Copyright 2000 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St.
Louis Post-Dispatch
May 10, 2000, Wednesday, FIVE STAR LIFT
EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL, Pg. B6
LENGTH: 709 words
HEADLINE:
HOT POTATO
BODY:
NUCLEAR WASTE
FOR more than 50 years, highly radioactive nuclear waste -- leftovers
from three decades of uranium processing for atomic bombs -- has been piled in a
corner of Lambert Field.
And for just as long, the U.S. government has
done a stunning job of lying, stalling, playing hot potato, shifting blame and
otherwise shirking its responsibility for disposing the waste and protecting the
public's health.
Meanwhile, the radioactive waste has contaminated the
soil on the 22-acre site, blowing onto nearby ball fields and airport runways.
It has blown off open trucks hauling it from Lambert to a rail loading area on
Latty Avenue, where it was stored under plastic tarps weighted down with old
tires. It has contaminated the groundwater and Coldwater Creek, which f lows
into the Missouri River just upstream from an intake pipe for St. Louis'
drinking water supply. No one knows how much radioactive material may have
settled in the lungs of residents of Florissant, Berkeley, Hazelwood and other
North St. Louis County communities. Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, which processed
uranium for atomic bombs, trucked the waste to the airport from 1946 to 1966.
The waste, uncovered and largely uncontrolled, was first the responsibility of
the now-defunct Atomic Energy Commission. For 20 years, the AEC lied, claiming
the uranium tailings weren't radioactive. In 1966, after citizen activists
raised a ruckus, the commission hired a contractor to remove some of the waste.
But the contractor was so sloppy that it contaminated dozens of other sites in
the process. For the next 15 years, various federal agencies -- including the
Energy Research and Development Administration, succeeded by the Department of
Energy -- claimed that the wastes either had been removed or were safely covered
with dirt. Neither was true.
Three years ago, Congress put the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers in charge of all the nation's nuclear clean-ups. At last,
something is being done. The Corps recently began digging into part of the site
with the highest levels of radioactivity. The waste will be shipped to a
licensed nuclear waste dump in Utah. This time, more effort is being made to
contain the dust, monitor radiation in the area and provide some safety gear for
cleanup workers, although some critics say the safety precautions are
inadequate. The cleanup is being overseen locally by the St. Louis County
Department of Public Health.
This checkered history is worth remembering
in light of the Department of Energy's proposal -- recently vetoed by President
Bill Clinton, and presumed dead -- to ship high-level nuclear waste by rail and
truck from power plants all over the eastern United States through St. Louis to
an as-yet unapproved nuclear waste facility in Yucca Mountain,
Nevada. In the context of the government's inept and disingenuous pattern of
past behavior, the Energy Department could hardly have expected the public to
trust its computer-simulated safety studies, route planning, equipment design
and security protocols it claimed would make cross-country s hipments "safe."
But having spoken out strongly against the plan at public hearings held
here earlier this year, and on the floor of Congress, St. Louis is in the
awkward position of justifying the shipment of our waste way out West, even as
we try to block East Coast cities eager to send their nuclear waste westward
through our backyard.
Unfortunately, there's no good storage alternative
for the radioactive dirt piles and radium pits at Lambert, which lie a windy
patch of flood plain. Power plants, however, could store their high level
nuclear waste in spent fuel pools, or put them in dry storage until safe
technology exists to neutralize, ship and store them for the thousands of years
they will continue to be radioactive.
In the meantime, the long-awaited
Lambert cleanup plan must go forward -- carefully. The only way the government
can earn public confidence this time is by ensuring that the cleanup plan is
open to public scrutiny, that lines of responsibility are clear, that
environmental regulations are strictly enforced, that worker protection is
paramount and that regular monitoring of soil, water and air will be done.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO Photo by KAREN ELSHOUT /
POST-DISPATCH - Gerald Scott, an employee of Stone & Webster contractors,
works inside one of the railcars at the Latty Avenue site to secure plastic bags
while a supervisor hands him supplies. As the general contractor, Stone &
Webster is responsible for removing radioactive dirt, dumping it in railcars
lined with plastic, and shipping it to Utah for storage.
LOAD-DATE: May 11, 2000 
