Clear and present danger: hazardous materials

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Experts have recently alerted the authorities to the Hazmat risk posed by hundreds of contaminated, closed nuclear weapons facilities in the U.S.

Hundreds of ramshackle and contaminated facilities that used to produce nuclear weapons and conduct energy research are still years away from being cleaned up. This, according to the Energy Department’s watchdog in a recent report.

The U.S Energy Department’s inspector general said there are 234 facilities awaiting deactivation and decommissioning activities. It also identified an additional 140 facilities that will need to be addressed in the future. In the framework of the cleanup process, facilities are stabilized to reduce the risks to personnel. Only then, are these facilities ultimately decontaminated and dismantled.

According to Fierce Home Land Security, as of last September, the department still hasn’t established a schedule to transfer those facilities to its Office of Environmental Management, which has been responsible for cleanup of such facilities since 1989, the IG said in the Jan. 23 report.

The office said until new funding is available it doesn’t expect any such transfers before 2017. And Energy Department officials are blaming tightening budgets for the delays.

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The IG report said these decommissioning and demolition delays are increasing costs. As of November 2013, the overall cleanup efforts were projected to cost more than $280 billion, the report noted.

The contaminated facilities are a result of 50 years of nuclear weapons production and energy research during the Manhattan Project seventy years ago, as well as the Cold War, said the report.

The report does not specify the state of affairs in the US compared with other nations. However, experts say the US seems to be years behind nations like Japan, France and Germany in terms of addressing hazardous materials, in particular nuclear waste.

The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), a civilian Energy Department watchdog organization, notes that nuclear waste storage is a multi-generational challenge requiring not only proper funding, but also expertise and long term oversight. The reason: these hazardous materials can only seldom be reprocessed, and takes hundreds of years to disintegrate.