N-DUMP LEAK OOZES PROBLEMS, POSSIBILITIES AND PLUTONIUM
IDAHO CLEANUP OFFERS CHANCE TO FOCUS ON PERSISTENT ISSUE

The discovery of a plutonium leak in one of the nation's oldest and largest nuclear waste dumps has presented both a problem and an opportunity in the federal government's effort to deal with a legacy of dangerous wastes from the buildup of the nation's nuclear arsenal.

Against a pristine panorama of mountains, desert and brilliant sky in southeastern Idaho, engineers using delicate monitoring equipment have confirmed that traces of plutonium have drained from shallow waste pits at the Radioactive Waste Management Complex. They are moving through rock layers toward a vast underground water reservoir that supplies thousands of southern Idaho residents. The deadly elements have been confirmed 110 feet beneath the waste site and tests indicate they are as deep as 240 feet, nearly halfway to the reservoir.The leaks at the 36-year-old waste site, part of the government's Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, were first identified in June 1987. It is a problem that has arisen in 12 other states at the national laboratories and industrial plants that spent almost five decades making nuclear weapons for the military, leaving behind radioactive waste that could take until the 22nd century to clean up.

At the same time, the Idaho plant is one of those at which the government is attemping to develop methods for stopping leaks at nuclear waste sites as well as developing methods for disposing of other radioactive substances, including contaminated soil.

"We're going to be in this cleanup business 50, 100, 150 years from now," said George Kritz, a physicist and director of the Energy Department's hazardous waste and remedial action division in Germantown, Md.

The Energy Department said last month that it would cost a total of about $100 billion to determine how much waste there is at sites nationwide, to contain it and to clean it up. This is an effort that emerged this year as one of the department's principal missions.

In the fiscal year 1988, the department will spend $895 million to manage its radioactive wastes, or nearly 12 percent of the $7.5 billion budget for nuclear weapons production. Two years earlier the amount was $618 million, 8 percent of the department's weapons budget.

Engineers in Idaho say the particles of plutonium that have penetrated to the deep rocks do not pose an immediate threat to any of the 10,000 employees at the Idaho laboratory, the 40,000 residents of Idaho Falls, or to any other citizen. Health specialists agreed.