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Three Tri-City leaders are challenging President Obama's authority to terminate plans for a high-level radioactive waste repository in Nevada.
They had a letter delivered to the White House and to Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Thursday afternoon saying that Obama and Chu have violated the federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act by abandoning development of the Yucca Mountain repository.
If necessary, they will file a lawsuit, said Bob Ferguson, who has worked for the Department of Energy, the former Washington Public Power Supply System and as an entrepreneur.
The letter was written by a K&L Gates attorney on behalf of Ferguson; Bill Lampson, president of Lampson International; and Gary Petersen, the Tri-City Development Council's vice chairman for Hanford programs.
The three are concerned that without Yucca Mountain, high-level waste at the Hanford nuclear reservation will be stranded indefinitely. That would create a significant public health and environmental risk at Hanford and the nearby Tri-Cities, they said.
At the end of January, Chu appointed a Blue Ribbon Commission to recommend a solution for managing the nation's used commercial nuclear fuel and its weapons nuclear waste, including Hanford high-level waste. The commission was excluded from considering Yucca Mountain as an option.
"This final action abandoning the Yucca Mountain project creates the very danger that DOE and Congress said should be avoided: environmental and human health risk arising from the continued existence of 121 sites where nuclear waste continues to be stored in ways far less safe than Yucca Mountain," said the letter to Obama and Chu.
The absence of a repository for the permanent disposal of Hanford waste now stored in underground tanks "will only increase the costs and continue to expose the residents around the Hanford site to unacceptable environmental and human health risks," the letter said.
High-level radioactive waste left from the past production of plutonium at Hanford is planned to be turned into a stable glass form at the $12.2 billion vitrification plant under construction at Hanford.
But the vit plant was designed to produce glassified waste that meets the radioactive content requirements of Yucca Mountain and to be packaged in canisters shaped to fit the physical requirements of Yucca Mountain, Petersen said.
DOE is making plans to temporarily store high-level glassified waste at Hanford, but "nothing is so permanent as something that is temporary," Petersen said.
The three Tri-City residents had been hoping that other parties, particularly in Washington or South Carolina, would step up to question the legality of the decision to drop Yucca Mountain as the nation's repository.
Removing Yucca Mountain as an option could mean that environmental studies for cleanup at Hanford and other nuclear weapons sites across the nation will have to be redone at a huge cost, Petersen said.
It also puts at risk the Tri-Party Agreement, which establishes legally binding requirements and schedules for Hanford environmental cleanup, he said.
The three Tri-City residents believe Chu has directed his staff to permanently withdraw the NRC license application for Yucca Mountain, which cannot be readily undone, Petersen said.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act "requires that the secretary follow very specific steps and undertake very specific obligations to assure that preparation and construction of the Yucca Mountain site proceeds forward quickly," the letter said.
Congress approved a resolution naming Yucca Mountain the site of the repository in 2002 and the Obama administration does not have the power to overturn that, Ferguson said.
"It's not legal," he said. "It's a violation of the law."
Since 1983, consumers of electricity produced at nuclear power plants have paid a fee, based on the amount of power produced, into a fund to pay for a waste repository program. Commitments to the fund, including interest, now total about $33 billion.
Although a national repository was intended for used fuel from commercial nuclear power plants and high-level radioactive waste from the nation's nuclear weapons program, Petersen's concern is with the defense waste.
All three of the men who started the legal process of challenging the Obama administration have strong ties to TRIDEC, and TRIDEC shares concerns about abandoning Yucca Mountain. However, the three are acting independently of TRIDEC, Petersen said.
"We thought it made sense to take it on personally," Ferguson said.
-- Annette Cary: 582-1533; acary@tricityherald.com; more Hanford news at hanfordnews.com
