from the single-shelled tanks made soon after WWII. Although most of the did tanks have been replaced by double-shelled tanks, much of the waste remains untapped and cannot be monitored due to dangers of increasing contamination through drilling. In 1980, an inspector for the DOE found that Rockwell International had attempted to cover up these leaks rather than expose their existence to the public. State Rep. Dick Nelson (D-Seattle), a member of the Nuclear Waste Board and a former nuclear research scientist at Hanford, urged the board not to sign an agreement with the federal government until it agrees to clean up the stockpile of defense wastes at Hanford. The DOE has not yet issued the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) which is to describe the method of handling waste at Defense Department facilities. The “Defense Waste Plan,” as it is called, is expected to recommend that waste be put in dirt-layered landfill called the Hanford Engineered Barrier. This landfill will probably be within 30 feet of the surface of the earth, inviting problems, if—in another era—humans begin to disturb the earth for mining, oil drilling or any other purpose. In addition to waste in storage tanks, the Defense Dept, has placed more than 1.25 tons of plutonium in non-retrievable landfills and trenches. Clearly there is a contradiction between the proposed handling of commercial waste and that produced by the Defense Dept. The state’s C&C agreement also concerns issues related to transportation. The state wants to have the right to conduct inspection of vehicles carrying high-level radioactive waste, to participate and concur in the designation of routes within the state, and have access to DOE shipping records and documents. Like liability, the transportation issue raises the question of “final authority” between the state and the federal government through its various agencies. A study by Battelle estimated that by the year 2000; a trailer truck carrying a half-ton of spent but highly-radioactive fuel rods would arrive every 90 minutes at the nation’s first repository site. The trucks would keep coming 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Although most of the sites under consideration are in the West, 80 percent of the nation’s waste would be coming from east of the Missisippi. Nick Lewis, a Nuclear Waste Board member and Chairman of the Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council said: “We have to take a strong position in Washington State to get more than one repository. To ship this stuff across country is crazy.” Spokespersons at Rockwell International under contract with the DOE stated recently that there were no plans for accepting foreign waste into the first repository in the U.S. Dick Nelson said that there were no current trade agreements with other countries to accept foreign waste, but that there has been talk of accepting waste from China. Some of Washington’s willingness to cooperate with the DOE is based on lobbying efforts by the Tri-City Chamber of Commerce and legislators such as Rep. Ray Issacson (R-Richland), who is also a chemist for Rockwell International at Hanford. Others maintain an attitude of resignation based on the idea that ultimately the federal government can put a repository where it wants to. This is in spite of the initiative three years ago in which state voters approved by a 3-to-1 margin a ban on the burial of out- of-state nuclear waste in Washington. The initiative was declared unconstitutional by federal courts. However, U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Washing- ton) reiterated the results of that initiative during congressional debate on the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. “Throughout the discussion on high-level nuclear waste legislation during this Congress, there has been a common misconception. This misconception is that the people of the state of Washington want a repository located in Washington State. To be fair, this is not the case. Were the disposal of nuclear waste in the state of Washington put to the people of the state as a general proposition, the overwhelming majority would answer no." On Yakima Land The Hanford Reservation is part of the original territory of the Yakimas which they ceded to the Federal Government by treaty in 1855. They were the first tribe to be designated in the Nuclear Waste Act as an affected Indian tribe. Since then the Umatilla and Nez Perce tribes have also A trailer truck carrying a half-ton of spent but highly-radioactive fuel rods would arrive every 90 minutes at the nation’s first repository site. been officially designated. The act provides for veto power to such tribes if a proposed repository location is on reservation land. Since the Hanford location is not directly within the reservation’s current boundaries, whether or not the Yakimas do have veto power is unclear and yet to be resolved. The current site of the proposed repository is at Gable Mountain which is Wana- pum Sacred land. The Wanapums are part of the Yakima Federation. The mountain was used for ceremonial functions and now has been drilled into by the DOE. As chairman of the Yakima Tribal Council, Watson Totus stated in a position paper on nuclear industries that the industry in the Pacific Northwest poses a threat which is more than an interim health hazard, but a threaf more akin to cultural genocide. He states that the nuclear industry and the establishment of a high-level waste repository threaten to contaminate natural food sources such as berries, roots, celeries, birds, waterfowl, wild game and salmon, which is not only a vital food source but a part of the religious and cultural background of Northwest Indian peoples. Indians rely more on local indigenous foods than do whites and are thus more vulnerable to contamination. Russell Jim, Manager of the Yakima Indian Nation’s Nuclear Waste Program, states that the DOE’s initial Environmental Assessment was an advocacy piece rather than a scientific document. “If they follow the letter of the law, it would have to be done in a scientific manner.” The Nuclear Waste Policy Act provides for grant funds to affected Indian tribes in order to study the geology and hydrology of the proposed site. Russell Jim stated that representation of the Yakimas on the Nuclear Waste Advisory Council had to be sought, demanded and diligently pursued. “I wish the contemporary society would erase the stereotype