b'P ROVING THE P RINCIPLEa nationally and internationally impor -tant project. He agreed to let it enter thestate, and we shook hands. He told mel a t e r, he re g retted it, but he said hew o u l d nt go back on his wor 1 5d .As it happened, DOE shut down produc-tion at Rocky Flats temporarily inDecember 1989 to deal with safety andmanagement problems at the site, inter-rupting the production of waste that oth-erwise would have gone to Idaho. In1991, after reassessing military require-ments in the post-Cold War world, DOEdecided that its arsenals no longer need-ed fresh nuclear warheads, and DOEstopped making plutonium weaponsparts at the plant. 16 INEEL89-631-1-8The concept of waste dump took on a attempting to forbid shipments on the Barrels of Rocky Flats waste stand in a certificationnew meaning when Andrus learned in stretch of interstate highway crossing its staging area ready to go to the Waste Isolation Pilot1990 that INEL planned to accept for reservation on the way to INEL. 17Plant in 1989.storage at the Chem Plant spentgraphite fuel from the Public Service Much of the subsequent struggle tookCompany of Colorado, which was place in the courts. A long series of legal battles, which it feared could takedecommissioning its Fort St. Vrain legal filings ensued and kept the IDO years. It wanted to remodel Fort St.reactor in Platteville. The fuel belonged legal staff and the governors attorneys Vrain as a gas-fired power plant andto DOE, which had a contract with the busy for the next several years. With proceeded to erect a spent-fuel storageutility company to store the fuel after it the help of temporary injunctions, building next door to the reactor. 18 had been used up. DOE had built the Idaho managed to prevent the fuel fromIrradiated Fuel Storage Facility at the entering the state until September of In April 1992 DOE announced that itChem Plant in 1975. It already stored 1991, when the 9th Circuit Court of would no longer reprocess any spentfuel from Fort St. Vrain that had been Appeals in San Francisco sided with nuclear fuel at the Chem Plant. Theshipped many years previously. These Colorado and DOE. Andruss roadblock countrys need for enriched uraniumnext shipments would send the balance was ruled unconstitutional. was much reduced, it said. Since Julyof the fuel and fill hundreds of remain- 1988 the Chem Plant had processed noing vacant storage cells.Idaho responded with another wave of fuel while its underground pipes hadlitigation. During a short interlude in the been upgraded (placed in double con-Andrus saw this move as new evidence fall of 1991 in which no judicial injunc- duit as extra protection against leaks),of DOEs intention to convert INELs tion prohibited fuel shipments, at least and now the shutdown was to be per-superb laboratory into a de facto two Colorado shipments made it into the manent. The Chem Plant would storewaste dump. He once again threatened Chem Plant. Another injunction soon spent Navy fuel instead of reprocessingto mobilize the state police to stop ship- followed, and those shipments proved to it. The question of how long the fuelments at the Idaho border. The be the last. The Colorado utility decided would be stored was unclear. At the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe supported him, not to await the final outcome of the direction of Congress, DOE was con-240'