Officials: Refusal to take nuke waste costs $9,000 a day

CINCINNATI - A battle between the state of Nevada and the federal government over the disposal of nuclear waste sitting in silos near Cincinnati is costing taxpayers about $9,000 a day, officials say.

Nevada Attorney General Brian Sandoval has threatened to sue to stop the disposal of 153 million pounds of waste from the former Fernald nuclear weapons plant in northwest Hamilton County. The government plans to bury the waste in the Nevada desert.

Sandoval's threat prompted the government on July 26 to postpone the removal of the radioactive waste from one of three concrete silos at the plant until an agreement can be reached.

The project now on hold is Silo 3, which houses powdery wastes that Fluor Fernald Inc., the government's contractor, says won't require the extensive processing of the sludge wastes in the other two silos.

The Department of Energy has promised to give Nevada 45 days notice before beginning shipments from Fernald, 18 miles northwest of Cincinnati, to the federal Nevada Test Site, 80 miles north of Las Vegas.

Last week, Energy Department lawyer Lee Lieberman Otis sent a six-page letter to Sandoval. It downplayed Nevada's argument that the Fernald wastes must be disposed of at a facility administered by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and offered to "set our legal differences aside" on the plan.

Sandoval has responded that Nevada's position is not negotiable.

The standoff's cost to taxpayers is at $126,000 and counting, said Bill Taylor, the Department of Energy's second-in-command at Fernald.

Taylor said the cost of keeping workers on standby at the Silo 3 cleanup will increase next month. If the legal battle stretches into fall, it could reach a cost of $57,000 per day.

"We're not going to allow that to continue for a long, long period of time," Taylor said. "It's just not practical."

Standby mode means crews at the Silo 3 project continuously monitor the computer and mechanical systems they would use to remove the waste. They also continue to practice with those systems on fly ash.

Ohio has threatened to sue if the federal government starts removing the silo wastes, but keeps them in temporary storage at the site. That would violate an agreement reached years ago to ship the waste off site for permanent disposal, Ohio officials have said.

Federal officials hope to complete the $4 billion-plus cleanup at the site in 2006.

Congress is currently providing annual funding of about $320 million.

The plant processed uranium metal from 1951 until 1989 when production ended to concentrate on the cleanup.

The 1,050-acre site will eventually be a wildlife area, with 123 acres housing permanent underground storage of lower-level radioactive wastes.