The WIPP Trail, A KNME Follow Up

Good evening, I'm Roger Morris, and this is KNME's special follow-up discussion and analysis of the Whip Trail, the documentary you have just seen on the controversial nuclear white storage facility planned near Carlsbad in Southeastern New Mexico. With us tonight are two distinguished panels composed of senior government officials and consultants very seriously responsible for the safety and effectiveness of Whip and citizen critics who have long studied and monitored the project. Together they will be discussing the full range of issues surrounding Whip, not only to clarify the technical questions of need and safety, but also the project's political, social, and economic implications. Whip. No set of initials, no single issue has so agitated New Mexicans in recent months. From crowded, often stormy public hearings, to the quieter but equally sharp exchange of scientific claims and conflicting appraisals. Almost from the beginning, more than a decade

ago, there were questions raised about the project, but that debate remained obscure, the issues largely hidden, until the facility neared completion and opening in 1988-89. And opposition groups, chiefly the concerned citizens for nuclear safety and citizens for alternatives to radioactive dumping, mounted major protests and one impressive media attention as well as political support from New Mexico, Congressman Bill Richardson, and other leaders. Today, more than ever, Whip is an ambitious and expensive project, haunted by contradiction. In charge is the U.S. Department of Energy, the home of some of the best scientific talent in the nation. Yet DOE is also an agency under fire and in internal agony, recently charged with neglect and even cover-up in its administration of nuclear facilities. Only last week, Whip and DOE got a major boost with nuclear regulatory commission approval of true PAC-2, the container designed to carry nuclear waste aboard trucks to the Whip

side. Yet at the same time, there were disturbing questions about whether the certification included proper testing for crushing the kind of road accident DOE experts themselves say maybe the most likely. And still, basic questions remain about the Whip side itself. Is it a technological marvel perpetually safe, as its backers claim, or is it sooner or later, doomed to ooze some devastation for future generations, if not our own? All that and more in our panels tonight. Our first panel will address questions of safety and of the crucial relationship between federal and state authorities in the Whip issue. Our guests tonight include Dr. Al Lapin, Division Supervisor of Nuclear Waste Technology, and its Department at Sandia National Laboratories. He's been involved in the Whip project for some six years. Don Hancock is Director of the Nuclear Waste Safety Program of Albuquerque's

Southwest Research and Information Center, and a long-time critic of the Whip project. Dr. Kirkland Jones is Deputy Director of New Mexico State Environmental Improvement Division in charge of waste management, including radioactive waste. And Robert Neal for the past 11 years has been Director of the Environmental Evaluation Group, the state's federally funded watchdog on Whip Standards of Safety. Dr. Lapin will begin with you. As you will know, there have been various criticisms mounted of the Whip project that it is near aquifers, that it may pollute groundwater, that it's already leaking brine. How can you even apart from these criticisms guarantee the safety of a project of this kind, not for 10 years, but for the 10,000 years or longer that we're talking about? And what makes you think that burial is the way to go in dealing with the nuclear waste crisis?

Well, I think the first part of the answer is that I have to believe myself that waste is better off 2100 feet under the surface of the ground than it is on the surface. Many of the waste now are stored on the surface. So I think, fundamentally, you have to believe that the waste is better off if it's more than 2,000 feet below the surface. In terms of the predictive question, I've been involved for six years developing a predictive capability for the behavior of the entire system. There's no question that the behavior is somewhat more complex than we thought it was 10 years ago, but we are developing a large degree of confidence, not necessarily that. At this point in time, we can predict behavior for 10,000 years for all of the parameters involved, but that within five years, by the end of an experimental phase, that it is planned and in the program that we will have reliable

predictive capability that extends to that period of time. We're doing a lot of lab studies and in situ studies and numerical modeling studies. Yes, it's a very complex system, but we're putting a large effort into being sure that at the end of the experimental phase, we do indeed have all of the predictive tools available, up and running, and that they have been used to demonstrate confidence. Mr. Hancock, Dr. Lapin says he'll be able to predict what will happen with WIP. They've spent now over $700 million, I think, on the project. What makes you and your colleagues, among the critics, think that you can predict failure for this project in opposition to all of this scientific authority and all of these resources expended now by the federal government? We don't want to predict failure. What we want to do is try to ensure as much as possible that the questions are answered ahead of time

and that, indeed, the proponents of the project, DOE, in this case, are able to prove that it is going to meet the standards. That's the requirement that any other facility has to meet. The Environmental Protection Agency disposal standards for radioactive waste repositories are standards that apply to WIP and other repositories. DOE has known for more than a decade that they have to meet those standards before any waste goes in the ground. Most recently, because they can't show that they meet those standards, they have come up with what I consider a ruse, a way of getting the facility open, the experimental plan that Dr. Lapin referred to, as a way of getting waste in the ground, because I think there is good reason to believe, in terms of the way DOE has structured the program and run the program, that their main objective is to get waste in the ground. Are you suggesting a kind of scientific bad faith here on the part of the deal? No, there are two issues here.

