NEWS OF THE WEEK
NUCLEAR ARMS PLANTS: Idaho bars entry of plutonium wastes The Department of Energy— said he will announce a new already beset by massive WIPP schedule next month. cleanup and safety problems He is awaiting the report of at its nuclear arms plants— a blue-ribbon panel of DOE now must grapple with a furofficials and others appointed ther dilemma in dealing with by the governors of Coloraradioactive wastes. do, Idaho, and New Mexico. This panel is looking at sevGov. Cecil D. Andrus of eral WIPP issues and at the Idaho closed the state's borexact identification of Rocky ders on Sept. 1 to waste shipFlats wastes. ments from the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near A second panel is looking Denver. If an alternative is at safety features and docunot found by next March, mentation at WIPP. A New when temporary storage of Mexico state Environmental the wastes at Rocky Flats itEvaluation Group, made up self is expected to reach stateof scientists and technical eximposed limits, DOE may perts, is evaluating health and have to shut down the plant, safety issues. The Environits sole source of plutonium mental Protection Agency is // triggers ,/ for nuclear arms. reviewing WIPP's compliance with the Resource ConservaThe ban comes after dection & Recovery Act. And a ades of "temporary" storage bill has been introduced in of Rocky Flats transuranic Congress to transfer land to wastes at DOE's Idaho NaDOE for WIPP, with $250 miltional Engineering Laboratolion in compensation to New ry (INEL) in southeast Idaho. Worker prepares tests in underground WIPP shaft Mexico. The "mixed waste" is conWith WIPP thus likely to be untaminated with plutonium-239 and Storage of transuranic wastes at hazardous chemicals. INEL's 144- INEL is considered temporary. DOE available for quite some time, and acre radioactive waste management plans ultimately to ship all transu- Rocky Flats limited in its storage complex stores two kinds of solid ranic wastes from there and other capacity, DOE is studying other poswastes: transuranic wastes (includ- nuclear weapons facilities to a per- sibilities to replace storage in Idaing such things as contaminated manent federal repository, the Waste ho. "Rocky Flats would be shut clothes, gloves, tools, plastics, and Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), near down only as a last resort," stresses sludge) that primarily emit alpha Carlsbad, N.M. There, wastes will department spokesman Will Calliparticles and have a half-life of more be deposited 2150 feet deep, near cott. DOE, thus, is examining sites than 20,000 years; and low-level the middle of a 2000-foot-thick salt in several other states, such as miliwastes that emit beta and gamma bed. Construction began in 1983, tary installations and other weapradiation, which will decay to near and major mining efforts and sur- ons plants, for possible temporary background levels in about 30 years. face facility construction were com- storage of Rocky Flats wastes. In addition, Rocky Flats is workThe transuranic wastes are stored pleted last year. "The WIPP facility is already ing on a method of compacting its in a manner allowing easy retrieval and shipment to a permanent re- physically ready," points out spokes- transuranic waste to reduce its volpository—stacked aboveground on man Richard Marquez. However, a ume and extend the time before it asphalt pads in drums, bins, and number of environmental, safety, reaches the storage limit of 1601 boxes and covered with a remov- and other concerns have repeatedly cubic yards set by the state of Coloable layer of soil. Rocky Flats gen- delayed its opening, and it is un- rado. The plant has imported equiperates more transuranic waste than likely to be operational by March. ment already used successfully in DOE Secretary James D. Watkins has Europe, notes spokesman Dennis any other DOE facility. 4
September 11, 1989 C&EN
Hurtt. However, time for installation, testing, and preparation of an environmental assessment probably will delay the start of such operations beyond March. Meanwhile, DOE has one piece of good news—the first milestone toward WIPP operation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved special steel vessels for shipping transuranic wastes to WIPP. Richard Seltzer
Chemical group vows to help fight drugs The Chemical Manufacturers Association was quick off the mark last week in endorsing President Bush's "National Drug Control Strategy/' CMA says it is already working very closely with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to ensure that President Bush's promise that "we will stop the flow of chemicals from the United States used to process drugs" in other countries is achieved. The strategy calls for the imposition of stringent controls on the export of chemicals used in the illicit production of cocaine in South America and for strong measures to stop the diversion of chemicals used in the illicit manufacture of drugs within the U.S. Regulations designed to meet both of these objectives were put in place
Bush: stop diversion of chemicals
Aug. 1, as called for by the Chemical Diversion & Trafficking Act of 1988 (C&EN, Feb. 27, page 17). But in addition to complying with the regulations, DEA has asked that chemical companies take further voluntary measures to help stop the flow of illicit drugs. For example, the regulations call for 15 days' advance notice of the export of a listed chemical. DEA would like to be warned as far in advance as possible of shipments of acetone, ethyl ether, methyl ethyl ketone, potassium permanganate, and toluene, particularly to Latin America. That's something the industry could probably do, says J. Garrity Baker, who works on drug diversion matters for CMA. Companies probably can give DEA at least an estimate of how much of a listed
chemical they expect to sell to a particular country in a given year. "If that helps DEA get acquainted with the usual transaction in order to spot the unusual, the illegitimate transaction, t h e n we w o u l d be willing to do that," he says. But Garrity says CMA's first priority right now is working to make sure that there is a very well founded regulatory program. That means getting the regulations out to industry and making sure that they are understood. He points out that sometimes simply reading the regulations in the Federal Register doesn't tell you what you need to do as a company to comply. CMA will be working with DEA over the next several weeks to s u p p l y t h e necessary guidance. Janice Long
Farmers urged to adopt alternative agriculture The U.S. farming establishment should begin adopting in earnest less wasteful, less expensive, and less p o l l u t i n g agricultural techniques—in other words, the increasingly promising methods of alternative agriculture. So concludes a four-year study by the National Research Council's Board of Agriculture in a report issued last week in Washington, D.C. In apparent orchestration, the Department of Agriculture a few hours later endorsed NRC's new faith by promising to support a "system of production environmentally sensitive, sustainable, and whose products are viewed as safe." The NRC study, which began as a survey of the promise of organic farming, was delayed a couple of years by reshufflings of staff and frequent changes in orientation. The "organic" characterization gave way to the less controversial and more broadly descriptive term, "alternative," and the result is a product more tasteful to the rigorous thinkers in the research community. It consists of chapters on economics, research, and problems that accompany conventional farming, plus case examples of successful alternative farms. According to John T. Pesek, chairman of the agronomy department at
Iowa State University and chairman of the NRC committee that did the study, alternative agriculture represents the third, or environmental, wave of the agricultural revolution. Earlier phases were the mechanization and chemical eras. But the productivity they achieved turned out to have high social, economic, and environmental costs. "Up to 3 billion tons of topsoil erode from U.S. farms each year, seriously threatening fertility," he said at last week's news briefing. "In addition to silts, pesticides and fertilizers in agricultural runoff have become important nonpoint sources of surface water pollution in the U.S. The presence of pesticide and animal-drug residues in foods has become a significant health concern in the minds of some consumers." So the answer has been such practices as crop diversification, integrated pest management, disease prevention in livestock, and genetic improvements in crops to improve resistance to pests, diseases, and drought. Needed now, the panel says, is a serious research effort by USDA and industry that would view farming as a total system that integrates data on soil, fertility, chemical inputs, and the relationships between pests and their predators. USDA's low-input, sustainable September 11, 1989 C&EN
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