Judge rules in favor of state on waste shipments to Hanford

YAKIMA – A federal judge today ruled in favor of Washington state, barring the federal government from shipping a certain type of radioactive trash to the Hanford nuclear reservation unless it meets storage requirements.

The trash, known as mixed transuranic waste, typically is debris — such as clothing, equipment and pipes left over from nuclear weapons production — that has been contaminated both with plutonium and hazardous chemicals.

The state of Washington sued the U.S. Department of Energy in 2003 to block shipments of the untreated waste to Hanford out of concern that it could be stranded at the site and add more waste to a spot already considered the nation's most contaminated nuclear site.

The Energy Department had said the waste eventually would be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico for long-term disposal. Once the waste was designated as destined for WIPP, state storage requirements do not apply, the federal government argued.

U.S. District Judge Alan McDonald of Yakima disagreed today, saying the storage exemption applies only to waste at WIPP. State hazardous waste regulations pertaining to treatment standards and disposal and storage prohibitions remain in effect at Hanford with respect to transuranic mixed waste already stored there and intended to be shipped there, McDonald said.

Waste shipments to the Hanford site already had been halted as a result of another lawsuit filed by the state. That suit alleges the federal government failed to complete an adequate environmental impact statement to support its decision to ship offsite transuranic, low-level and mixed low-level waste to Hanford.

However, the judge's ruling also gives the state authority to force federal officials to abide by a negotiated schedule for preparing mixed transuranic waste already at Hanford for shipment to New Mexico, said Andrew Fitz, a state assistant attorney general.

The ruling also puts the state in a better negotiating position for keeping out waste that should not be permanently stored at Hanford, said Sheryl Hutchison, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Ecology.

"The reality is it was coming for an awful long time, and it was staying for an awful long time," she said. "Now, if they bring it here, we have more control and a say over when it might leave."

An Energy Department spokeswoman said federal officials had not yet seen the ruling and could not comment.

A third lawsuit, filed by the federal government, also is still pending before the court. That lawsuit seeks to overturn a voter-approved initiative in Washington state that bars the Energy Department from sending any more waste to Hanford until all the existing waste there is cleaned up.

For 40 years, the south-central Washington reservation made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal, beginning with the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb.

Costs to clean up the highly contaminated site are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the work to be finished by 2035.