unitex@rubbs.fidonet.org Subject: Hanford to Ship (unitex) (10/11/89)
Forwarded-From : Greenlink
October 6, 1989
HANFORD TO SHIP NUCLEAR MATERIAL TO WEST GERMANY
SEATTLE (UPI) -- The Hanford Nuclear Reseravation will begin
unprecedented overseas shipments of highly radioactive material early
next year, officials said Thursday, but environmentalists swore to
oppose the transfer.
More than 9 1/2 tons of radioactive cesium 137 and strontium 90 will
be shipped to West Germany for the first time by the Department of
Energy, which runs the reservation.
Energy Department and Washington state officials said the shipments
are the only ones planned and can be done safely. The plan is to truck
the material from Hanford through the Columbia River Gorge to Portland,
where it will be moved to Germany by ship via the Panama Canal.
"Considering the measures that are taken ... I don't think there's a
significant transportation problem" with the material, said Washington
state radiation health physicist Al Conklin.
The material, extracted from liquid waste on the reservation, is to be
mixed into glass logs that will be sealed in a triple layer of
canisters, casks and shipping containers. Energy Department officials
said the material will be sent in three shipments and there will be no
more radiation outside each container than that emitted from a
television set.
But environmentalists said they're disturbed by the proposal. They
said they are worried about moving the material, which a recent Energy
Department letter said emits radiation and heat at a level
"approximately twice that of spent fuel from commercial reactors."
"We're going to try to stop it," said Kathy Kirkham, nuclear weapons
cutoff campaign staffer for Greenpeace in Seattle. "We don't think
radioactive material waste should be transported."
The Energy Department will issue an environmental assessment next
month on the shipment.
Ronald Gerton, the agency's waste management chief at Hanford, said
the shipments will be made under a 1984 arrangement between the two
countries. The Germans are paying the United States $20 million for the
material, which they'll bury to test a nuclear waste disposal site at
an old West German salt mine, he said.
Gerton said the Germans bought the U.S. material because they've never
produced it in the purified form they wanted or rolled it into glass,
processes used for several years at Hanford.
Gerton said the material cannot be converted to nuclear weapons.
Shipping expenses will be shared by the two countries.
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