Company working to bring Mexico radioactive waste to Washington state

[Emily]

Company working to bring Mexico radioactive waste to Washington

by Associated Press and GARY CHITTIM / KING 5 News

Posted on May 2, 2012 at 2:35 PM
Updated today at 7:02 PM

YAKIMA, Wash. -- A waste management company has applied to the federal government for a license to import up to 500 tons of radioactive waste from Mexico to south-central Washington, where the waste will be incinerated and the resulting ash returned to Mexico.
[snip]
The waste would cross the border in Laredo, Texas and travel by truck on interstate highways to the Perma-Fix facility in Richland, Wash., near the Hanford nuclear reservation, according to the application.

?It?s not particularly hazardous stuff,? McIntyre said. ?They just don?t have the incineration capacity down there, whereas Perma-Fix is skilled at it and experienced at it.?...

Perma-Fix says the waste coming into the U.S. would be low-level contamination like worker clothing and tools, (and how could so much contamination like that occur?). But since the purpose of incinerating is not to release the radioactive material into the environment, but to concentrate it into the ash product, I'd suspect that ash being trucked back to Mexico would be more hazardous.

The legacy from the 1980 Port Macquarie, Australia accident is something to think about in that case.