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Comments on the West Wing episode



These are my impressions of the episode:

Overall, it wasn't as bad as it might have been.   At the end, the President
said something to the effect that no radiation was detectable above
background.   

The biggest distortion was to identify the shipment as "depleted uranium
nuclear fuel " which is an oxymoron if ever I saw one.   The 10 CFR 71 fire
test was cited accurately, as was the Baltimore Tunnel Fire peak temperature
BUT the distortion was in the omission of the fact that the Baltimore Tunnel
Fire did not remain at 1500 deg. F for 30 minutes, nor would it have been
"engulfing." And clearly if there were releases in a tunnel, they wouldn't
have dispersed in the environment.

What bothers me about the episode is its timing and its inclusion in the
show in the first place.  I have never seen West Wing before, and I likely
won't watch it again, because TV is such a waste of time, but the truck
crash appeared to be completely extraneous to the story lines..  It seems
pretty clear that this is an effort to mobilize public opposition to Yucca
Mountain and that's why it was aired when it was. However, there really
wasn't much in it to get media attention (though the media can blow anything
out of proportion).

Another point: neither nuclear fuel (fresh or irradiated) nor a truckload of depleted uranium would be driven through a highway tunnel anyway: either because it is a HRCQ material, or because it is a DOT Class 7 hazardous material.   These shipments would also be traveling on interstate highways.  I have traveled on I-90, I-84, and I-15 in Idaho, and I do not recall any tunnels (I-90 crosses Lookout Pass).

The scenario goes under the rubric of "artistic licence," I suppose, and I wonder just how much artistic licence the scriptwriters allow themselves. This episode was close enough to reality to be credible (and anyone who travels the interstates in Idaho would probably chalk that part up to "artistic licence") and was a whole lot more credible than "Atomic Train."

Ruth


Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.
ruthweiner@aol.com