Features

Environmentalists sue DOE over radioactive material

By Jessica Brice, The Associated Press
Friday February 15, 2002

SAN FRANCISCO — A San Francisco Bay area environmental advocacy group sued the Department of Energy Wednesday, claiming the department plans to ship radioactive material in unsafe containers to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 

Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. 

DOE spokesman Joe Davis would not comment Wednesday on the lawsuit or the shipment specified in the suit, but said that, in general, the DOE follows strict guidelines whenever shipping radioactive materials. 

“We have an incredible safety record,” he said. “We will only transfer if we can do so safely.” 

The suit alleges the DOE has “improperly granted itself a national security exemption” in order to bypass laws requiring it to study the potential environmental impacts of transporting plutonium in the proposed containers. 

The DOE wants to ship the plutonium as part of the massive cleanup of the Rocky Flats Technology Site in Colorado, a facility that was once used to produce components for nuclear weapons. The facility, which was shut down in 1989 after 40 years of production, is scheduled to be cleaned up by 2006. 

The group, represented by the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice, argues the plutonium should be shipped in containers that could withstand an accident that might occur during transport. 

Trent Orr, lead attorney in the suit, said the group hopes to get a ruling restricting the DOE from making the shipments until an environmental impact study is conducted, determining the safest way to transport the plutonium. 

“The chances of an accident are relatively remote,” Orr said. “But if it does happen...potentially hundreds or thousands of people could be exposed.”