One is scientists like Dr. Lapin and the kind of work that they are allowed to do, the kind of money they're given, the kind of restrictions are put on and the kind of staff that they have versus just look at what's happened in the last six and seven years. They've been constructing the facility, they've been putting their money into drilling holes, doing the tunneling underground, building the surface buildings, not to looking at all the technical questions. The Department of Energy's goal, which is not necessarily the goal of all the scientists who work for DOE on the project, but DOE is the one that makes the decisions ultimately. Their goal has been to get this facility open as soon as possible. They first said it was going to open in 1986. Then they said it would open in 1988. Then they said it would open in 1989. Their goal, and what they have led the program with, what they have requested money from Congress for, what they have told the public in New Mexico and all over the country, is this facility is going to be open soon and it's going to start taking

waste from Idaho and Colorado. That's their objective. The health and safety objectives should be the primary objective. But unfortunately, it's played at best second fiddle to purring up the project. Let's get the waste moving. Let's get it transported. Let's get it in the ground someplace. Dr. Jones, Mr. Hancock says that in effect that DOE has an imperative here, which is bureaucratic. You're a state official, most responsible for New Mexico's interest in all of this. Do you think DOE has been doing an honest and forthright job scientifically or is there some bureaucratic imperative, which is driving them beyond the standards here of safety and common sense? I'd say there's on both sides of the issue, there are people who have a philosophical position in their attempting to use science to reinforce it. The position of the state is of course that we're only interested in the health and safety of the citizens in this

generation and future generations. But we can see on both sides that people are using a science to try and reinforce a philosophy that they have. It has an EID been generally more willing to accept the DOE view of this project than the view of the critics. No, I think the DOE has provided more hard data that we were able to examine and to that degree we had more effort to review what they had to say. Are you satisfied that the DOE has the long term interests of the people of this state at heart or as much at heart as they do in what Mr. Hancock suggests, getting that nuclear waste moved out of rocky flats and other sites around the nation, which is a very important issue for the nation at large? I think their primary focus has to be on the national level. I think they're very concerned about disposing a waste at the national level. But I think we at the state level have to look at it from the standpoint of there is waste on the surface here in the state of

New Mexico that needs to be put away safely and that we must reinforce all of the necessary safeguards to ensure that there not be any leakage. Mr. Neal, you're the watchdog of all of this process and you've been the watchdog for more than a decade. Critics say that sometimes the evaluation group is a watchdog without teeth. I've heard DOE officials say that you're too meddlesome in their affairs. What's your view of this debate as an outsider and yet an insider at the same time? Is DOE meeting the scientific standards they should be meeting? Do they have the safety and health concerns at heart that Mr. Hancock suggests? Or are they sacrificing those interests in behalf of some bureaucratic timetable? As you know, the role of EEG is neither as a proponent nor as an uphone of whip. The fundamental issue that we're really identifying here is one of safety. Can these materials

be brought to Carlsbad safely and in place safely? You're really divided into two phases. The first is on an operational considerations. DOE is not yet completed. All of the necessary work to indicate that they can handle these materials in a safe manner. For example, one must rely upon instrumentation to detect radiation. Those systems are not yet in effect or if they've been checked out in the mind to assure that if a release did occur, one can detect it and divert the airflow. With respect to the long-term safety considerations, the Federal Agency EPA sets standards for the safe disposal of trans-oranic waste. They're identical to the standards for high-level waste. These were issued about four years ago. The Department has said that they will not be able to complete their determination that the facility can meet these long-term standards until about October 93. I think that Mr. Lapis Dr. Lapis is certainly correct in pointing out that their enormous amount of studies

have been conducted. There's work that's been ongoing to try to characterize that real estate to get a better understanding of the geology in order to better predict the future. Not ultimately, in order to be able to say that this is a safe facility for a long-term disposal, one must show that the documentation indicates that you can meet those standards. Dr. Lapis, let me ask you. It's clear that the people of New Mexico at this point or at least many of them don't entirely believe what the DOE tells them. You've got a credibility problem in this state and elsewhere in the nation. What steps should the Department take to deal with that problem? Should you be more open? Do you have data that you're not releasing that would make some of this criticism less harsh and less effective than it's been? Let me answer this way. I was directly involved full-time basis in preparing a major report in support of what's called the supplemental environmental impact statement.

The size. The draft size. I can say that I think it is probably the healthiest thing that has happened in years within the project. The marching orders that we were given consistently by DOE management, by Sandia management, was to be absolutely upfront about all of the uncertainties that we identified within our understanding of the entire system. We took that approach and I might incidentally add that that began early in January, so it predates some of the recent discussions. From my perspective, that technical approach of being absolutely open and upfront about the uncertainties is a great step forward. As long as those uncertainties exist, do you expect the political authorities or the scientific authorities in this state to give you a green light or do you have to do more

