By Josh Long
Jackson Hole Guide

The Teton County Commissioners on Monday stepped into the fray and unanimously requested that a public comment period on a proposed nuclear incinerator be extended for 60 days.

The commissioners' chambers overflowed during the Monday public meeting in which officials from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Lab and a private subcontractor at the facility discussed a proposed nuclear incinerator in eastern Idaho.

The questions asked and comments offered by the public were not part of the official record for the proposed facility at the INEEL.

During the meeting, INEEL representatives and other officials affiliated with the project sought to allay community apprehension, maintaining the proposed burning of nuclear and hazardous waste would emit, on site, less than one percent of radioactivity that humans naturally receive per year.

Some community members maintain radioactive and hazardous emissions from the incinerator - which is proposed to begin operation in 2003 - will enter the atmosphere in Jackson due to prevailing winds and cause environmental hazards. The Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Proposal, which is slated to treat 65,000 cubic meters of nuclear and hazardous waste, has many residents in a frenzy. During the meeting, audience members sporadically clapped as residents fired a round of probing questions that didn't get answered. Commissioners cited time restraints as grounds for limited public comment. Meanwhile, officials defended the scope of the project as others sat in protest.

"Our comments are meaningless because they didn't go anywhere, like being flushed down the toilet ...," said Berte Hirschfield, of Jackson.

Hirschfield and others scorned Department of Energy and INEEL officials' decision to attend a meeting that was off-the-record and had no bearing on the decision-making process. She called their presentation on the proposal "propaganda."

She maintained that residents requested officials come to Wyoming for a meeting when the public comment period on the air permit was still open, but they declined.

At stake now is whether officials at the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality will extend the public comment session following the county commissioners' unanimous resolution to request a 60-day extension.

The county had scheduled a public meeting concerning the nuclear facility on Aug. 26, but is waiting to hear an answer to their request before confirming that date.

"We are encouraging them to allow more time for comment and even re-open the hearing ... Especially when we know that there are Westerly winds that affect us, we want to make sure there aren't any health problems to anyone in Wyoming and that we understand what the possibilities are of what could happen," said U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, of Wyoming, in media interviews on July 26.

BNFL, Inc., a subsidiary of BNFL, plc. - which has been managing nuclear materials for half a century - is a private subcontractor that has been awarded the contract to treat the waste during a 13-year period.

The purpose of the treatment facility is to process nuclear and hazardous waste and ship it to Carlsbad, N.M., for storage. The incineration is necessary, officials said, because some of the organic chemical compounds mixed with radioactive waste must be burned before the waste can be safely stored. At the meeting, Commissioner Sandy Shuptrine presented a slew of questions to officials about which local residents had concerns. Some inquiries included:

• What will officials do with the underground waste that is at the INEEL facility?
• When the plant exceeds levels of hazardous and radioactive emissions, who is notified, what actions are taken, and what is the time frame?

Shuptrine also inquired about reports that children have plutonium concentrations in their teeth near the Sellafield site in England - a BNFL, plc. nuclear facility - which reportedly exceeds acceptable standards and "wasn't considered to be safe and healthy." Sellafield has a history of alleged environmental hazards associated with its activities.

If the IDEQ decides to not extend the public comment period on the air permit, it is expected that some residents may take legal action.

A larger question, though, seems to be whether residents are interested in modifying regulations concerning the air permit or if community members are flat-out opposed to the incinerator.

Last week, more than 1,200 residents had signed a petition which opposed the proposed nuclear project, according to Sophia Wakefield, an owner of Harvest Natural Foods. And the signatures are reportedly growing.

Jay Kaplan, of Jackson, is among residents who oppose any amount of radioactive and hazardous emissions entering the atmosphere, likening the proposed nuclear project to a game of Russian roulette.