Re: "Mobile Chernobyl" and federal responsibility (formerly ptsd)

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 3/12/02 1:25:09 AM Mountain Standard Time, lavelyp@UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU writes:



> It seems to me that it is a responsibility of the federal government 
>
> to say that Mobile Chernobyl is inaccurate. Have I missed it?

For those of you who are bored with this issue, please forgive this email.  I am writing it because if I do not respond to the quote above, you may be left with an erroneous impression.  I would like to apologize in advance for the length of my response.


Yes.  You have missed it.  In November and December of 1999, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a series of day-long (and evening-long) public meetings in Washington DC, and Las Vegas and Pahrump, Nevada, to discuss the analysis of the behavior of spent fuel transportation casks in very severe accidents.  Critical Mass, NRDC, the Nevada Nuclear Waste Project Office, and several other local and national anti-nuclear groups participated in the invited panel discussion.  Kevin Kamps, who (according to the NIRS website) is the NIRS transportation expert, was there and spoke at length.  Robert Halstead of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Project office did a lot of the talking.  Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, whom UCS refers to as their transportation expert, also participated in the invited panel.


I was part of the Sandia support team for the meeting.  Actually I organized the meeting and was responsible for documenting it.  A verbatim transcriptof the meeting and a summary and analysis were available on the NRC website until it was shut down, and may still be available at ttd.sandia.gov/nrc/modal.htm (note no "www").


An extensive discussion of  Type B casks and their behavior in various extreme accident scenarios was presented by both NRC and Sandia (I do have the Sandia slides somewhere-- if you write me privately, I will try to find them and send them to you electronically).  The "Mobile Chernobyl" question and the "beer can" type accident were discussed.  Everybody had a say (by the way, in Las Vegas, only six members of the public attended).


These NRC meetings were neither the first nor the latest public discussions of this topic, by any means.  The "Modal Study" (Fischer, et al, Shipping Container Response to Severe Highway and Railway Accident Conditions LLNL, 1987 -- NUREG/CR-4829) also received extensive public scrutiny and discussion by Dr. Resnikoff, UCS, the State of Nevada, etc. before its publication.  The "update" (Sprung, et al, Re-examination of Spent Fuel Shipment Risk Estimates, SNL, 2000, NUREG/CR-6672; I am one of the "et al") received extensive comment from the same anti nuke and anti Yucca Mountain groups  Both documents are available on the cited website (or were, before September 11).  They are available through the NRC Public Documents Room.  


The draft and final EISs for Yucca Mountain (www.ymp.gov) also discuss spent fuel cask accident behavior at length.  There were about 4000 comments on the transportation sections of the draft EIS, and DOE has responded to every one of them (in the Comment Response Document of the Yucca Mountain EIS).  The Nevada Nuclear Waste Project Office discussed accidents in considerable detail and other anti-nuke groups that commented repeated that discussion.


The "mobile Chernobyl" scenario has been refuted repeatedly, in detail, and in many forums in which anti-nuclear spokespersons have taken part.  Moreover, anyone with even a superficial knowledge of what is needed for a criticality to occur, or a superficial reading of 10 CFR Part 71, can recognize the phrase as a mischaracterization.  It wasn't coined by a frightened, relatively uninformed, private citizen but by the groups involved in these hearings and discussions (Dr. Resnikoff is a physicist).  The people who keep reiterating it -- the ones responsible for its dissemination -- know perfectly well that they are distorting.  By the way, they are also familiar with the NRC and DOT regulations on radioactive materials transportation, as well as having taken part in the public discussion of these regulations before the regulations were promulgated.


I apologize for thinking that everyone on RADSAFE either had an idea that the risks of spent fuel transportation were small or simply gave me the benefit of the doubt, since I have written on this topic before on RADSAFE, as well as having corresponded with some of you at length.  I would be happy to supply anyone who thinks I don't know what I am talking about with a list of my relevant peer reviewed publication.         

  

Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com