Comments on the West Wing episode

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

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