Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
10/2/2015
Former Idaho Governor Cecil Andrus this week sued the Department of Energy in an effort to obtain “the disclosure and release of agency records improperly withheld” regarding DOE’s planned shipments of research spent nuclear fuel into the state. Andrus previously tried to obtain information on the project through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, but the department responded with a heavily redacted version of the documents. “It is clear that the federal government is withholding information from the people of Idaho that will allow all of us to more completely assess what they have in mind in both the short and long term with regard to commercial spent fuel coming to Idaho,” Andrus said in a statement. “I don’t take legal action lightly, but I do believe the information that DOE has refused to provide is essential to protecting Idaho’s environment as well as protecting the integrity of Governor Batt’s historic agreement.”
Andrus claims DOE has formulated long-range plans to bring significantly larger amounts of commercial waste material to Idaho, and that without a commercial repository pathway the waste will linger in the state for much longer than anticipated. “Without DOE leveling with Idaho about both near-term and longer range plans we simply have no ability to assess the wisdom of what they are planning for the state,” Andrus said. “I suspect they know what they are planning will be very controversial and for that reason they want to keep it secret. That is simply unacceptable.”
DOE declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Andrus has joined with another former Idaho governor, Phil Batt, to protest the planned shipments of spent fuel. The former governors both worked to establish the 1995 Settlement Agreement banning additional spent fuel from entering the state; the accord would need to be waived in order for the research material to be brought into Idaho.
The fuel shipments would be necessary to support the department’s high-burnup fuel study, conducted by the Electric Power Research Institute at the Idaho National Laboratory. The research is aimed at better understanding the effects of high-burnup fuel aging on dry storage cask systems and to support DOE’s ongoing research and development to advance understanding of the long-term aging of spent fuel. The study plans to look at the technical, economic, and nonproliferation aspects of the fuel while also enabling fuel performance studies for the nuclear industry.
