And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] June 2, 1999 U.S. Sees Flaw in Safe Storing of Atom Waste By MATTHEW L. WALD WASHINGTON -- After spending 16 years and $489 million on a crucial step in its plan to safely store millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste, the Energy Department has abandoned the procedure because it produces explosive gases. Department officials said Tuesday they will replace the contractor, a former subsidiary of Westinghouse, and asked outside scientists to help find another method. Dr. Ernest Moniz, the undersecretary of energy, said that experiments in the early 1980's showed the process was producing high levels of explosive benzene gas. But rather than trying to develop a new procedure, "some rather poor judgment was used" and, instead, engineers tried to make the process safe. In a report released Tuesday by Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said part of the problem was "design and construction being done concurrently -- with an emphasis on pushing ahead in the belief that the problems could be solved later." That a test in 1983 produced more benzene than the instruments could measure "seemed to have been forgotten over time," the report said. Dingell, in a statement, said "mismanagement by the Department of Energy and Westinghouse led to an extraordinary, and pathetic, waste of taxpayer money. All we have to show for $500 million is a 20-year delay, and the opportunity to risk another $1 billion to make a problematic process work." The plan is intended to solidify wastes left over from nuclear weapons production that will be dangerously radioactive for thousands of years. About 34 million gallons of the wastes are stored in 51 aging underground tanks at the Savannah River site, near Aiken, S.C. The South Carolina plant is one of two main sites at which the government is storing wastes from nuclear weapons. Because the chemical mixture of the waste there was considered simpler than that at the second plant, in Hanford, Wash., it was decided to deal with the problem in South Carolina first. The first stage in the plan was to concentrate the wastes so the volume would be manageable. For the second stage, mixing the radioactive material into molten glass, the department has built a $2 billion factory. The factory works, but the process that Westinghouse wanted to use to concentrate the wastes created benzene, a chemical found in gasoline that can burn or explode. With that approach abandoned, the department may be forced to spend billions more and take many more years to develop an alternate. The department decided in January 1998 not to proceed with the step Westinghouse favored to concentrate the wastes and Moniz said that the Energy Secretary, Bill Richardson, decided last week to ask for bids from other companies to replace Westinghouse. Earlier this year, Westinghouse said that if the plan it favored did not work, the government could spend $1 billion to build a processing plant to handle the waste in smaller batches, to control benzene emissions. The Energy Department hopes to choose an alternative by fall. But the costs may run higher. The General Accounting Office, in a report released Tuesday, said that an alternative might take eight years to develop and could cost $2.3 billion to $3.5 billion. Moniz, in a telephone interview, acknowledged that "some significant amount of funds could have been saved by pulling the plug somewhat earlier." But he added that several billion dollars would be saved by perfecting a way to concentrate the wastes, and thereby reducing the volume of material to be sent to the glass factory. Westinghouse Government Services, the Westinghouse subsidiary in charge of concentrating the wastes was sold in March to Morrison Knudsen and BNFL (formerly British Nuclear Fuels Limited). It will continue to run other operations at Savannah River. Officials for the contractor and at the Energy Department would not estimate the value of the contract that the company will lose. The Energy Department has even more wastes in underground tanks at its Hanford nuclear reservation, near Richland, Wash., and these are leaking into the Columbia River. It is working with BNFL to devise a system for solidifying the wastes there, but the Energy Department had tried to solve the problems at Savannah River first because they were considered chemically simpler. Savannah River was built by DuPont and operated by that company for 30 years beginning in the early '50s; Hanford was run by a variety of companies with far less chemistry experience. But scientists at Savannah River discovered, to their dismay, that copper and palladium in the tanks were acting as catalysts, and allowing faster production of benzene. The plan was to add a chemical called tetraphenylborate to the tanks, to make cesium and strontium, two of the most intensely radioactive waste products in the liquids, fall to the bottom. The liquids would then be reduced in volume in an evaporator, and the resulting solids, which were not highly radioactive, would be mixed with cement. The solids would go to the glass factory. The chemical problems at Hanford are different, but experts there are worried by the problems at Savannah River. Jerry Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, an environmental group, said that "from a management point of view, it raises a huge concern here." The department signed a contract under which it promises to provide the wastes to a glass factory to be built by BNFL, and if it fails to deliver, he said, it would pay penalties. Reprinted under the fair use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine of international copyright law. &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit) Unenh onhwa' Awayaton http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/ &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&