[ RadSafe ] Yucca Mountain

[James Salsman]

Steven Dapra wrote:

> Note that above James Salsman ... quoted something Miller and McClain
> said about BEIR IV, to wit:  "The BEIR IV report (1988) ...
> cautions against minimizing the risk until more studies become available."

Those studies have become available, and they have gone from neutral
-- no evidence of carcinogenicity -- to positive, meaning that uranyl
exposure causes leukemia in animals.  The teratogenicity and
mutagenicity have never been in doubt since the 50s and 90s,
respectively.  That was in the portions of Miller and McClain that I
quoted.

>  For a dirty bomb (or any type of bomb) to be effective it must do damage
> at the time it is exploded, not (possibly) 30 or 40 years in the future.

What source could you possibly have for such an absurd statement?  Do
you know that weapons which act off the battlefield have been against
international law for almost a century?

> If you, James, want shipments to Yucca Mountain to begin, why don't
> you petition Sen. Reid of Nevada who is violently opposed to opening YM?

Do you mean "violently" in the literal sense, or is that the sort of
accusation that you think it is okay to make?  Senator Reid can't do
anything to stop Yucca Mountain, it has been entirely in the NRC's
hands since last month's submission of the DoE's application.

What we really need is an emergency petition to the NRC to modify the
existing licenses of facilities with overflow spent fuel casks rated
for only eight hours submerged (most all of them) to use the Yucca
Mountain facility according to its existing application on a tentative
basis.  What we don't need is the idiots who turn their backs on the
mutagenicity of U(VI) drafting it.

>  RADSAFErs are not opposed to opening YM

You have clearly not been reading.  Dr. Rabbe along with a small
minority of nuclear scientists and engineers want to begin
reprocessing and they think Yucca Mountain will somehow impede it.
Opening Yucca Mountain to overflow cask storage will not impede the
ability to reprocess spent fuel.  Even if Yucca Mountain was one-way
there would still be plenty of fuel to get to in non-overflow
facilities.

James Salsman