QUESTIONS STILL SURROUND MU REACTOR FLAP

Most of the people who benefit from operation of the University of Missouri's research reactor probably never will know how close it came to being shut down, because the federal Energy Department had placed restrictions on shipments of spent nuclear fuel from the reactor.

The reactor at Columbia is the only provider of three isotopes used to treat bone cancer. Because the Energy Department had barred the reactor's shipments for five months, it faced a shutdown by the end of June, when it would have exceeded its licensed storage capacity of uranium 235. That would have been tragic to cancer patients.

It appears the department placed the restrictions on the shipments in retaliation for Missouri officials' refusal to allow foreign nuclear wastes to travel along Missouri interstates on its way from South Carolina to a storage facility in Idaho.

Mel Carnahan, Missouri's former governor, blocked the South Carolina-Idaho shipment proposal last year, saying that bad roads and construction along Interstate 70 would make the shipment unsafe. So DOE trucked the waste north through Illinois and west through Iowa.

Then in April, Gov. Bob Holden wrote Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, arguing it was unfair to link the Idaho shipments to the reactor shipments. Holden claimed the Energy Department's decision on the university reactor was "a futile attempt to force the state to rescind our legitimate concerns about the cross-country shipments on I-70 through our two largest metropolitan areas."

Since then, the DOE restored its plan to route the shipments through Missouri, but an agreement with the state places restrictions on their movements. Among them are that the shipments be escorted by the Missouri State Highway Patrol and that they not travel on I-70 during peak traffic periods, particularly in St. Louis, Kansas City or Columbia.

Holden's office said the governor continues to oppose the shipments over Missouri's roads, although they will take place.

The Energy Department denied any connection with Missouri's refusal to let the shipments pass through the state and the restrictions placed on shipments of waste from the university's reactor.

U.S. Sen. Jean Carnahan said she received word the restrictions were being lifted only after she used a maneuver called a "hold" to stall the nominations of four Energy Department officials.

U.S. Sen. Christopher Bond also urged the Energy Department to lift the restrictions.

Because the Energy Department offered no logical reason for restricting shipments of spent nuclear fuel from the MU reactor, one must assume its actions were retaliatory. And if that is the case, it doesn't speak well for the Energy Department when the lives of cancer patients are at stake.