of the Indian which people have had through history,” Jim stated. “You and I reside here. The earth does not provide us with a back door to run out of when it becomes contaminated. We appreciate the wisdom of our forefathers and the natural foods and medicine that we have here in this Hanford area. But now we are interested in a truly scientific investigation on this issue.” Responses in the Scientific Community Since 1978, Rockwell Hanford Operations has administered the Basalt Waste Isolation Project (BWIP) under the direction of the DOE to determine if Columbia River basalts would be suitable as a host rock formation for a deep mined geologic repository. Considerable skepticism has mounted in the scientific community over the stability of the basalt formation. Even Rockwell’s own Hydrology and Geology Overview Committee observed in September, 1981 that “there is only one solid justification for studying this site and it is the sociopolitical fact that the land is a U.S. nuclear reservation. From a hydrological perspective, the Columbia River Basalt Group as a whole is not well suited for a high-level waste repository. It may be that with further data and/or careful engineering design it can be shown to be acceptable, but it cannot be stated that the ‘geology is favorable’.” BWIP selected a site of mostly flat, featureless land about five by eight miles in the center of the Hanford Reservation, naming it the Reference Repository Location (RRL). The Cold Creek Interbed at about 1000 feet below ground level was •initially considered as the repository location, but was eliminated partly because of the presence of high-yield aquifers (layers of permeable rock through which water flows). The unconfined aquifer—the “water table”—lies about 450 feet below the surface of the RRL. The Cohasset flow in the Grande Ronde Basalt at about 3000 feet below the RRL is the current site under investigation for a repository. Basalts in the region are layered due to successive eruptions alternated with sediments laid down by floods and volcanic ash deposited by eruptions in the Cascades to the west. “Basically I have troubles with the concept of drilling through the water table and burying the waste in the Columbia River Basin,” says Senator Al Williams. “If that river is threatened in any way, who knows what kind of disaster would result? In Nevada, for instance, you could bury the waste 3000 feet deep without drilling through the water table. There are still some problems regarding the speed of migration of water around the Columbia River.” Investigators agree that the most likely means by which radionuclides would eventually escape a repository in the Hanford basalts is by groundwater migration. The period of time for this to occur is referred to as “travel time.” Rockwell developed a conceptual model for BWIP resulting in calculations of travel times which exceeded 20,000 years. However, using the same data, the NRC presented travel time calculations demonstrating that radionuclide releases to the Columbia River could occur in as few as 20 years. According to Golder Associates, a consulting firm in Bellevue, overprediction of travel time by Rockwell resulted in part from inaccurate porosity measurements. Actual field measurements of vertical and horizontal hydraulic conductivities, rather than the use of predicted values, would have altered travel time as well. In 1983, the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) reported in its Review Comments: “Groundwater movement is three dimensional throughout the Columbia River Basalts. The general pattern of movement appears to be downward in areas of groundwater divides (on major anticlines) and upward in areas of major streams, regardless of the depth of the basalt formation, and whether it is in contact with the rivers. With the exception of the water-level data collected by Rockwell, all the water data in the Plateau supports this concept of flow.” In its geologic critique, -High-level Nuclear Waste Disposal at Hahford, March, 1983, Washington’s Public Interest Research Group (WashPIRG) points out: “There is a strong possibility that escaping radionuclides may be carried by groundwater flow to aquifers outside the Hanford Reservation, to the Columbia River itself or to the surface, where this contaminated water may be utilized for crop irrigation or human consumption. As was noted, major wells just outside the Hanford Reservation already tap deep basalt aquifers for irrigation water. A clear and definitive analysis of the possibility of serious contamination of groundwater used for irrigation in the vicinity of Hanford is imperative.” The USGS review pointed out that fractures or faults may be as abundant as several per kilometer. Whether faults are active or not, they serve as vertical conduits for groundwater flow. Other analysts including the NRC and Goff (1981) at Rockwell have indicated the presence of faults beneath the Hanford site on eastern Umtanum Ridge. Some of the measuring techniques used by the DOE have been criticized, such as the effect of drilling mud bore holes in water-level test. The limited quantity of measurements, reliance upon predicted values, and assumptions based on a steady-state rather than a changing model of groundwater flow have also been cited as flawed. Barry Moravek in the Public Affairs Dept, at Rockwell stated recently that more dialogue is taking place between Rockwell and agencies such as the NRC and the USGS pertaining to technical questions. According to Gail Hunt, Manager of Project Integration of Performance Assessment and Development at Rockwell, “We are using a baseline of groundwater flow to measure vertical conduits. These tests are scheduled to begin in March or April of next year to include a summer pumping cycle and a winter recharge. The USGS has reviewed our monitoring data to date and concur that we can establish a baseline for pumping within about a year.” Hunt also noted, “We have agreed with the NRC and the USGS that we would do one test before the shaft would reach repository depth. This would be a hydrological pumping test using state-of-the-art tracers which might tell you about vertical conduits and might get wider acceptance by the technical community.” Rockwell people indicate that the utilities have accepted the Hanford reservation as safe for nuclear power plants and that this 14 Clinton St. Quarterly
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