On September 3, 1993, the Federal Register published a notice of expanded opportunity for public comment on the way in which the Department of Energy deals with nuclear waste, including spent nuclear fuel from Navy submarines.
The events leading up to the Federal Register notice were discussed extensively in the [url=/members_archives/archives1993.php]September issue[/url] (scroll down on link to see article listings) of Environment Hawai’i. Articles carried in the two Honolulu dailies and statewide, via the Associated Press, gave Hawai’i readers notice of the opportunity to comment, although they provided little information on the substance of the notice.
Here is a recap, then, of developments since publication of our September issue:
Background
Before June 28, 1993, spent nuclear fuel from reactors in Navy vessels was shipped to the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory outside Idaho Falls, Idaho. On that day, federal Judge Harold L. Ryan ordered that no additional spent nuclear fuel, among other types of nuclear waste, be delivered to INEL until such time as the Department of Energy which runs the laboratory, had completed an environmental impact statement concerning the long-term consequences of storage at the site.
This had the immediate effect of turning all the shipyards (including Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard) where spent nuclear fuel was removed from Navy ships and submarines into temporary storage sites themselves. Under an agreement worked out among the state of Idaho, the Department of Energy, and the Navy, some relief would be granted to a few sites (not including Pearl Harbor), In the meantime, by the end of this calendar year, the federal government would prepare environmental assessments for all shipyards where spent nuclear fuel would be stored. (Judge Ryan approved the settlement on September 21.)
Recent Events
The Federal Register notice of September 3 expands the scope of an environmental impact statement that was first announced October 5, 1992. At that time, the Department of Energy, which is the agency preparing the EIS, had not anticipated analyzing “The potential impacts of transporting, receiving, processing, and storing SNF [spent nuclear fuel] at sites other than the INEL,” according to the September 3 Federal Register notice. In light of judge Ryan’s decision, however, the DOE is expanding the scope of that EIS to include “evaluating the alternative of transporting, receiving, processing and storing spent nuclear fuel, including spent fuel from naval vessels, at sites other than the INEL.”
The Energy Department had already been preparing a programmatic EIS concerning management of naval spent nuclear fuel – a process that had begun in 1990. Now; however, according to the Federal Register notice, the “programmatic analysis of SNF alternatives that was being prepared for the PETS” (the programmatic environmental impact statement) will be folded into the INEL EIS.
The Local Connection
So how does Pearl Harbor fit into this?
“Because of the variety of potential origins and destinations of SNF to be evaluated,” the notice reads, “the alternative locations to be considered include not only the DOE sites for SNF storage, but also naval facilities for storage and examination of naval SNF…. The Naval and DOE facilities (other than INEL) at which storage and examination of naval SNF will be assessed include:
“Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth, VA;
“Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, Kittery, ME;
“Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, Honolulu, HI;
“Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Bremerton, WA;
“Kesselring Site, West Milton, NY;
“Hanford Reservation, Richland, WA;
“Savannah River Site, Aiken, SC.
“Neither Charleston Naval Shipyard, Charleston, SC, nor Mare Island Naval Shipyard, Vallejo, CA, are being considered since they are planned to be closed and returned to the local community for their use and thus would be unavailable for extended federal use.”
More Questions than Answers
So what, exactly, is being proposed for review in this expanded EIS? Will the Navy’s spent nuclear fuel be stored indefinitely at each site where the reactor fuel is removed? Will it rather be consolidated at just one or perhaps two of the sites listed for consideration?
These questions were posed to Annette Campbell, the public relations officer at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard. On September 11, 1993, the Navy responded as follows:
“The public comment period on the scope of the INEL EIS is not yet complete; thus a decision on your question [concerning possible consolidation] has not yet been made.”
How long will the storage term be? The Federal Register notice states that the storage will last until “final disposal offsite” is possible. A spokeswoman for the DOE in Idaho said that “final disposal offsite” will not occur until the DOE has opened a “permanent” waste repository – something that might not occur until the year 2040, if then.
Will the expanded scope of the EIS mean that the Navy will not be preparing an environmental assessment for short-term storage of naval nuclear fuel at Pearl Harbor or the other shipyard sites (as the Navy-DOE-Idaho agreement seems to require)? This question also was posed to the Navy and the Department of Energy. The DOE referred all questions regarding the expanded scope of the EIS to the Navy. The Navy responded as follows:
“The expanded scope of the INEL EIS does not affect the Navy’s current plans to prepare an Environmental Assessment covering the management of spent naval fuel pending completion of the INEL EIS.”
Environment Hawai’i also posed this question to the Navy: “If deactivation at Pearl Harbor continues to occur on a schedule similar to that of past deactivations, what amount of space will be necessary to contain all [shipyard] -generated spent nuclear fuel?”
The Navy: “A primary purpose of this EIS is to analyze the facilities, land and equipment necessary to implement each of the proposed alternatives. These questions will be addressed in the analysis of alternatives.”
A Conundrum
Frankly, the lack of good answers to questions concerning storage of spent nuclear fuel should not surprise anyone. For as long as radioactive waste has been produced, no place has been found suitable for its permanent storage.
What does the DOE look for in deciding whether a place might be a good candidate for a nuclear waste repository? First, it must be dry. When there’s a high water table, as there is in Pearl Harbor, the possibility exists for water to get into the storage containers, creating a potentially explosive scenario. Conversely, the containers might leak into the water table, causing vast, irreversible contamination.
A site should be in an area where little significant seismic activity is predicted to occur. It should be far removed from population centers. It should be in an area not likely to be inundated by floods or tsunamis. Any characteristics likely to cause the containers to deteriorate – such as salt air – are to be avoided.
The comment period on the proposed expansion of the EIS scope was to end October 3, with the DOE planning to issue an implementation plan by November 1, 1993. Publication of the draft EIS will not occur until mid- 1994, in all likelihood.
Persons wishing to receive notice of availability of the implementation plan, draft EIS, and other information should notify Rob S. Rothman, ER&WM EIS Project Manager, Department of Energy; Box 1625, Idaho Falls, Idaho 83415-1120. Envelopes should be marked to “Attention: INEL ER&WM EIS.”
Closure?
As quoted earlier, the Federal Register notice rules out the possibility of storing spent nuclear fuel at the Charleston, S C., shipyard, whose closure was recommended by the Base Closure and Realignment Commission, a panel whose work was to be guided by the consideration of the relative military value of military facilities.
According to a report by the General Accounting Office, however, the Navy strayed from this principle in considering shipyards for closure. Instead, the GAO found, “The nuclear work-load requirements were the primary factor in developing shipyard closure recommendations.”1 The report continues:
“Minutes of Navy deliberations detail its decision to recommend the closure of Charleston and Mare Island Naval Shipyards. Three other naval shipyards were rated as having a lower military value than Charleston – Pearl Harbor, Hawai’i; Mare Island, California; and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The Navy’s shipyard recommendations were one case where, after excess capacity reductions were achieved, a base with a higher military value was closed in place of one with a lower military value.”
More recently, the newsletter Defense Week has reported long-range Navy plans for cutbacks at Pearl Harbor, which include scaling back the shipyard to a “ship repair facility.”
1 “Military Bases: Analysis of DOD’s Recommendations and Selection Process for Closures and Realignments,” GAO/NSIAD-93-173 (April 1993), p.30.
Volume 4, Number 4 October 1993
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