in order to win their approval? Certainly we do. Certainly we have to do more. That really is the objective of the five-year experimental phase is based on the present understanding and the present uncertainties to do our best to do the experiments that are required to demonstrate confidence in the reduction of those uncertainties and in being sure that we have things squared around. The first step was really to admit to the uncertainties to be upfront about the ranges in the databases and some of those problems and now then to resolve them in the next five years. Gentlemen, let me ask an open question here. Do any of you believe that any agency of the U.S. government, including certainly the Department of Energy, is going to spend almost a billion dollars, in this case over $700 million on a project, find at the end of that process that it really doesn't work as it expected it to and walk away from it? Well, it has happened. It only happens though under two circumstances. One is when citizens

and government officials do their job to encourage the federal agency, whether it's DOE or another federal agency who's made a mistake to sort of give them away to say, okay, the mistake's been made, we need to go on to someplace else. So one key component is that people get involved and require some accountability of the federal agencies and the state government. And the other is that there are independent technical people that aren't wedded to a particular viewpoint who actually have the resources and the time and the ability to look at the technical issues so that you really do have the independent kind of analysis that the average person who may not know all of the acronyms that we throw around or understand plutonium and some of these other kinds of things, to feel like, yeah, you know, it looks

like there's somebody that doesn't have such a vested interest in keeping it going or getting it stopped. And I think that on the first area, people getting more involved, that's one of the things that's happened in the last couple of years. And frankly, from my perspective of working on weapon other way sites for the last more than 12 years, that's been a key factor in putting the onus on and requiring the kinds of things that have been done most recently. The uncertainties have been there for a long time. The geologic problems we're talking about are not new. They've been talked about for years, but they haven't been taken very seriously. But the other thing, that independent kind of review, we're still missing because the Department of Energy, whether it's the certification of the true pack where they don't let NRC go the whole way, whether it's the compliance with the EPA standards that DOE wants to be the judge of that, not letting EPA be the judge of it, until we get that second one in place, where there really is independent

oversight. So it's not just Dr. Lappin, who's saying, this is what the data show, his data can be put out, so other people can look at it, and other people can agree, yes, that's right. Or no, that's not right. What about these other factors? Dr. Jones, isn't that part of the responsibility of state environmental officials, someone in your job, to make an independent evaluation? Absolutely. And that's been recognized for a long time. But it was also recognized a long time ago that the state did not have as much resource to put on this project as DOE could muster. And that's why Bob and his group was created so that there would be an independent full-time technical group watching over DOE and advising the health and environment department as to what actions we should take. Do you feel you have the resources you need now? Oh, I never have enough resource. The problems are far too magnificent for us to approach with the few state workers that we have. So that's why it's critical that Bob continues.

You point out one thing, though, that I consider a plus. Do you always going to go through a five-year test plan? And at the end of that period, there are going to be some other critical permit activities that will take place. That is a major event for the state. That is a point in which we can demand that the federal government withdraw if they cannot demonstrate without any equivocation that they can meet the standards. And you're prepared to do that. You're prepared to make that stand. Mr. Neal, let me ask you. This issue is not a loan, a scientific issue. It's a constitutional issue. States rights, if you will, between the state government and the federal government. Are you satisfied now that there is, in fact, the right spirit of cooperation on all sides? Is the federal government pushing New Mexico around on this issue? Do you feel as if you as a state official are heated by Dr. Lapin and his colleagues? Or is there a tension

and is there a big brother, little brother problem here? Well, I don't think the relationship is one of a big brother, little brother. I think invariably there is tension and there should be. People do differ in their technical evaluation of the significance of events. When analogy I've used, when you tell your own brother what is going to happen 10,000 years hence, it's very difficult to gain concurrence or agreement on that. And that's one of the reasons why WIP, although as you point out, the 700 million has been spent to date, will come in eventually at over $2.5 billion. There is one major check and balance to make very clear on it. And that is EPA, a neutral independent federal agency, has set standards for the safe disposal. DOE is obligated to demonstrate that they have the capacity to meet those standards. It's a very complex series of requirements. It goes on for about 40 pages. You have to demonstrate that there will be a limited migration of waste in 1,000 years and in 10,000 years. And on the revised standards

there are even some additional time constraints. So the department must put on the table their documentation and demonstration. And this provides an opportunity to groups such as EEG and as well as Kirk's group, as well as the independent types that Don spoke of to evaluate whether or not that has been adequately performed. And right now there is legislation pending before Congress to provide some responsibilities to people other than DOE. The way the system now stands, DOE has the right to self-certify how well they have met these standards. And under some of the proposed changes for the Land withdrawal bill, this would give some authorities to other agencies as well. If the findings of all of these mechanisms turn out to be troublesome for DOE, are you considering now Dr. Lappen back up, fail safe mechanisms in this process? Are you looking at on-site storage schemes inside DOE? Is there a fallback position if whip effect comes a cropper with all of these studies?

Let me first just make sure we all understand one thing. And that is that I am here representing San Diego National Labs. I am not a DOE representative. I can assure you, just from my information and understanding within the project, that the commitment to retrieve all of the waste at whip, if indeed the compliance turns out to be negative, that that commitment is taken absolutely seriously. There is no question I don't believe in anybody's mind about that. That at the end of five years, if you don't meet compliance, you will indeed retrieve. On the other hand, I am not privy to all of the ongoing discussions about what might be done with it after it was retrieved. But from what you know of the way DOE operates and the standards that are applied here during these five years, would you be confident to let your grandchildren have a picnic near the website or have your son or daughter living on one of the routes through which the trucks will come?

