Nuclear Waste - The REAL Problem!

["Estabrooks, Bates (IHK) " <IHK@Y12.doe.gov>]

RADSAFERs,



Please excuse the length of this post, but the content of the attached

article from The New Republic (TNR) is not to be missed.  Please note, TNR

is not known for its conservative leanings; just the opposite.



Norm Cohen, read carefully.



Bates Estabrooks





http://www.thenewrepublic.com/112601/crowley112601.html

<http://www.thenewrepublic.com/112601/crowley112601.html> 





ON THE HILL

Waste Away

by Michael Crowley



Post date 11.15.01 | Issue date 11.26.01			

In the weeks since September 11, the United States has frantically

inventoried every conceivable target of terrorist attacks. Few seem as

tempting as the nation's nuclear power plants--103 potential Chernobyls from

coast to coast. But, as terrifying as an attack on a nuclear reactor would

be, there's something that worries public safety experts even more: the

40,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel stored at plants around the nation. While

reactor cores are housed in fortified casings designed to withstand

earthquakes, tornadoes, and maybe even plane crashes, most nuclear waste is

stored in flimsy buildings that are often little more than simple concrete

warehouses. There's no good reason why: Spent nuclear fuel is just as deadly

as a reactor core--and it's often deadlier. Last year a Nuclear Regulatory

Commission report concluded that a major explosion of spent fuel could lead

to a lethal radiation dose far worse than the fallout from the bomb that

destroyed Hiroshima, rendering the surrounding area uninhabitable for

thousands of years. 

But don't blame malevolent nuclear power barons for this sorry state of

affairs. The federal government long ago vowed to store America's nuclear

waste in a safe and secure location far from large populations. For the past

20 years, however, textbook NIMBY politics on Capitol Hill have stymied that

effort. One nuclear expert calls it a tale of "social Darwinism" in which

powerful members of Congress have repeatedly protected their own states,

shunting off the problem onto those represented by weaker colleagues. In

1987 it was determined that the shuntee would be Nevada, whose Yucca

Mountain would hold all the nation's nuclear waste. But, since then, the

state's senior senator, Harry Reid, has become the number-two Democrat in

the Senate. And he has used every ounce of his clout to send the waste

debate back to square one. Which is where--national security be damned--it

seems likely to stay. 

The government has been worrying about how to dispose of nuclear waste since

the 1950s. Early ideas included dumping canisters of waste at sea, freezing

them in Arctic ice, or firing them into space. For a time there were plans

to recycle spent fuel through special reactors, but the Carter

administration rejected the procedure, fearing that it would create masses

of plutonium, which could be used to build nuclear weapons. Finally, the

government decided to simply bury the waste deep underground. In 1982

Congress passed a law authorizing a search for sites, with disposal to begin

by 1998. 

The legislation was possible only thanks to a wary regional compromise that

ensured one waste site in the East and one in the West. But once the

Department of Energy began sniffing around specific states, the fragile deal

quickly fell apart. In the early 1980s, for instance, when then-Democratic

Senator John Stennis discovered that a storage site was being considered in

Mississippi, he convened a special committee hearing to berate Energy

Department officials. According to nuclear waste specialist Robert Alvarez,

who attended the hearing, it turned out that the site that so upset Stennis

was located near property owned by his sister. The plan was abandoned. 

That was only the beginning. In 1986 Energy Department scientists named

Texas, Washington, and Nevada as possible Western burial grounds, and

announced that they were also exploring the benefits of storing waste in

granite, which is especially prevalent in Northeastern states like Maine and

New Hampshire. On Capitol Hill, primal self-preservation instincts quickly

kicked in. Maine's George Mitchell, who would become Senate majority leader

the next year, pushed an amendment in 1987 barring even the consideration of

granite storage. New Hampshire had no equivalent powerhouse congressman, but

the Granite State does hold the nation's first presidential primary, making

Mitchell's amendment politically unstoppable. Meanwhile, House Speaker Jim

Wright of Texas and his soon-to-be successor, Tom Foley of Washington,

helped to bump their states off the list. The result was legislation,

crafted with what The New York Times called "stunning abruptness" and tucked

into a $600 billion budget bill, that singled out Nevada's barren Yucca

Mountain as the only site the government could consider. 

	

evadans understandably dubbed the measure the "Screw Nevada" bill,

complaining that their political impotence had been exploited. The state's

then-little-known junior senator, Harry Reid, fumed that the process

amounted to "base, raw power politics." And, ever since, he has made

defeating Yucca his holy mission in Washington--vowing, at one point, to be

"on top of the Capitol doing a full body dive" before giving up the fight. 

