Environmental and peace activists condemn the U.S. Senate's decision to maintain a provision in the Department of Energy's budget bill to leave millions of liters of liquid radioactive waste at a site in South Carolina, where plans are afoot to process more plutonium. The 2005 Defense budget includes more than six billion dollars for research and development of new nuclear weapons. The George W. Bush administration is under fire from a number of U.S. lawmakers and environmental groups for pursuing efforts to produce another generation of nuclear weapons while government fails to take responsibility for cleaning up existing radioactive waste.

The U.S. Senate recently approved a provision promoted by Bush, included in the 2005 Department of Defense Budget, that loosens the clean-up requirements for millions of liters of dangerous liquid radioactive waste.

According to the Jun. 4 wording of the bill, the Department of Energy can reclassify the waste as “incidental''.

It can cut back its clean-up efforts, and abandon 51 underground tanks of radioactive waste at the Savannah River nuclear site in the U.S. state of South Carolina, instead of moving it to the Nevada desert, in the west, as stipulated in current legislation.

Although the provision applies only to South Carolina, lawmakers and environmentalists in the states of Idaho and Washington, with similar radioactive waste storage tanks, charge that the decision sets a ­clear precedent that could force them to reclassify the toxic waste also.

“It's an effort by the Department of Energy to do less clean-up… It wants to save money by leaving more waste behind and putting future generations at risk,” Bob Schaeffer, of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a network of more than 30 communities living near nuclear sites, told Tierramérica.

The initiative “will have serious detrimental consequences for vital water resources around the country,” the Alliance told U.S. senators in a recent letter. “It will undermine the rights of states and tribes to protect their residents.”

To enter into effect, the provision must be included in the Senate and House of Representatives' conference committee final report at the end of the month.

The Savannah River nuclear site, a federal complex established in 1950 and covering more than 777 square km, employs more than 12,000 people, most of whom are involved in managing the toxic legacy.

The site is believed to hold about 130 million liters of radioactive waste, and some of its tanks are reportedly leaking.

The Department of Energy argues that it could reduce clean-up costs by tens of billions of dollars if it left substantial amounts of waste in underground tanks and covered them with grout — an approach strongly endorsed by some senators.

“That plan saves our taxpayers money,” Republican Party Senator James Inhofe, told his colleagues recently. “It shortens the amount of time the waste remains in the tanks. It is a safe way” to handle the issue.

But critics say the nuclear authorities' suggestion is just an excuse for plans to build a plutonium fuel factory at the Savannah site, with the intent to produce new nuclear warheads.

A report titled, “Managing the Nation's Nuclear Materials: The 2025 Vision for the Department of Energy”, reveals the intention to produce new arms.

According to the document, “Dormant elements of the nuclear forces must be reconstituted… There is an opportunity to use the Savannah River site canyons to process surplus residual plutonium that is considered separable into weapons-grade plutonium.”

That complex ” is the most contaminated site on the face of the earth,” says Louis Zeller of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League in an interview with Tierramérica. “It's a horrible legacy of the Cold War made more horrible by the U.S. pursuing more weapons.”

The budget for the next fiscal year, which begins in October, includes more than six billion dollars for nuclear weapons research and development. That figure is similar to sums earmarked for this purpose during the Cold War. In contrast, funding for this area in 1995 was three billion dollars.

Federal funding for plutonium fuel would support new weapons capability, and the fuel operation would include a new plant to purify plutonium by liquid acid processing which is also essential for production of nuclear weapons, said Zeller.

Experts say a new nuclear warhead plant proposed by the National Nuclear Security Agency could produce up to 450 new plutonium triggers every year for both existing weapons and those in development.

The United States currently possesses a stockpile of more than 10,000 active nuclear weapons, nearly 4,000 pits in “strategic reserve” and over 12,000 in “surplus.”

The 2002 Moscow Treaty mandates that the United States and Russia would each reduce their nuclear arsenals to 2,200 or fewer deployed warheads by 2013.

However, the Bush administration has refused to state how many warheads taken out of deployment will be held in reserve or destroyed.

Disarmament advocates say the plans to produce a new generation of nuclear weapons, known as “earth penetrators” as well as “mini-nukes”, undermine global non-proliferation efforts.

The Bush government expresses concerns regarding Iran and North Korea's attempts to acquire nuclear weapons, but does not meet its own obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires the original nuclear weapons states to negotiate the elimination of all nuclear arsenals, said Ralph Hutchison, an activist with the U.S.-based Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance,

Despite repeated attempts, the Department of Energy did not return Tierramérica's telephone calls for comments.