Feds seek to bring nuclear waste to Idaho

IDAHO FALLS (AP) - Idaho will grant a one-time waiver to the U.S. Department of Energy to bring nuclear waste into the state for research purposes if certain conditions are met, Gov. Butch Otter said.

In a letter to U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, Otter said spent fuel rods can enter the state if the federal agency commits to resolving noncompliance issues from a 1995 agreement, the Post Register reports in a story on Wednesday.

Idaho has banned shipments since January 2013 after the Department of Energy missed a cleanup deadline at the Idaho National Laboratory in southeastern Idaho.

In the 1995 agreement struck between the federal government and then-Gov. Phil Batt, a Republican, the Department of Energy was required to remove all high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel from Idaho by 2035, and also meet other deadlines along the way. The fear was that buried nuclear waste would seep into the huge Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer, which provides water to much of the state's agriculture industry.

In a letter to Otter obtained by the newspaper, Moniz said funding for the research associated with bringing in the nuclear waste would bring up to $20 million annually through the end of the decade. Twenty-five spent fuel rods would arrive in June and another 25 in January 2016.

Earlier this month Idaho's Department of Environmental Quality said it would fine the U.S. Department of Energy $3,600 per day for missing a Dec. 31 deadline involving tanks containing radioactive material.

Federal officials in November said a waste treatment facility planned to be operational by now to deal with the material in those tanks won't be ready for months. The Department of Energy said malfunctions with the $571 million Integrated Waste Treatment Unit continue to cause delays turning 900,000 gallons of liquid waste into a solid form. The high-level radioactive waste came from processing spent nuclear fuel from U.S. Navy ships. Currently it's stored in tanks at the INL's Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center.

The federal agency last month said low-level radioactive waste that's supposed to be sent out of Idaho is backing up because an underground nuclear waste repository in southern New Mexico is not taking shipments due to recent mishaps.