He hasn't had to. Instead, Reid has turned to the same power politics he

denounced in 1987. In 1992 he and his former colleague Richard Bryan stalled

a Senate energy bill for days with the first of many filibusters to come,

complaining that Nevada was getting "shafted" by pro-Yucca language. Another

filibuster in 1996 grew so bitter that Senate leader Trent Lott fumed at

Reid and Bryan in an unusual floor speech. "[Nuclear waste] is all over

America. What about the other 48 senators that are directly involved in this

nuclear waste issue?" railed an exasperated Lott, who finally had to calm

himself down: "Sorry to get carried away there." When lack of progress at

Yucca led Congress to consider setting up an interim, aboveground waste dump

at the site, Reid killed the idea year after year. With the threat of a

Clinton veto overhead, Reid used a combination of arm-twisting and doomsday

warnings that transporting waste across the country to Nevada could cause

riots and disaster in his fellow senators' states. 

Indeed, Reid has mounted a skillful public relations campaign to convince

Americans that the project is their problem, too. In 1998 he toured the

country--stopping in Denver, St Louis, Indianapolis, and Chicago--to warn of

a possible "mobile Chernobyl" if waste were transported to Nevada by truck

or train. Reid's Senate website includes a map showing several possible

routes, complete with state-by-state detail. By 1998 Reid had so firmly

identified himself with the anti-Yucca crusade that when then-Representative

John Ensign challenged his seat, Reid declared, "You send Ensign to the

Senate, you send nuclear waste to Nevada." 

But it was the Democrats' recapture of the Senate last spring that may have

sealed Yucca's fate forever. Reid played a central role in convincing

Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords to abandon the GOP--even heroically ceding the

Environment Committee chairmanship he would have inherited to Jeffords. The

switch did, however, make Reid chairman of the Senate Appropriations

subcommittee, with direct power over the Yucca budget--which Reid has

already begun to slash. Reid has also used his new perch to stall three Bush

Energy Department nominees whom he considered pro-Yucca. (Last year, Bush

was considering former Louisiana Senator J. Bennett Johnston--who oversaw

Congress's 1987 choice of Yucca--to be Energy secretary; when Reid heard the

news, he said he couldn't wait to get to the office to call Johnston, whose

nomination he vowed to kill.) And in coaxing Jeffords across the aisle, Reid

also won the deep gratitude of his Democratic colleagues and, in particular,

Senator Majority Leader Tom Daschle. Within days of the Senate changeover,

Daschle showed up at a fund-raiser for Reid, saying of the Yucca project,

"As long as we're in the majority, it's dead." 

	

hich is unfortunate. Because while Yucca Mountain may have been a political

choice, it wasn't a bad one scientifically. After years of study, a

Department of Energy report completed last summer determined that the

mountain, which rises from the desert about 100 miles northwest of Las

Vegas, is safe for long-term waste storage. The mountain rock, produced by

ancient volcanoes, is especially stable and dry, minimizing the risk that

radioactive material might seep into water streams. Federal scientists

project very low levels of radiation exposure for the area's small

population, vastly less than what an average person is exposed to from the

sun and from the potassium in bananas. And, even when radiation levels peak

from leakage in the year 622010 (no, that's not a typo), they'll still

amount to less than one-third of average background radiation, which causes

no harm. 

As storage concerns have receded, Reid has increasingly focused on

transportation risks. But the Energy Department says waste can be

transported in nearly indestructible containers. And it says there are no

good alternatives. Reid has proposed keeping radioactive material in

specially designed concrete casks at their current sites. But such casks are

only a short-term solution; the waste will remain deadly for much longer

than the man-made containers are destined to last. Casks also mean the waste

will stay in populated areas with diffuse oversight. 

The Bush administration hasn't given up the fight for Yucca and is expected

to give it an official go-ahead later this year. In Nevada some heretic

politicos have even suggested the state stop fighting and make the best of

the situation. As Democratic state Senator Joe Neal bluntly put it to

National Journal in 1998, "We should demand large amounts of cash." But

Reid--though wary of acting with "a heavy hand" in the wake of September 11,

according to Alvarez--is unmoved. And he has one more card to play. Assuming

Bush approves the Yucca site, the decision will face one last vote by

Congress. Reid can count on his friend Daschle's political muscle, along

with the deep pockets of the casino industry, which fears that if Nevada

becomes the nuclear waste state, Las Vegas tourism will suffer. It's quite

possible, therefore, that in a lightning-swift, dead-of-night maneuver, some

other poor, defenseless state will be volunteered in the name of national

security. Best of luck, Arkansas. 

MICHAEL CROWLEY <http://www.thenewrepublic.com/masthead/crowley.html>  is an

associate editor at TNR. 







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