Obama can't be bothered with nuclear waste disposal. Let the next guy worry about it.
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho — State officials say they plan to fine the federal government $3,600 a day for missing a deadline to remove 900,000 gallons of liquid nuclear waste from a southeast Idaho nuclear facility.
The state Department of Environmental Quality says the U.S. Department of Energy missed its Dec. 31 deadline to ship radioactive waste out of the Idaho National Laboratory.
Idaho officials tell the Post Register that three 50-year-old tanks are no longer supposed to be used for storage under federal laws governing hazardous waste.
They say fines will increase to $6,000 a day if the waste isn't gone by July 1.
Energy Department spokeswoman Danielle Miller says the agency is reviewing the violation notice.
The newspaper reports that a facility to treat the waste has had problems getting past the testing phase.
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The Obama Administration rejected use of Yucca Mountain in the 2010 United States federal budget, which eliminated all funding except that needed to answer inquiries from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, "while the Administration devises a new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal." However, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) is still the federal law and is not a project of the President and can not be canceled by either President Obama or the energy secretary. On March 5, 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a Senate hearing the Yucca Mountain site is no longer viewed as an option for storing reactor waste. In Obama's 2011 budget proposal released February 1, all funding for nuclear waste disposal was zeroed out for the next ten years and it proposed to dissolve the Office of Civilian Waste Management required by the NWPA. In late February 2010 multiple lawsuits were proposed and/or being filed in various federal courts across the country to contest the legality of Chu's direction to DOE to withdraw the license application. These lawsuits were evidently foreseen as eventually being necessary to enforce the NWPA since Section 119 of the NWPA provides for federal court interventions if the President, Secretary of Energy or the Nuclear Regulatory Commission fail to uphold the NWPA.
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