============================================================

Local residents pan incinerator plan
By N.S. Nokkentved
Times-News writer

TWIN FALLS -- People don't want it, the government hasn't shown it needs it and incineration is the wrong way to treat radioactive waste.

That was the message state and federal regulators got Wednesday evening at a public hearing on a permit application for a radioactive waste treatment plant at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory.

The state Division of Environmental Quality and federal Environmental Protection Agency propose issuing a permit for treating solvents and PCBs at a plant operated for the federal government by BNFL Inc. -- the American subsidiary of the British government-owned British Nuclear Fuels Ltd.

The Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Plant would sort, treat and prepare for shipment about 3 million cubic feet of plutonium-contaminated waste that also contains solvents and PCBs. About one-fourth of the waste would be incinerated.

People who spoke at the Wednesday public hearing were skeptical of claims that the plant would be safe and would have no adverse effects on human health and the environment.

British Nuclear Fuels, the parent company, has a sketchy record, said Margaret Macdonald Stewart of the Snake River Alliance's Ketchum office. The British operation has released pollutants into the Irish Sea, falsified quality assurance documents on nuclear materials and tried to hush its critics in Europe, she said.

With the parent company track record, BNFL Inc. was hired without public participation to operate the treatment plant in Idaho, she said, wondering whether the company in Idaho would falsify records, pollute the land or oppose their critics.

Though an environmental impact statement eventually was completed on the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Plant, it was only at the insistence of the Snake River Alliance. Federal officials at INEEL, state regulatory and oversight officials, and BNFL officials didn't insist the impact statement be done, Stewart said.

"Yet you're asking us to trust you," she said.

Potential hazards of the plant were not adequately analyzed in the proposed permit, said Chuck Broscious, executive director of the Environmental Defense Institute of Troy.

As an example he cited assumptions about removal efficiency of the plant's pollution control system that couldn't be verified independently with the information supplied in the permit application. The application instead cites a technical paper on the efficiency of the system -- an issue that should be central to the permit analysis, Broscious said.

The permit also relies on assumptions that HEPA filters -- high efficiency particulate air filters -- become more efficient as more filter banks are added. But that assumption may be flawed, because particles that pass through the first filter are likely to also pass through the second and third, he said.

David Kipping of the Snake River Alliance, speaking for himself, said that the decision to build the plant was made in closed door meetings in Washington D.C. during negotiations between Idaho and federal officials in May 1995.

The treatment plant was a little publicized part of the deal, and it was to start treating waste by 2003, Kipping said.

The public was not consulted, he said. When plans for the plant were announced in July 1997, officials said there was no need for an environmental impact statement or public review.

During the bidding for the project, other bidders dropped out. By the time the contract was signed, BNFL was the only bidder, Kipping said. The company was selected without public participation.

BNFL gets $16 million when environmental permits are in place. Those permits have not yet been issued. But some minor construction has started, he said.

The facility is supposed to start burning waste in 2003, he noted. But that is a political solution to a technical problem. Like others at the meeting, Kipping suggested the waste slated for incineration be set aside and stored until, perhaps, a better treatment technology is available.

"We know how to store it," he said.

Information about the proposed permits is available at the DEQ Twin Falls Regional Office, 601 Pole Line Road, Suite 2. Written comments may be submitted by 5 p.m. Feb. 7, to: Brian R. Monson, Division of Environmental Quality, 1410 North Hilton, Boise, Idaho 83706.