March 24 Daily News editorial

Washington’s long-running battle to keep the federal government from turning Hanford nuclear reservation into a toxic waste dump received a legal boost this month. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the state has the authority to regulate mixed transuranic wastes buried at the south-central Washington reservation. The decision upholds the state Department of Ecology’s 2003 order instructing the federal government to remove and process the equivalent of 75,000 55-gallon radioactive waste at Hanford, according to Associated Press writer Nicholas K. Geranios.

The case does not involve the most radioactive waste at Hanford — the toxic soup stored in 177 aging underground tanks. It instead covers radioactive clothing and equipment, known as transuranic waste. Nevertheless, the decision is a significant win for the state. It establishes that Washington can enact laws governing the handling of nuclear waste stored within its borders.

This is an important precedent — one we would hope the Obama administration allows to stand without an appeal to the nation’s high court. The federal government overreaches when it argues that Washington should have no say whatsoever in how radioactive waste is stored within the state — just as Washington voters overreached in 2004, when they passed an initiative barring the shipment of any radioactive waste to Hanford until all existing waste has been cleaned up.

Washington officials declined to fight last year’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, which effectively repealed the 2004 citizens’ initiative. State officials recognized that pursuing an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court would have been a waste of money better spent on the cleanup. U.S. Department of Energy officials should follow their wise example, and get on with the cleanup.

This month’s ruling does not deprive the federal government of the authority it needs to safely deal with the country’s nuclear waste. As the Tri-City Herald noted in a recent report on the decision, the DOE can continue disposing of untreated transuranic waste at the national repository in Carlsbad, N.M. Federal law allows this exemption for such low-level radioactive waste. But the appeals court said the exemption doesn’t cover the storage of this waste at Hanford and other sites not designed for its safe disposal.

The state should have a say in how radioactive waste is stored within its borders. Washington’s 2003 order at issue in this case required the federal government to either store the transuranic waste at Hanford according to standards set by the state or send it to the New Mexico repository for permanent burial. That’s reasonable. If the state cannot ban future shipments of this waste, it certainly should be able to insist on strict storage requirements.