http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001898261_nuke08.htmlThursday, April 08, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.
Feds issue threat over money for nuclear-waste cleanup
By H. Josef Hebert
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Energy Department is threatening to withhold $350 million that was to be used to pay for disposal of some of the most dangerous radioactive waste from Cold War bomb-making. First, it said, Congress and state officials must accept a cleanup plan already rejected in court.
The issue has pitted Washington and five other states against the Bush administration, raising concern that some of the millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste that are supposed to be solidified and buried by the government may remain in place.
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A federal judge in Idaho last year said the Energy Department's plan to reclassify some of the waste in the tanks as "low level" and not remove it for burial violated the law. He said Congress specifically said all the waste, the byproduct of plutonium production during the Cold War, has to be treated as "high-level" waste and must be buried in a central facility, probably the planned site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The cleanup at sites in Washington, Idaho, South Carolina and New York is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars and take decades.
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