Cleaning up the mess: The unfinished legacy of Robert Oppenheimer

We have recently gotten a new look at the complicated legacy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, in a brilliant movie.

Oppenheimer and his colleagues thought deeply about the morality of what they were doing, even as they strove to build a fearsome weapon of mass destruction. One thing they did not think much about, however, was what to do about the massive poisons that the production of these weapons would leave behind. If they thought about it at all, they probably assumed that the science capable of developing these bombs would surely find solutions to deal with the waste.

They were mostly wrong.

Since the end of the first Cold War, the United States government has spent billions of dollars struggling to “clean up” this legacy waste. Thirty years ago, I was given the responsibility by President Clinton and Vice President Gore to get this nascent cleanup organized at the Department of Energy (DOE). After about a year in office, I produced an estimate of about $250 billion to close and remediate the so-called Nuclear Weapons Complex. The fiscal 2024 budget is set to spend $8.3 billion more next year alone.

There is no end in sight to what has become the largest environmental program in the world. Imagine the good that money could have done if applied to the climate problem.

There have been a few clear successes. Rocky Flats, near Denver, was once among the most dangerous places in America because of fire and other risks from plutonium “pit” production. With the help of then-Gov. Roy Romer and the Colorado Department of Health, it was remediated and closed for good in 2006 by the DOE. A huge chemical production plant near Cincinnati, Ohio, was also demolished and closed. And the nation’s first underground waste storage area, the so-called Waste Isolation Production Plant in southeast New Mexico, was opened to receive and encapsulate contaminated waste.

We were able to drive these sites to full, safe cleanup due to the use of citizen advisory panels that brought local individuals into the decision process. We armed the panels with information and let them come to decisions based on technology, cost and safety parameters. That allowed projects to move forward more quickly. This can be duplicated today to save time and money, and bring more of these sites into full remediation with public input and buy-in.

What about the rest? Huge sums have been spent simply to keep large, aging facilities around the country, such as Oak Ridge, Savannah River and Hanford, from collapsing while cleanup awaits. Plants and laboratories in Texas, New Mexico, Idaho and Kentucky spend hundreds of millions per year to stay in state environmental compliance while awaiting final disposition. The government is still employing thousands of people per year to deal with issues created more than 50 years ago. No end is in sight.

The biggest problems revolve around the disposition of high-level nuclear waste primarily at Hanford and Savannah River. Millions of gallons of toxic stew were originally scheduled to be encased in glass and shipped to Yucca Mountain, Nevada (along with civilian spent fuel) for deep underground storage; no realistic technology exists to neutralize the wastes. The citizens of Nevada and their politicians rightfully rebelled against this option, and have made their support of any presidential candidate conditional on keeping Yucca Mountain closed. Every candidate for the last 30 years has taken the pledge.

Consequently, cleanup, particularly at Hanford, is stuck. Not only is there no place to send the waste, but there are technological problems making vitrification work safely in a monstrous plant that has already consumed over $14 billion and is only half built.

The intractability of these problems has resulted in paralysis and turned cleanup into the dark stepchild of the government. Two brilliant scientist secretaries, Nobel Prize Winner Steven Chu and Ernest Moniz, have found this problem unyielding. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, together with the State of Washington and the Environmental Protection Agency, are keeping the public guessing about the results of a mediation effort designed to break the Hanford deadlock on cleanup, but promise to tell all shortly. One can only hope the mediation was fruitful — and doesn't cost the entire national treasury.

We have a problem that costs an amazing amount of money just to keep the genie in the bottle. I can’t imagine Oppenheimer and his colleagues would be sanguine. The solutions involve an important deep involvement of independent science, serious senior level policy leadership and the full engagement of an enlightened citizenry. It does no good to keep this unfinished legacy in the dark.

Thomas P. Grumbly served as assistant secretary for environmental management at the Department of Energy, and as undersecretary of Energy, from 1993-1997.