Yes. I would personally, again, this is non-technical, but personally, I feel that the risks involve are much less than living downwind from a coal-fired power plant. You feel like not an issue that is being discussed here, but I do feel that way. Dr. Jones? My office is only a few feet away from the whip route. So a certain amount of that waste is literally going to go past my doorstep. And I am not concerned about it from that standpoint. I do think that we are about to get into an arena where we start talking about relative risk. And I am not sure that that is what the citizens want to talk about. I think what the citizens want to talk about is, whip is a new risk, a different risk, a risk that they never bought into. And they don't want to talk about it in terms of comparing it to some other. They want to talk about whether or not they should accept that risk to begin with. Is it a relative risk, Mr. Hencock, or are there worse alternatives? It is a relative risk, but it is not just a relative risk. It is an absolute risk. The Department of Energy itself, in the size document that was mentioned earlier, talks

about nine people being killed in more than 100 injured from whip transportation. That is a risk that seems to me is a relative risk, but it is an absolute one to people who might be killed or injured. It is one that at this point is not clear that they should be faced with at all. One of the curious things about the Department of Energy's analysis, that Dr. Lapin mentioned, is that analysis shows that the strategy that kills and injures the most people is doing the program that they have proposed, shipping the waste to whip by truck and putting it underground. Of the three alternatives they looked at, that is the one that kills and injures the most people, so that is the one they want to do. It is a little hard for me and I think for the average citizen to understand how that shows the priority to health and safety when they are picking the alternative that their own analysis shows is the one that causes the most problems. They haven't even looked at all the reasonable alternatives that they

are both legally and I think morally and from a policy standpoint required to look at. Those are questions that people have and I think one of the things that is interesting about all of this, I went around to a number of those hearings that we are talked about. The concerns that people have are certainly in New Mexico, but a lot of the concerns I heard were not just in New Mexico either. I think one of the things that has happened is people in general understand just that it is a national problem, but it is not just the Department of Energy that is going to decide what the national interest is, what the public interest is, because frankly DOE is a record of evaluating the national interest in the public interest in the last few decades has been pretty poor and an increasing number of people all over the country are coming to that conclusion. Mr. Neal, if we allow Whip to Open and by we, I mean the body politic of the United States, if this goes forward, are we going to be sitting here five years from now or six years from

now engaged in a debate about the data that emerges from that hole in the ground, debating whether it is still safe, whether we can go ahead with another five year experimental program. Aren't we looking at a kind of open-ended process here in which there is no apparent resolution? Well, the effort to demonstrate compliance with the standards that EPA has written is largely a series of calculations that one can do some experiments which will provide some useful data which may be helpful in that area, but largely the exercise is one of using probabilistic risk assessments and will not be that dependent upon the actual measurements. The question again which was referred to on relative risks that these can be a very useful tool in comparing the hazards of different activities, but relative risks can be used to trivialize any risk.

For example, in New Mexico we have over 500 deaths a year on automobile accidents. If you use automobile accident statistics as a yardstick of comparison, you could almost trivialize any risk which would wind up with, you know, occurring less than 500 deaths. The EPA standards permit 1,000 deaths over a 10,000 year period, and again those are calculational type of approaches. But no, I don't think that it would be an end, although data will certainly be debated, I think that one can get closure on these issues by people to address the calculations, to evaluate the consequences, using ranges of values, using probabilities, and reach the conclusion that yes, this facility does meet those standards for safe disposal or no, it does not. One of the things we would like to see addressed, however, that if it doesn't meet the standards, what will deal with it? EEG has been pressing the department for several years to say, well, if it doesn't work out, what are you going to do?

Will you return these waste Idaho? Will you ship them back and come back? And do you have an answer to that question? Yes. So you're reluctant to commit to it, and yet in Nevada, on the high level waste standard, NRC is requiring DOE to submit to respond to that question and provide plans before they can begin construction. I see. That's a considerable difference. So we really don't have a resolution of the important scientific questions. I take it that the verdict of this panel, at least, is that the verdict is still out. If the issues of scientific and technological concern seem complex and controversial to you, that is even more the case with political and social and economic problems with WIP, and the next segment of our panels will discuss those issues. In this segment, we now turn to the political, economic, social, and even medical issues associated

with the WIP controversy and the project. We have four more authoritative panelists on the WIP trail. With us tonight is Mr. James Bickel, Assistant Manager of the Department of Energy's Projects and Energy Program of the DOE Albuquerque Operations Office. Ms. Milo Riesen, Executive Director of the Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping, and a Vocal Critic of the Project. Mayor Bob Forrest of Karlsbad is an enthusiastic advocate of WIP, who sees the project as an economic asset to his town and region. And Dr. Ted Davis, an emergency medicine specialist who has received special advance training in the management of radiation accidents.

