Nuclear Cleanup to Cost Billions: State-Funded Study Puts Almost $10 Billion Price tag on West Valley

December 3, 2008

McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Brian Nearing Albany Times Union, N.Y.
While it will cost taxpayers billions to clean out dangerous radioactive waste from a defunct nuclear fuel reprocessing plant, storing it there would cost billions more over the centuries -- and risk contamination of Lake Erie.

That was the conclusion of a state-funded report on the 3,300- acre West Valley nuclear site, closed since the early 1970s and once the nation's only commercial center for reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.

Released Tuesday, the report comes during a growing national debate about stepping up nuclear power as a way to cut the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. Critics continue to question the fate of spent fuel, which is dangerous for thousands of years.

The report by Cambridge-based Synapse Energy Economics claimed it will cost nearly $10 billion to clean radioactive waste from West Valley over the next 60 years and ship it to a federal dump that does not exist yet.

But leaving the waste where it is -- about 30 miles from Buffalo--would cost up to $13 billion to keep contained over the next 1,000 years.  The report said the task could be technologically difficult in an area prone to erosion. It could cost up to $27 billion if radiation escapes the area a century from now and gets into creeks that flow into Lake Erie, endangering the drinking water supply.

"No generation has the right to impose such terrible hazards on future generations," said Barbara Warren, executive director of the Albany- based Citizens Environmental Coalition, one of the grassroots groups that sought the study.

West Valley operated from 1966 to 1972, when it was closed as unsafe and inefficient. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and the U.S. Department of Energy are partners in the decontamination and decommissioning of the site.

The cleanup, which was authorized in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter, has been long delayed. The federal government issued its first suggested cleanup report in 1996, and followed that up in 2005. Another report was issued last week by the Energy Department,

This latest analysis recommended a phased shutdown, a process that will take 30 years. It leaves many key issues open, including which government is responsible for cleanup, and where the radioactive waste would be shipped.

The report was paid for by a $90,000 state grant arranged by Sen. Cathy Young, an Olean Republican whose district includes West Valley.

The federal report on West Valley can be found online at
http://www.westvalleyeis.com

Brian Nearing can be reached at 454-5094 or by email at
[email protected].