Transportation Impacts

["Richard F. Orthen" <rorthen@EARTHSCIENCES.NET>]

Seems to be a flurry of discussion on this subject lately, so I'll offer my

0.02 worth (without reference to the West Wing):



* Ruth Weiner is correct in her portrayal of the transportation impacts

(accident dose-risk) analysis in the YMEIS.  She did not mention, however,

that pure accident consequences (i.e., doses not weighted by the conditional

probability of each accident "cell" in the matrix) are calculable using the

competitor ANL code RISKIND.  I believe these impacts were also provided in

the FEIS.

* John Andrews brings up a great point in that the current analyses stop

short of identifying the full scope of potential accident consequences since

they ignore the costs and potential health effects incurred in the aftermath

scenarios.  While I believe the capability to calculate aftermath impacts is

included in both RADTRAN5 and RISKIND, I suspect the reason it wasn't

included in the FEIS is that cost is not supposed to be an overt NEPA

attribute.  However, this reason wouldn't explain the absence of aftermath

health impacts in the analyses.  Perhaps Ruth can tell us why DOE chose this

truncated path.

* We all should remind ourselves that, while in NEPA-space, we're trying to

identify environmentally-preferred alternatives, not exact answers.  If a

fairy tale is what the public is looking for, they apparently didn't read

the DEIS No Action analysis where, in a complementary scenario, it was

assumed that the Federal government would abdicate its legal mandate over

Part 50 licensees (I don't believe this made it into the FEIS).  This isn't

to say that what's being done isn't "good science," it just has real

limitations that perhaps DOE could do a better job in bringing to light when

giving us their interpretation of the results in a reality check.  Of

course, this rationale is of little value to Nevadans within eyeshot of the

proposed alignments.

* What about the big picture?  I believe that the President on down should

emphasize that the used nuclear fuel "issue" is one of National security

that renders the NEPA process a penultimate venue for decision makers.

Non-enlightened members of the public haven't caught on to this yet, and

will certainly feel abandoned when the correct decision finally comes down.



Rick Orthen

Export, Pennsylvania









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