Let me begin with you, Mr. Bickel. I brought along with me a recent reprint of a subcommittee on energy and commerce in the House of Representatives from June 1989, and I thought I would begin by simply reading to you part of the table of contents of this Congressional report. Its titles, I think, are emblematic of one of the problems you face. They read DOE fails to acknowledge its problems, health and safety problems are real. DOE rewards the wrong people, DOE fails to reward the right people, DOE suffers from an attitude problem. These are some of your vocal critics in the U.S. Congress, and you know you have those critics as well in New Mexico. Let me ask you why the people of New Mexico, with all the problems that have beset the Department of Energy in terms of credibility, FBI investigations and all the rest, why should they believe what DOE tells them about the WIP project? Well, first of all, there's about a 45-year relationship between the Department of Energy

before that, the Atomic Energy Commission and Energy Resource and Development Agency with the State of New Mexico, the Department of Energy has been one of the main employers in the State of New Mexico over those 45 years. And during that period of time, there have been a lot of positive things which have occurred not only in the State of New Mexico, but within the nation. I think part of the problem that we're suffering from now is that people are focusing on the negative things and not the positive things, but we are doing a lot of positive things as well as negative things. And certainly, the Department of Energy is one of the major employers in the State of New Mexico. I believe over 15 percent of the economic activity within the State of New Mexico comes from the Department of Energy. But you'd agree, I think that even that history and even the number of employees in the state wouldn't justify failures or neglect or misleading the public on crucial issues of health and safety to do with WIP.

Well, first of all, I can only speak for the Albuquerque Operations Office of which I'm part of. And I don't feel that we have misled the public. I feel that we've been very forthright. And of course, the thing that we're here to talk about today is the WIP project. And I know that as far as WIP is concerned, we've been very forthright all the information that we have available, we make available to other people. And certainly when Secretary Watkins took over as Secretary of the Department of Energy, he recognized the credibility as being a major problem that he had. And in order to try to rectify that problem, he's come up with his ten point plan where he's trying to work with the states at the grassroots level. He's trying to clean up some of the problems that we have around the country as far as environmental restoration is concerned. There's a lot of positive things which we're trying to do in order to get that credibility back. Not the least of which was when he took over, in order to give the WIP project more credibility, he did establish a blue ribbon panel which will be looking at the safety aspects of WIP. And he, Secretary Watkins, has to be convinced that the facility is safe, and he's using this blue ribbon panel to

do that. And he won't make the determination to open the facility until he makes that determination. Mr. Wilson, how do you feel about the credibility of the Department of Energy and of WIP? Are you going to be satisfied if Secretary Watkins comes up with a clean bill of health here with his review, or are you skeptical in the long term about this agency? Well, I think that the credibility of the DOE is at an all-point low. And I'm not particularly impressed with Admiral Watkins. Admiral Watkins came to New Mexico and he said that WIP wouldn't open until he was sure that it's safe. We have environmental protection, the agency standards, to determine whether or not a project is safe. We don't have to rely on personalities. We don't have to rely on Admiral Watkins' personal assurances that the project is safe. As far as the blue ribbon panel goes, there are no environmentalists on that panel. We are not represented. The citizens groups are not represented on the

panel. On my dad, on that, though, when the blue ribbon panel was established, each governor and the three primarily affected states, which are Idaho, Colorado, and New Mexico, all were allowed to nominate one of the representatives that would be on that panel. It was not the Department of Energy that selected any one of those three individuals. The department did select two other individuals to serve on that panel. Well, you can't say that Gary Corrothers, who is an assistant to James Wat, is going to choose an environmentalist for the panel. And I don't think that Mr. Tom Bart is going to satisfy the environmentalists and represent their concerns. Mr. Baker, you've acknowledged in your opening comments that you've got a political and credibility problem here. Isn't that something of a stacked deck? Isn't she right about Governor Corrothers and his past record as well? Don't you need some of these outside critics drawn into the process more?

Well, first of all, let me answer it this way. I've never been associated with any project that has more independent oversight groups looking over it than the WIP project. Let's just look at a few of them. Previously, you had Bob Nealon from the Environmental Evaluation Group. You got Curtlyn Jones representing the Environmental Improvement Division for the state of New Mexico. We have a WIP panel, the National Academy of Scientists, WIP panel. We have what we call the A-Hern Committee. That was a committee which was set up to start up the Savannah River reactors. They're overlooking it. We have the Blue Ribbon Panel and even where the test plan is concerned, we have active participation by the Environmental Protection Agency and where true package is concerned, we have the NRC. So we have many, many people who are not directly associated with the WIP project who are serving in an oversight role. In fact, the biggest problem we have right now in trying to get the project open is trying to coordinate all the various comments we get from all these various oversight groups and trying to bring them all together into one cohesive story, whether it be the

