Nuclear Waste Lawsuit

(AP)  The Department of Energy is being sued over a proposal to abandon radioactive waste that has been buried in storage tanks, a practice environmentalists say could threaten water resources.

The tanks, buried at sites in Idaho, Washington and South Carolina, held millions of gallons of liquid acid used to reprocess spent fuel rods until the late 1990s. The rods were bathed in the liquid acid, which extracted uranium, plutonium and other radioactive substances but left behind a highly radioactive stew of other metals.

The waste fluid was stored in the underground tanks. Although much of the fluid has been pumped out and processed into a more solid form, a residual sludge remains, coating their bottoms and sides.

The lawsuit, filed by environmentalists on Friday in U.S. District Court in Boise, asks that the department not be allowed to abandon the tanks.

About 800,000 gallons of sludge remain in 10 tanks at Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. The Energy Department plans to remove all but about 1,000 gallons in each tank, leaving a total of about 10,000 gallons in place, said department spokesman Brad Bugger.

The other waste is buried at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. All three sites are near aquifers or rivers that could become contaminated if the containers leak, the lawsuit contends.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has classified the buried material as high-level waste, a designation which would not allow the department to abandon it. The Energy Department wants the waste's rating downgraded so it has the option of leaving the waste at the three sites.

Bugger said there has been no decision to cap the tanks and that other options are also under consideration, including removing them.

Gary Richardson, director of the Snake River Alliance, one of the plaintiffs, said the department was trying to circumvent established rules for handling high-level radioactive material.

"We think that is a violation of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and that they are using regulatory rule-making as a sleight-of-hand way to define away the problem," Richardson said.

By Chuck Oxley