Most Portlanders see the Columbia River as a source of natural beauty, recreation, hydroelectric power and even food. They don't see the glistening waters as a highway that could deliver over 54 million gallons of radioactive waste to the shores of the Rose City. Too many Portlanders are unaware that 215 miles upstream is the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, 560 square miles of eastern Washington desert that is home to the largest atomic stew in the nation. That's too bad, according to activists like Paige Knight, who say that federal regulators responsible for cleaning up the waste at Hanford are more concerned with playing politics and gutting environmental regulations than coming up with a viable way to keep the stuff safely stored.

"The Department of Energy (DOE) has come up with a 'new plan' for the clean-up," states Paige, president of the non-profit group Hanford Watch. "But will this new plan help us move forward or simply leave these problems for a new generation?"

The question is not a new one. Since the Hanford Nuclear Reservation first starting producing weapons-grade plutonium in 1944 the question of how to handle the waste has been raised. Between 1944 and the late 1980s Hanford operated several nuclear reactors along the Columbia River. The river's waters were pumped through the reactors, cooling radioactive fuel rods, before being returned back to the river. Spent rods were dissolved in nitric acid to recover any remaining plutonium. The process combined radioactive materials with highly hazardous chemicals, creating enormous amounts of very "hot" waste. Since production of weapons-grade plutonium ceased at Hanford, the facility's only mission is to clean up this deadly mess.

They have been trying to do so since 1989. That was the year DOE entered into the Tri-Party Agreement (TPA) with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Washington State Department of Ecology. Hanford is ownby the federal government and managed by the DOE, but is subject to federal and state environmental laws and the responsible regulatory agencies. This legal contract governing the clean-up that the three agencies signed contains legally enforceable "milestones" or deadlines for completing certain tasks. But the TPA is a "living document" and milestones have been moved more than once as the agreement has been renegotiated and amended. Time, however, is running out.

Most of the 54 million gallons of waste are stored in 177 underground tanks the size of three-story buildings, buried about 12 miles from the Columbia River. Seventy of those tanks have been leaking for the past several years, sending an estimated one million gallons of waste into the surrounding soil. Some of the waste has reached groundwater that eventually flows into the Columbia. Estimates of the time it will take for waste to reach the Columbia vary widely - from as little as seven years to several generations. There are no estimates on how badly the river could be damaged should that occur.

There is also no plan for making sure that doesn't happen, either. DOE has not developed a plan for intercepting the waste. Their response has been to transfer waste from the leaking single shell tanks to newer double shell tanks. But the 28 double shell tanks do not have the capacity to handle all the waste from the leaking tanks. The double shell tanks, as Knight points out, are aging as well. X-rays of the tanks have shown cracks in the "analus," the filler between the walls. In time, these tanks will also begin leaking.

The DOE's long-term strategy is combining the waste with molten glass - vitrification. The glass logs produced by this process would be stored in vaults in Hanford's central area. Although DOE is talking about beginning tank closures in 2003-4, the vitrification plant will not be constructed and in production until 2011. DOE expects that by 2018 it will have vitrified 10 percent of the storage tank waste.

The other area of urgent concern is Hanford's "K Basins." Located only a quarter mile from the river, the basins are enormous indoor pools used to hold 2,300 tons of corroded, highly radioactive fuel rods underwater. The basins have leaked in the past and are extremely susceptible to rupture by earthquake. Such a rupture could spill radioactive water into the Columbia. Or it could expose the fuel to the air, causing it to burn and spread radioactive particles through surrounding atmosphere. The DOE plan calls for drying and storing the spent fuel in canisters that will be buried in underground vaults on the reservation. The TPA calls for the west basin to be emptied by Dec. 2002 and the east basin by July 2004. Some spent rods have already been moved.

The new administration has publicly expressed a sense of urgency around the cleanup. The DOE's Jessie Robinson, Assistant Secretary of the Office of Environmental Management has conducted a "top-to-bottom review" of how the cleanup is progressing and what needs to be done to get back on track. Knight believes the review did produce some good things, like identifying bad contracting practices and poor management. But she is concerned about some of the conclusions Robinson and others at DOE are drawing from the review.