test plan or the safety analysis or report or whatever. It's very difficult trying to be responsive to so many groups and that's the problem that we're trying to come to grasp with right now. Mayor Forrest, for you, of course, the WIP project is not only a scientific undertaking. It's also jobs for Eddie County and for Carl's bad. Some 600, I think, jobs. That means not only a payroll, but it means collateral industry and development for your region. And you've been a big booster of WIP in large measure as a result of that. Do you think that your concern for the economic development of your community may have blinded you to some of the technical and scientific problems of safety in this project? Yeah, a lot, I don't think so. The WIP project goes back to almost 18 years. And when the atomic energy, and we contact them, and if anybody wants to get credit for having WIP in the state of New Mexico, it has to be southeastern New Mexico. And I think if anybody can stop WIP, whether it's now or five years later, it will be the

city of Carl's bad and the city of Hobbes. And I think we'll do that if it proves it's not safe. But going back over the history of WIP, and when we met with the atomic energy and they made their game plan, they told us the process how it would work. And we could look at almost a billion dollars being spent in our area. And at any time, we felt like WIP wasn't safe. They would stop and go look for another site. They had to have the community public support. And they didn't have that in Lions, Kansas. And it was the city of Carl's bad, the former mayor. And I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't. There was legislators that got involved. They went there and they got them to come to look at the Carl's bad area because they felt like the salt was the place to put it. And when you look at the process and see what's happened in the stages, it took six years to drill almost 500 holes out there. They finally decided on a location. And after they did that, they came in here and built almost $750 million plant facility. The next step is a transportation project. And the next step is a testing. Well, the building, the facilities out there, if you've ever toured WIP or you've been through the facilities, you wouldn't believe

the overkill. Only the government could afford a project like this. We've got safety out there. We're ruining our miners in the area. Everybody wants to go to work out there. They know that working conditions are the safest that money can buy. We think it's a state of the art building. We think that's problems been solved. Number two is transportation. And if you're going to hard on the highway, you're going to use a truck and that's what they want to do. They went out and they spent $40 million on a container. They got 160 trucking companies to bid on the contract. They awarded to the Mexico firm. It'll be the only 18 wheeler going 55 miles an hour on the interstate. But I think it's the safest facility in yesterday. A true pack got certified. And now there's already complaints that they rushed through the process. It took two years. We spent $40 million. Number three is a scientific study. And that's where the most important thing is next. And we're going to wait for that. And there's got to be a lot of answers that still need to be answered. But they can't be answered until we get some waste in there to do the study. But that safety factor has always been a very important part of the system of Carl's bed. And I'll

guarantee you this. I'll lead the fight to lead DOE out the community door if it doesn't prove safe. But DOE's credibility didn't get ruined in Carl's bed in New Mexico. Maybe it was Savannah River. Maybe it was Rocky flats. But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Those plants were 40 and 50 years old. And we're doing things today. We didn't do in those days. And if those plants would have been developed like the whip project, they wouldn't have those problems today. But if you had if you had a viable economic development program in southeastern New Mexico, would would nuclear waste disposal be your industry of choice in Carl's bed? Would it prefer something like Carl's bed sport? Take the top three banks in the city of Carl's bed. Last year their profits were three and a half million dollars. The top three banks in Carl's bed in New Mexico. The top three banks in Santa Fe, New Mexico lost $485,000. So you're saying Carl's bed doesn't really need this project? No, it's not our life. We've got international minerals and chemical company there. The largest fertilizer producer in the world. We've

got pins all there. We've got Westinghouse there. We've got seven and a half unemployment. We've got a million people coming through the Carl's bed caverns. We've got a beautiful river. We've got Brantley Dan. We've got two national parks. We've got two state parks. We've got a quality of ideas to say tonight. We've got to find this town in the state of New Mexico. And we would no way run our natural resources or bring anything in there. I've got grandchildren, I own a tire companies in five different cities. And they almost surround the website. Dr. Davis, let me ask you. The mayor says it's not a life or death issue in economic terms. Is it a life and death issue in medical terms? Is Carl's bed overlooking and are the rest of us overlooking here crucial medical issues in this whole controversy? Roger, there certainly are some problems that could come up in terms of the medical management of accidents involving the whip transportation. We have heard discussed the new true pack that has been certified. First of all, the key test, which may be the crushed test, has never been performed on these containers. So we don't know exactly what

they will withstand. They haven't even been test to the point where they fail so that we know at what level of stress and fire these containers will actually fail. So we don't know what circumstances will lead to their rupture and possible dispersion of radioactive materials. So there are some valid criticisms about true pack and the safety of the transportation and those circumstances. Regarding the management of radiation accidents, there also are some serious considerations. The American College of Emergency Physicians, New Mexico chapter, testified before DOE, that they, the people who will be the de facto experts to handle radiation accidents from whip transportation problem, are not prepared to deal with it. There's not been adequate training. And even the hospitals do not have the appropriate detection equipment. The isotope that we're talking about being transported primarily on whip is plutonium, which is really considered to be one of the most carcinogenic and toxic materials known. And there are drugs that can be given to someone who inhales it or ingested

or gets it in a wound. That drug, which is DTPA, which I happen to bring some with me, is not available in New Mexico except at less almost labs. The drugs are not available. The detection equipment to pick up plutonium is not available. So those shipments started next week or next month or early next year. We're not really ready for the medical eventualities. Is that what you're saying? It's not only true. It's not only true in New Mexico, but I have pulled 25 hospital personnel around the country on the whip route. Oregon, Texas, Mississippi, Missouri, and New Mexico. With two exceptions, the hospitals that I've been able to reach in the physicians and nurses don't know about the project, first of all, generally. And they certainly not prepared to handle any sort of accident that may occur involving whip. Mr. Bickle, can you guarantee absolutely no accidents if this five-year program goes into effect and that we're not going to be facing a medical emergency year that we can't handle?

