986, and1990 – and served as secretary of the interior from 1977 to 1981. This articlewas reprinted in the Post Register from Idaho Falls on May 26, 2012

[write4change]

Truer word were never spoken. I hope you all are able to hang tuff.

[Ouroboros]

As bad as that is here in Scotland the politicians (conveniently 600 miles away in London) have allowed Dounreay in the north of Scotland to become an international nuclear waste dumping ground. As well as European nuclear waste we also store waste from the U.S. and Australia!

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/sc...6908-23796059/

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[Arrowwind]

Sheer insanity. There is so much of it everywhere now how could it ever be cleaned up? no where to run to nowhere to hide. 600 miles means nothing when an earthquake happens, a meltdown, or other catastrophe. Think of all the local risk at the transport of this stuff across continents and oceans.