Sherri votes...
and so should you!
November 2004:
This measure would establish additional requirements for regulating mixed waste (radioactive and non-radioactive hazardous substances) sites, such as the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The measure would set standards for cleanup and granting permits, would prohibit waste disposal in unlined soil trenches, and require cleanup of tank leaks. Permits would not allow adding more wastes to facilities until existing contamination was cleaned up. Additional public participation would be provided and enforcement through citizen lawsuits would be authorized.
I recommend a NO vote on I-297.
The Hanford Nuclear Reservation was the site for the plant that produced the plutonium used for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki in World War II. Today, it’s the site of another massive engineering task: cleaning up the mess.
Throughout the Cold War, Hanford produced the plutonium for the arms race. Plutonium is unstable, radioactive, and carcinogenic. P-239, the plutonium isotope used in weapons, has a half-life of 24,000 years, and is made in a reactor. There are over 200 million liters of radioactive waste stored in 177 underground tanks at Hanford. These tanks were built from the 40s to the 80s, but were designed to last 20 years. Sixty-eight tanks leak; Bechtel Corporation, the company doing the cleanup at Hanford, estimates that 3.8 million liters of radioactive waste have already leaked, contaminating 120 square miles of ground water and threatening the Columbia River. Hanford is one of the most contaminated sites in the world.
The Department of Energy wants to truck more nuclear waste to Hanford. This is supposed to be a temporary measure, until long-term storage facilities are completed at Yucca Mountain, NV. I-297 is an attempt to prevent the DOE from sending any more waste to Hanford until the waste already there is cleaned up in compliance with all state and federal environmental laws.
Seems like a no-brainer, right? Adding more waste to one of the most toxic sites in the world seems like a bad idea, and it is. But it’s questionable as to whether I-297 will withstand court challenges, and even it if does, is it really in Washington’s best interest for states to be able to block shipments of nuclear waste?
A major part of the plan for cleaning up the Hanford site involves eventually shipping the waste to a national repository being created in Yucca Mountain, NV. This site, originally scheduled to begin receiving waste in 1985, is currently scheduled to begin in 2010. Should I-297 pass and withstand court challenges, Nevada would almost certainly take a similar course. After all, nobody wants more nuclear waste in their back yard. In attempting to reduce the amount of nuclear waste stored at Hanford, I-297 could actually end up increasing the amount of waste stored there over the long term. Washington should continue to resist the plan to ship more waste here, but I-297 is not the way to do it.
I’m reminded of that garbage barge that wandered up and down the Atlantic seaboard back in the ‘80s looking for a landfill that would take its load. Nobody wanted to take the garbage, but it wasn’t going to just disappear. NIMBYism doesn’t solve problems; it’s putting your hands over your ears, closing your eyes and humming in hopes that the problem goes away. There’s not a state in this country where something like I-297 wouldn’t pass overwhelmingly, but this problem isn’t going away. Yes, we need to continue to work to make sure cleanup happens, yes, there are real problems with the idea of trucking more nuclear waste up I-5 to an already toxic site, but I-297 doesn’t solve anything, and it doesn’t protect us from anything.
Websites of interest:
usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa102497.htm - brief overview of the history of Hanford.
http://www.protectwashington.org/protect_washington/index.php - Yes on I-297 web site.
http://www.tridec.org/welcome/docs/I-297_TRIDEC_Fact_Sheet.pdf - opposing view on I-297.