Well, nothing is without risk. And we still do not project that we will ever have an accident in which there will be a breach container. However, we have taken every precaution to take what I call a belt and suspender approach to the whip project. And we have a very extensive outreach program where we have gone around to the various cities that are along the shipping route, the route shipping route. We put on courses in what we call first responder. Those are the people who would be the first people on a scene. Also, we've had what we call command and control courses. And those are the people who would take charge of an accident scene, whether it involves true PAC or any other hazardous material. Also, we've even put on courses to take care of what we think will never happen. And that is no migration. I mean, mitigation courses on how you would clean up a site if there was a spill. Now, we did hear the comments about the fact that the hospitals were not prepared in the state to deal with a radiological emergency. We've been working through what we call the reacts people. I'm not sure what that acronym stands for. I know the doctor does at Oak Ridge.

They have put on courses in five cities in the state of New Mexico, Carlsbad, Hobbes, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Ratthone. We've gone to two cities in Wyoming, one in Utah, and also one in Idaho. And it's our full intention. And we're leaving up the states to designate what hospitals they want us to go to. But whatever hospitals they want us to go to, we will go to them and we will put on this kind of training. Again, we're leaving nothing unturned as far as assuring that we do ship this material to the website in the safest way that we can. Should we even begin a pilot storage program here without all of these assurances being met, without these medical preparations, without the fullest safety provisions that we can make? It seemed prudent that before beginning to move extraordinarily hazardous carcinogenic materials on the highway, there should be adequate training and preparedness. The issue that's been brought up about reacts going to some cities now and providing some training,

I did encounter the one city in Wyoming where they had had training, but you have to realize there may be more than a hundred hospitals on these routes. Plus, the Whip Project was slated to open last year in October. There was absolutely no training. When there were none of these preparations. When none of this had occurred, now it's curious to me as how after a project has been on the books for 12 or 15 years, has this whole notion of training physicians and hospitals to deal with these accidents been overlooked until a physician testifies before the DOE. What could happen to the people of Albuquerque or Santa Fe or Carl's Bad, the Mayor's own community here, if this unlikely breach did in fact take place? What are we talking about in terms of potential casualties and the potential impact of an accident of that kind? Well, let me answer that. We did an analysis in the supplemental environmental impact statement, which was what we called an upper bounding case, where we assumed that there would be a breach of all the three true-pack containers, which is a rather rash assumption, and that after that breach occurred that the true-pack containers would be emerged in

a fuel fire for excess of 30 minutes. Based on the calculations that we did, we projected that there would be what we called 0.33 excess latent cancer fatalities as a result of that accident, and that was a very conservative analysis. Now, admittedly, one of the criticisms that we did received during the hearings is that we used the Rocky Flats waste, which did not have as higher carry count as a waste which would be coming from Santa Savannah River, so we're going to redo that analysis. I guess the other point I would make is that we're kind of in a darned, if we do, darned, if we don't, a situation here, we go out and we have these hearings in the public, we listen to what people are saying, we try to respond to them in a positive way, and then we're still criticized because we didn't do it sooner. We are listening, we're trying to be responsive to the public at large, and you know, give us a little bit of credit for that once in a while instead of always dwelling on the negative. This reason, are you unfair and you're dwelling on the negative here and your criticism of DOE? I'd just like to say, Mr. Bickel was just talking

about some calculations that were done by the DOE and the supplement to the Environmental Impact Statement. According to our state environmental evaluation group, in their summary of the sites, they say that the document contains mistakes and calculations, reflects an erroneous knowledge of the history of the project, presents tables without units and displays an indifference to the statistical precision of predictions. So, where do we go from there? What do we believe? It's hard for me in light of reading this to give much credence to what you say. On the other hand, you have heard an oversight group criticize the document that we've had. You have not heard our counter to Mr. Neal, and at the time we do that will be when we offer the record of decision. We don't agree with everything to Mr. Neal or some of these other groups have said we think that there are some misunderstandings, and I think as far as the calculation that I'm talking about, I think on that particular calculation, Mr. Neal is thinking that we should have

used a larger opening by approximately a factor of two times larger than what we used, but that would not dramatically change the results. The bottom line is that there are thousands and thousands of things going up this nation's highway every day, like gasoline trucks, propane trucks, that could cause a lot more damage than one of the part containing our true pack containers. And again, the National Academy of Sciences, and I should say final report, but the report that they just put out on the test plan, complemented the department on what we were doing in the transportation area, and said as a result of our actions that the probability of anything seriously happening in the transport of transuranic waste was extremely small, and that was the National Academy of Sciences. Would you want your son or daughter driving one of those trucks? The only way I would hesitate is being a truck driver and head on collision, but as far as what the contents are that we're carrying, a lot of other having driving one of those trucks, and I would have an oil tanker or a gasoline truck or a propane tanker.

