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Workers at the INL are helping remove nuclear waste material buried in the Arco desert. This material is known as transuranic waste, stuff like gloves, body suits and other items contaminated by radiation.
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INL
LINE Commission chairman Jeff Sayer explains to lawmakers the 6 priorities in the final recommendations.
credit:
Aaron Kunz
BOISE, Idaho — The Idaho nuclear task force presented its final report to lawmakers Wednesday afternoon. It’s raising concerns from environmentalists who say it leaves the door open to transporting radioactive material into the state.
The Leadership in Nuclear Energy — or LINE Commission — lays out several priorities, like working with the federal government to finish the cleanup of nuclear waste at the Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls. And it asks state leaders to help *the federal government to develop nuclear policies and grow advanced educational programs.
Mike Hart is president of Partnership in Science and Technology, a pro-business association in Idaho Falls. He says the recommendations could help the INL maintain a leading role in advancing nuclear energy. Hart called it a clean energy technology that can help slow global warming.
“The reality is, we don’t factor in the cost of carbon,” he said. “We merely have a landfill in the sky where we dump gigatons of carbon and hope the globe doesn’t warm…but it is.”
Idaho’s leading anti-nuclear watchdog group, the Snake River Alliance, criticized the report for not shutting the door on possible nuclear waste shipments to Idaho.
The group’s executive director, Liz Woodruff, said in a prepared statement: “Idahoans should read this report very carefullly and ask themselves whether they believe, as this Commisison evidently does, that Idaho might somehow be able to cash in on our country’s worsening nuclear waste fiasco.” Read the full report here:
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