Activists Oppose DOE Plan for Plutonium

Nearly three dozen activist groups are calling on the Energy Department to draft a new environmental impact statement for plutonium consolidation at Idaho National Laboratory, arguing that an assessment issued in July underestimates the risk that workers would be contaminated under the current plan. “The plutonium impact statement was completely inadequate, and if we proceed with what DOE is proposing, there will be accidents and there will be contamination,” says Jeremy Maxand, executive director of the Snake River Alliance, an Idaho-based nuclear watchdog group. In an Oct. 17 statement, the groups expressed particular concern with the “likelihood” of workers being exposed to deadly isotopes. As recently as 2003, they note, workers at DOE's Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico were contaminated with plutonium, which is used in radioisotope power systems to generate heat and electricity for NASA spacecraft and satellites. DOE currently has radioisotope power system programs at its Idaho, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge laboratories. DOE wants to consolidate these operations at the Idaho lab, which it describes as “highly secure,” and says the radiological impact on workers and the general public would be “small and well below regulatory limits.”