For Immediate Release: August 7, 2001

Contact: David Ritter, 202-454-5176

Wenonah Hauter, 202-213-0891

OAKLAND, CA -Today Public Citizen and other citizen organizations are speaking out at a Department of Energy

(DOE) hearing against a plan to allow radioactive waste to be recycled into consumer products or disposed of in landfills.

Even though there is no public support for allowing the DOE to move

forward with this scheme, they are continuing a "scoping project." The hearings, which were announced with little public

notice, are being held to meet the agency's legal obligation of obtaining public comments on their Programmatic

Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) process on the recycling of nuclear waste for commercial products and disposal

as regular trash.

"It's obvious that the DOE doesn't want anyone to attend this hearing in Oakland. If they really wanted public comments

they would have held it at an easy-to-reach location," charged Jane Kelly, Director of Public Citizen's California office.

"Instead they gave us less than a month's notice and are holding the meeting at a difficult-to-reach hotel at the Oakland

airport."

The Department of Energy (DOE) is developing a program - under heavy pressure from the nuclear industry - to unload

vast quantities of radioactive scrap metal into municipal landfills and to "recycle" it into everyday household products and

industrial materials. Currently, some radioactive wastes an

d materials - except some metals - can be released without restrictions from DOE nuclear weapons sites. DOE, in January

and July 2000, put bans on releasing some radioactive metals, but the policy being discussed in the hearings would replace

and supercede those bans.

DOE's process to authorize the release of radioactive metals from DOE nuclear weapons facilities begins with the

Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) being discussed in the hearings. The PEIS process has not had a

promising start. The DOE initially contracted with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to perform the

environmental review. SAIC is one of the companies that would profit from radioactive "recycling" at a major nuclear

waste site in Tennessee. SAIC's history of conflicts of interest on radioactive recycling led to the forced termination of its

Nuclear Regulatory Commission contract. In late July, Public Citizen and others pointed out the current conflicts to DOE

and the contract to perform the PEIS was dropped.

"If the DOE can get away with it, they are going to follow the polluters golden rule: the solution to pollution is dilution,"

said Wenonah Hauter, Public Citizen's Director of Energy and Environment. "That's the reason they have selected a

nuclear industry lobbyist to facilitate the so-called publi

c hearings."

Holmes Brown, who has been an employee of Afton Associates, Inc., is the facilitator for the DOE's hearings, which are

being held in locations like Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Mr. Brown and Afton Associates have been paid advocates for the

interests of radioactive waste producers for well over a decade, even receiving some funding indirectly from DOE itself to

promote nuclear programs.

"DOE has also failed to supply records of what radioactive materials have been and are currently being dumped into

unregulated disposal and 'recycled' into everyday products," stated Kelly. "We are urging the Department of Energy to

stop dispersing radioactive materials - such as concrete, soil, asp

halt, plastics, wood, metals and more - into municipal landfills and the open marketplace, and to strengthen and expand its

current bans on 'recycling' radioactive metal."

The DOE hearings are at 2-5 PM and 8-11 PM. at the Holiday Inn Oakland Airport, 500 Hegenberger Road, Oakland,

California. Activists will be available to speak to the media at the Citizen Group Information Table at 2:30.

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