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Gee! A positive article on Nuclear Waste on the Highways
I saw this and thought people would be interested.
-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
3050 Traymore Lane
Bowie, MD 20715-2024
E-mail: jenday1@email.msn.com (H)
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Nuclear Waste on the Highways
April 21, 2002
The volatile issue of whether it is safe to transport
highly radioactive nuclear materials around the country has
been pushed before the public by the state of Nevada in
recent weeks. In a desperate effort to avoid becoming the
nation's burial spot for spent fuel rods from nuclear
plants, Nevada has begun to run advertising that warns the
residents of 42 other states that they will be "IN GRAVE
DANGER" from truck and train shipments of the waste unless
they persuade Congress to block the burial plan.
That may be Nevada's best shot politically, but it ignores
two salient facts. Spent fuel rods have been shipped in
small quantities for decades now with no obvious harm to
the public, and whatever new risks may emerge with more
numerous shipments in an age of terrorism will have to be
addressed in detail by federal regulators before they
approve the burial plan. Nevada's hyperbole provides no
reason for Congress to abort a promising plan before the
issues can be closely analyzed.
The transportation issue has come to the fore in the wake
of the Bush administration's formal proposal to build an
underground repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada to
accept spent fuel rods that are now stored at the sites of
nuclear power plants. Nevada has vetoed the plan, and
Congress has until July 26 to override that veto and push
ahead. Nevada contends that the Yucca Mountain site is
unsuitable and cannot safely contain the waste for the
10,000 years required. But that is an issue that has little
resonance elsewhere, so the state has buttressed its
argument with alarming statements about transportation
risks that, according to its governor, endanger some 123
million Americans in states along the way.
Nevada cites estimates that some 96,000 truck shipments -
or about 19,000 rail shipments - would be needed to
transport the waste over three to four decades, and the
state says that would expose communities along the way to
the risk of radiation exposure from accidents or terrorist
acts. The state estimates that there might be 130 truck
accidents or 440 train accidents over that period. It
contends that a credible worst-case accident could release
enough radioactive material to cause hundreds of cancer
deaths and cost tens of billions of dollars to clean up.
These are merely speculative estimates that have yet to be
subjected to the kind of rigorous scrutiny needed to form
national policy. By contrast, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, the agency designated to protect the public
from such disasters, has conducted its own analyses over
the years and found very little likelihood of an accident
that would release enough radioactivity to harm the public.
The massive casks that are used to transport the spent fuel
rods are designed to survive punishing tests in which they
are dropped onto hard surfaces, subjected to a puncture
test, engulfed in fire and submerged in water. So far, in
some 2,600 shipments of spent fuel rods since the mid-60's,
there have been only four truck accidents and four rail
accidents, with no release of radioactive material.
There is no question that the transportation issues will
need to be explored in great depth - to make sure that the
tests conducted on the casks are strenuous enough, that the
probabilities of serious accidents have been reasonably and
conservatively calculated and that the new threat of
terrorism can be countered. But the appropriate place for
those issues to be addressed is in painstaking regulatory
proceedings before the N.R.C., not in rushed Congressional
debate now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/21/opinion/21SUN2.html?ex=1020652479&ei=1&en=
7d49387a14117377
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
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