Nuclear Switch

Beware of bills that must pass Congress for government to continue to function. To them become attached legislation that would fail on its own, often because they are bad ideas. The 2005 defense authorization bill is carrying such dangerous cargo right now, and the Senate should relieve it of that burden.

The Bush administration would like to accelerate its cleanup of nuclear-weapons sites, a fine idea that is very expensive. At the urging of the Department of Energy it would reclassify some of what is currently considered high-level waste to low level. An idea that could be even more expensive to human and environmental health. Nearly a million gallons of the waste resides in underground storage tanks at a site in South Carolina, where Energy’s idea is to leave it there and encase it in cement, or grout. Leaving it in place would cost much less than moving it eventually to a permanent facility and would get money flowing to contractors and the cleanup moving.

The waste, however, is dangerous. It is the remaining sludge of a blend of highly radioactive chemicals used in making weapons. Though only a small fraction, about 8 percent, of the total amount of waste in the tanks, which hold mostly highly radioactive water, it represents 55 percent of the radioactivity. The liquid in the tanks would be pumped out and stored in thick glass containers, but the sludge, which under current law must also be prepared for disposal at a permanent site, would remain.

The Energy Department proposed doing this through its rules earlier but a federal judge said that would violate the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. The proposed change in that law would affect only South Carolina, but elected officials in other states with nuclear weapons waste sites – Washington, Idaho and New York – are concerned that once the practice is established in South Carolina it will be put into place in their states.

The Senate is expected to vote this week on an amendment by Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington to remove the nuclear waste provision from the defense bill. That is a good idea if for no other reason than to urge its sponsors to redraft it as a stand-alone bill and send it to the Environment and Public Works Committee for a full debate. The long-term implications of such an important change in waste-storage policy are too serious to give the issue a free ride on a spending bill.