Wyden: Lax regulations allow radioactive waste on icy highways
LA GRANDE, Ore. -- Oregon's senior senator says lax regulations allowed a truck hauling low-level radioactive waste to travel icy Interstate 84 and jack-knife Monday afternoon.
A hazardous materials crew determined the trailer did not breach in the crash.
"Fortunately, no one was hurt and no hazardous material leaked into the environment," Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a statement. "Nevertheless, that truck never should have been allowed to travel through Oregon in those conditions.
"When you're moving a cargo that has a half-life of several thousand years, it won't hurt to wait a few hours or days until the roads are safe," Wyden said.
The truck from R&R Trucking Inc. was en route from Oakridge, Tenn., to Perma Fix Northwest Inc. in Richland, Wash., a facility near the Hanford Nuclear Reservation that serves "offices, laboratories, and processing facilities for the treatment of Low Level Radioactive and Low Level Mixed Waste."
State police said the load was unidentified. Wyden said the truck was carrying 233 packages of solid and liquid waste.
The truck, driven by Timonthy Enright, 50, of Corvallis, Ore., was westbound on I-84 near in northeastern Oregon when it lost control. The vehicle jack-knifed, went off the highway and collided with a rock wall.
An assessment by the regional Hazardous Materials Response Team out of La Grande Fire Department determined there was no breach or compromise of the container and the vehicles are to be towed to a secondary location before continuing to its original destination in Richland, Wash.
"Oregonians need to be assured that all hazardous material is being moved under the safest conditions possible and that it won't be done at all in the middle of a snowstorm," Wyden said. "While the materials on board the truck that crashed didn't appear to be particularly hazardous, other hazardous materials are sent on Oregon highways all the time with the same lax regulation, creating not only an environmental danger, but a national security one as well."
Wyden called on the U.S. Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the U.S. Department of Transportation to develop rules for the transportation of all radioactive wastes during inclement weather. Wyden wants the agencies to require notification of local communities when radioactive waste shipments are sent and to give states more authority to regulate transportation of nuclear waste on their own highways.