Robinson seems to see the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) as a problem. NEPA requires agencies to assess the environmental impact of a project, including taking input from the public. NEPA has long been a target of the resource extraction industries and those in the public sector who support them. Robinson, Knight states, feels NEPA is taking up too much time with public hearings and public input while reducing government control over the cleanup.

Robinson has also made noises about another environmental law being an impediment to clean-up: the Resource Conservation and Reclamation Act (RCRA), the U.S.' basic hazardous waste law. RCRA classifies hazardous waste and outlines procedures for its removal. Robinson has stated that RCRA, like NEPA, needs to be streamlined to meet the current crisis.

Setting aside the role these two federal laws have played in environmental protection, Knight sees Robinson's focus on NEPA and RCRA troubling since neither can be altered except through Congres-sional action, a lengthy process at best that doesn't address the more pressing needs at Hanford.

These aren't the only troubling comments coming from Robinson. With the vitrification plant nowhere near completion and more tanks leaking everyday, Robinson is talking about removing more waste from the tanks and using a method called "grouting" to prepare the waste for storage.

Grouting involves mixing the waste with cement and then applying it to the insides of underground vaults. This is not the first time grouting has been proposed. Knight points out that the idea was floated in 1992. But Hanford's waste is so "hot" the grout wouldn't set.

Perhaps the most disturbing influence Robinson is bringing to the issue is her reorganizing of how all nuclear reservations will be funded in the future.

"In the past, the advisory boards for the reservations had developed into a close network," Knight, an advisory board member for Hanford, states. "The other reservations recognized that Hanford had the largest amount of waste to deal with and therefore warranted receiving the most funds. There had even been advocating for multi-year funding for projects. Robinson has changed that."

Under Robinson's plan, all the reservations will be underfunded, creating what Knight calls an $800 million "slush fund." Robinson wants all the reservations to compete for those funds to bring reservations up to legal requirements and to implement projects. Hanford had previously been promised $430 million for clean-up, but Robinson's new system has fueled competition between the reservations, jeopardizing the likelihood Hanford will receive adequate funding. Knight characterizes the idea as a way for DOE to "divide and rule" the advisory boards.

Meanwhile the clock continues to run. DOE's plan, which can best be described as composed of "big strokes," is supposed to be completed by Aug. 1. A public meeting of DOE officials and the advisory board is scheduled for June 4 to discuss the budget.

Knight doesn't believe DOE will have the budget in time for the meeting, but hopes the time can be spent getting DOE to respond to a series of troubling questions about the clean-up, such as why is Robinson talking about closing tanks when there is no vitrification taking place or any criteria established for closing the tank farms? Knight would also like the meeting to address the solid waste impact standards DOE recently finalized - only four years behind schedule - which Knight and others see as a green light for shipping large amounts of waste to Hanford.

An additional round of meetings is scheduled for July. DOE wants to hold two meetings in Oregon - one in Portland or Hood River and one in LaGrande (expected to be a major transport center). Meetings are also being scheduled for Seattle and Richland. Knight thinks there should be meetings in La Grande, Hood River and Portland.

The June and July meetings will be opportunities for the public to provide input, too. Key questions that need to be raised by citizens include Robinson's "competitive budgeting" that Knight calls "robbing Peter to pay Paul." The public also needs to ask for the plan's holes to be filled before being adopted. Then there's the issue of turning Hanford into a major storage area for waste from around the nation.

For Paige Knight, it all boils down to the question she keeps asking DOE: "Are we solving the problem or leaving it for future generations?

Unless Oregonians and other citizens begin asking the same questions, it seems unlikely we'll receive more than a quick fix designed to make the Bush administratoin appear to have taken action while laying the groundwork for future attacks on environmental laws like NEPA and RCRA that the administration and its resource extraction industry friends would love to gut.

Note: Calls were placed to Ms. Jessie Robinson at the DOE regarding proposed plans for cleanup at Hanford Nuclear Reservation, however, there was no response by the time this issue went to press.

-Dave Mazza is editor of The Portland Alliance.