Dr. Are we ready to go ahead with this five-year program, or do we have another two or three years of hard preparation in social and medical terms to deal with the problems we're discussing here? We've obviously got a controversy. A state evaluation group says that there are major gaps in DOE's calculations. DOE is going to answer them. Mr. Bickle acknowledges that there are problems along the route, although he feels that it's basically safe. We still got a controversy here. What are we going to resolve that? Is there any end point in this process? Well, it seems to me that in a sense, a medical problem is being reduced to a political decision. Do we want to have a situation where the hospitals and the personnel along the route are actually prepared with the equipment and the training and the drugs to manage a possible accident? Or are we not? It's really a political decision. A decision that should be made by the citizens. I can't give you exact figure on what the cost of that preparation would be, but it would take a lot of time and a lot of money to be adequately prepared.

For example, at Oak Ridge, they teach us that there are a number of different steps and procedures that need to be done in order to prepare an emergency room and its staff to deal with these problems. As far as I can tell, the surveys I have done have been within the last two months. By far, most community hospitals and emergency rooms are not prepared and equipped to handle an accident. Mayor Forrest, is that true of calls bad? Are you ready for anything that may happen with this project? I think we are. There's still some unanswered questions. Let me say something. New Mexico is a nuclear energy state. We got 70,000 people working in nuclear-related jobs in New Mexico. We created part of this problem. Are Uranium mines, Los Alamos and Sandia were part of the problem? If there's a solution out there and there might be and calls bad to Mexico, we want to help solve the problem. I've been to seven hearings. I've listened to all this and I have never heard anyone come up with any kind of a solution that's better than Whip or even any kind of a solution. None of them have a solution and we think that this Whip project might be it and we think that we've answered these questions.

We answered true back. We'll answer his questions about the medical supplies along the route but we're going to finish all these things one by one and I'll guarantee you that it'll get open one of these days. It may be a year from now but we're going to address all these problems but I wish Bob Neal would come to me and say, hey, I want to take you on the ground and I want to show you a crack that's dangerous or I want to show you the brine water. I want to show you something. I think you ought to know is the mayor of Crosbert that's going to endanger the health and welfare of this community but nobody comes to me. Nobody comes to you and nobody secret rooms. The only crack in the room out there is in a room that was drilled six years ago. DOE knew what was going to happen but anytime that salt creeps and comes back to a solid form, something's got to give. You're going to have those cracks. I took two resident managers of the Pot-Ice mines to the hearings in Santa Fe. They had a combined total experience of almost 90 years in the Pot-Ice Basin. Cracks are very common in the basin. Mr. Bickle, is there an alternative to whip? If whip turns out not to be safe, if you're not able to put together the program that you're talking about, is there a fallback plan at DOE for onsite disposal, for dealing

with the hazards of nuclear waste? We've spent over $700 million. We will spend some $2 billion on this project. Couldn't that money be spent to find some alternative means of dealing with this problem rather than bearing? Well, certainly when we did what we call the final environmental impact statement, the FICE in 1980, it looked at a number of alternatives such as injection into space, burial, undersea, transmutation by putting it into a reactor and making it something less long life. A variety of things were looked at, and for good reasons, all those alternatives were rejected. So now we're doing the supplemental EIS, and in that document we have three alternatives. One is to go ahead and proceed with the project as it is. The second one is to do our test program to scale it down and do it somewhere else, and the third alternative is the no-action alternative, and that would be to continue

to store the waste at the generator sites where it's being generated. And, of course, that suggestion doesn't make too much sense to people like Governor Romer Colorado. That would mean that we'd be storing that waste like $17,000. We're already upset with these things. We've got about 20 seconds. Ms. Reeson, can you respond to that? Are there alternatives we should be considering? Right. I think that what we need to do is keep the waste at the generator sites until we have developed safe technology to dispose of the waste. At this time, we have not developed the technology to transport the waste safely or to dispose of it safely, and it's foolish to rush ahead in order to expedite the future proliferation of nuclear bombs. This is what this is all about. We're trying to create space for the waste so that we can continue to make nuclear bombs. We already have 24,000. That's enough. We don't need more. I'm afraid our time is up, but thank you all very much for your comments. This has been a sample of the issues, the disputes and the passions that decision-makers will have to grapple with in the DOE, in state government, and the

US Congress. But you too, the New Mexico and American public, will have to come to grips as well with those questions. For if there's one fact about WIP that is beyond dispute, it is that this project has become an exercise in democracy, in responsibility to ourselves and to our posterity. In the end, only an informed citizenry can truly decide what to do, what to instruct our government about the agonizing choices in the nuclear waste crisis. In that sense, WIP is not some distant issue in Curlsbad or Washington or some other state, but a problem very much in your own backyard. I'm Roger Morris for K&ME. Thank you for being with us. Good night.