SCHUMER VISITS WEST VALLEY TO KICK OFF NEXT PHASE OF CLEANUP EFFORTS

Senator announces opening of Remote-Handled Waste Facility and pushes feds to finish cleanup at the nuclear site

Schumer helped secure over $40 million in federal funds with Sen. Clinton, Reps. Reynolds, Quinn and Houghton to complete facility that will prepare contaminated materials to be shipped off the West Valley site

US Senator Charles E. Schumer today visited the West Valley Nuclear Demonstration Project to announce the beginning of operations at the site's new Remote-Handled Waste Facility. The facility will be used to cut up and package highly contaminated radioactive waste for future removal and disposal.

"We're beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel. The good news is that opening this new facility marks real progress in getting nuclear waste out of Western New York," Schumer said. "But we can't rest on our laurels. The federal government can't just cut and run without finishing the job it started here at West Valley."

Under 1980 Congressional legislation, the Department of Energy (DOE) began clean-up of the high-level, radioactive waste by "vitrifying" thousands of gallons of liquid waste, transforming them into solid glass rods. In September 2002, West Valley announced the completion of the vitrification program. In the new Remote-Handled Waste Facility, operators can safely and remotely control the equipment that will cut and reduce the size of the waste, and then place the waste in the appropriate container for storage and eventual shipping.
The Remote-Handled Waste Facility was built to prepare a unique inventory of difficult-to-handle radioactive waste for disposal. The facility will use remotely operated cranes and tools to reduce and process large steel vessels and other waste materials with high dose rates or high levels of radioactive contamination. Over 60,000 cubic feet of waste will be remotely processed in preparation for disposal.

The facility, a free-standing concrete structure with three pre-engineered metal buildings attached to the outside walls, is designed to reduce and repackage the high-activity radioactive waste created by the processes carried out at West Valley. The work of the facility is performed by a series of cranes, and operators control the work safely positioned behind shield windows that provide a vantage point from which equipment can be remotely operated.

There are 13 different waste streams held in approximately 186 containers to be processed through the Remote-Handled Waste Facility. The total weight of these containers is nearly 500 tons. Typically, the size of the debris will be reduced into pieces shorter than 6 feet. Samples are collected, and the process is videorecorded. The waste pieces will be placed in either a drum or a box, based on classifications determined by the weight and dose measurements recorded by a gamma assay device.

For the past several years, DOE and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) have been at loggerheads over who has ultimate responsibility to finish the cleanup job at West Valley. In February, DOE released a deactivation plan for West Valley that set DOE on a course to complete the bulk of its activity by 2008, leaving behind significant amounts of nuclear waste at West Valley. The plan calls for cleaning, but not removing, underground tanks that held radioactive water. It also would leave an underground plume of contaminated ground water, as well as a federally licensed radioactive waste dump.

Schumer, who along with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rep. Tom Reynolds, Rep. Jack Quinn, and Rep. Amo Houghton, secured the federal money needed for the project, also today pushed the US Department of Energy (DOE) to complete its cleanup work before walking away from the site. "For 24 years the understanding has been that the Energy Department would fully clean up the waste before decontaminating and decommissioning the facility. At this point, its work is incomplete," Schumer said. "I understand the Energy Department doesn't want to be in West Valley forever, but leaving before the underground tanks are removed, the reprocessing facility is demolished, and the contaminated groundwater is addressed is not an acceptable solution."

####