But the record of decision released Thursday is cause for concern for a citizens' group monitoring the cleanup, and a national environmental group.
Seth Wochensky, spokesman for the Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Wastes, said the plan mentions the possibility of reclassifying high-level waste as "waste incidental to processing."
If that were the case, Wochensky said, high-level waste, like the underground tanks that have now been drained of high-level liquid waste, could be allowed to remain on site.
"They would not remain high-level waste but (be) reclassified as waste incidental to reprocessing and then be left in the ground and capped with concrete," he said.
Diane D'Arrigo, with the Washington-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said the announcement signals the DOE's intention to keep high-level radioactive waste buried on the site.
"This is completely unacceptable, and it's time for Western New Yorkers to renew attention on West Valley because it will take all of us to demand that the wastes that are left there be dug up," she said.
Asked by e-mail if the DOE planned to reclassify high-level waste at West Valley, a DOE spokeswoman did not give a clear answer.
"The department's evaluation of alternatives to disposition of the tanks at West Valley is to be addressed in the West Valley decontamination and decommissioning environmental impact statement, which is currently in preparation," replied the DOE's Christina Kielich.
The DOE has been shipping the least-dangerous low-level waste, Class A, from West Valley for several years. The plan announced Thursday will allow the government to ship the other two classifications, Classes B and C.
There are about 600,000 cubic feet of that kind of waste in storage at the site, according to Chamberlain, and a DOE news release announcing the plan said as much as 400,000 cubic feet of low-level waste could be shipped this year.
In 2004, Chamberlain said the project generated about 22,000 cubic feet of low-level waste. In the past several years, he said, the average has been between 10,000 and 20,000 cubic feet.
The plan envisions the DOE's continuing low-level waste shipments to a commercial disposal site in Utah, as well as DOE disposal sites in Mercury, Nev., and Hanford, Wash.
The highly radioactive liquid waste that was in the rotting underground tanks was pumped out and mixed with glass to form a more stable solid.
Canisters of that solid waste are being stored behind the concrete walled building that housed the original commercial fuel reprocessing center that operated at the site in the 1960s and 1970s.
The plan calls for that waste to remain where it is until it can be shipped to the nuclear waste repository the federal government wants to build under Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
e-mail: jbonfatti@buffnews.com
