[ RadSafe ] Yucca Mountain

[James Salsman]

Dr. Franta:

> At the risk of our prophet of gloom and doom complaining my company CEO again

Do you still contend that the intent of those who have been
complaining about the health effects of depleted uranium intend to
help terrorists?  Since your accusation, the Colombian FARC --
themselves terrorists -- have been found with 33 kg of DU this past
March which  according to the "senior intelligence official" quoted by
the L.A. times said, "the health threat was negligible.... what's the
use of that other than irritating people?"

  http://articles.latimes.com/2008/mar/28/world/fg-dirtybomb28

"Negligible" -- the word appears in the reports which describe risk
from cancer due to radiation and kidney effects only, such as those of
Dr. Al Marshal from Sandia, not just the work of Kathren, Cherry, and
Johnson -- all are pathetic attempts to keep information from the
public.

>  there was the infamous case of Soviet dumping of spent fuel from military
> production reactors into a lake, with disastrous consequences.....

The U.S. overflow casks are a product of Yucca Mountain remaining
closed, and are only rated for eight hours submerged.   Flooding for
as long as we've seen near some of the reactor sites could have easily
gone twenty times that.  The Baltimore tunnel fire has shown us that
those casks were under-engineered for real-world conditions.

Anyone who thinks the seepage rate is exactly zero is living in the
imaginary magical world of absolutes.

The question is not whether U(VI) has seeped into the water table from
spent fuel, but:

How much has, and how much is expected over time?

James Salsman