SEN. UDALL OFFERS SOME SUPPORT TO CIVILIAN TRU GOING TO WIPP

An article in yesterday’s Weapons Complex Morning Briefing incorrectly suggested that Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M). had told an environmental activist that he opposed a provision offered by Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) that would open the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant to non-defense transuranic waste. The Pearce provision had been included as an amendment to the House version of the Fiscal Year 2014 Defense Authorization Act,  but was not included in a final House-Senate version of the bill that was unveiled yesterday. Weapons Complex Morning Briefing quoted Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center as saying that Udall had told him "that he opposes changing the WIPP Land Withdrawal Act’s requirement that the facility is for defense transuranic waste only. The Pearce Amendment changes the law and he, thus, opposes the amendment.” The second statement, though, was Hancock’s conclusion, and not attributable to Udall.

In a statement yesterday, Udall’s office reiterated that the Senator had not been the cause of Pearce’s provision not being included in the final version of the Defense Authorization Act. “Senator Udall could support the disposal of a finite amount of civilian TRU waste in WIPP, as long as that waste doesn’t displace defense waste already slated to be disposed of at WIPP, especially waste from Los Alamos National Lab.  He was working on improvements to the WIPP provision in the NDAA to protect WIPP’s existing mission and potentially enable it to accept some TRU waste when the Senate Armed Services [Committee] determined that the WIPP amendment would not be included in the NDAA at all because it wasn’t in the committee’s jurisdiction," Udall spokeswoman Jennifer Talhelm said.