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00000179-65ef-d8e2-a9ff-f5ef8d430000The Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeast Washington was home to Native Americans and later to settlers. It turned into an top-secret military workhorse during World War II and the Cold War. Now, it’s one of the most pressing and complex environmental cleanup challenges humanity is facing in the world.This remote area in southeast Washington is where the federal government made plutonium for bombs during WWII and the Cold War. It’s now home to some of the most toxic contamination on earth, a witch’s brew of chemicals, radioactive waste and defunct structures. In central Hanford, leaking underground tanks full of radioactive sludge await a permanent solution. Meanwhile, a massive $12 billion waste treatment plant, designed to bind up that tank waste into more stable glass logs, has a troubled history.00000179-65ef-d8e2-a9ff-f5ef8d440000Anna King is public radio's correspondent in Richland, Washington, covering the seemingly endless complexities of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

Hanford Waste Plan Under Debate In New Mexico

CARLSBAD, N.M. - Last month, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a plan to send some nuclear waste from leaky storage tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation to southern New Mexico. The proposed new storage site is near Carlsbad and it's called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. WIPP, as it’s known, has been prohibited from receiving Hanford tank waste for nearly a decade. Now, New Mexicans are debating whether to reverse course, and accept some of the waste.

WIPP is nearly half a mile underground near Carlsbad New Mexico. The facility provided a jump-start to the failing Carlsbad economy in the 1990s when unemployment was high and people were leaving the largely blue collar town. WIPP brought around 800 white collar jobs -- and transformed the community.

Today that same salt formation protects our future by providing a safe place to permanently dispose of the nation's defense related transuranic radioactive waste. New Mexico has a long tradition of dealing with waste from US nuclear weapons facilities. Think Los Alamos National Laboratory and the birth of the atomic bomb.

As part of the early negotiations between the state and the DOE, it was agreed that only transuranic waste- consisting mainly of contaminated tools, clothing, soil and sludge- would be allowed at WIPP. This so-called "TRU" waste is less radioactive than High Level Waste, which comes from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel.

WIPP is not equipped to handle that super-hot stuff.

But tank waste at Hanford has always been managed as High Level Waste, so back in 2004, shipments of waste from the tanks were prohibited by New Mexico.

A prohibition the DOE is now proposing that the state eliminate.

“Because it was managed as HLW doesn't mean that is what it really is," explains John Heaton, a former New Mexico state representative and Chair of the Carlsbad Mayor's Nuclear Opportunities Task Force. “That tank waste has since been analyzed thoroughly and none of those incompatibilities are known to exist, those were hypothetical at the time that that prohibition was put in place.”

Supporters say the Hanford shipments would extend the repository's mission and keep people working long after waste from Los Alamos National Labs is shipped over the next couple of years.

“WIPP has a mission for transuranic waste," Heaton says. "And it has 16 square miles of bedded salt. We are barely using two-thirds of a square mile, so there is a vast volume available.”

On a recent evening in Albuquerque, Janet Greenwald and other members of nuclear watchdog groups met over bowls of vegetable soup to discuss their opposition to the DOE plan.

“Through the years we've all noticed that if you talk to people too much about nuclear issues, their eyes glaze over, you can't see it, you can't hear it.”

But waste destined for WIPP is driven right through small New Mexico communities by truck, and Greenwald worries about the potential for nuclear spills.

“If we accept the Hanford waste because they are having problems, we are going to end up taking care of all the problems that they have at all the facilities in the US," Greenwald says. "I don't think New Mexico wants to be in that position.”

Don Hancock is another opponent. He directs the Nuclear Waste Project for the Southwest Research and Information Center.

For Hancock, the DOE proposal to remove the New Mexico prohibition is a rushed response to a political crisis. Any Hanford waste would have to be processed in a brand new facility there, he says, before it could be shipped to WIPP.

“We’d have to spend all that money anyway!" Hancock says. "I don't know anybody from a technical standpoint that thinks either they can do or that they can do that anytime soon, or that it would be cost effective.”

The Department of Energy is preparing their official request for the New Mexico Environment Department to remove the prohibition on Hanford tank waste.

According to a DOE statement, once that request goes in, there will be a 60-day public comment period and two public hearings to debate the proposal.

On the Web:

Waste Isolation Pilot Plant - Department of Energy
Radioactive waste factsheet - Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
"For N.M., Nuclear Waste May Be Too Hot To Handle" (May 14, 2010) - NPR 

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