Re: Various Comments- Serious and Otherwise

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

However, pictures, videos, etc about ongoing tests were presented at every public meeting on the Yucca Mountain EIS and all public NRC meetings on the package performance study.  Moreover, your "woolly-minded" public unhesitatingly spout the anti-nukes' CRITICISMS of the tests (e.g., they are insufficiently severe, etc.).


No I don't believe it's lack of information or access to information (the tests are on other web sites, and any search engine will find the Sandia site as well).  I truly think people believe what they want to believe, and what is comfortable to believe.  It's comfortable to denounce DOE and Yucca Mountain and spent fuel transportation because:


1.  Even after Yucca Mountain opens there won't be that many trains carrying spent fuel (one or two a day somewhere in the U. S.).  Rail is the preferred option.  Even if trucks are used for most of the SNF, it would be 5 to 7 trucks a day, somewhere in the U. S.  So most people will never see the casks anyway.


2.  It's always fun to denounce the government (look at how many people on RADSAFE routinely do), especially when the government agency in question doesn't fight back, but rolls over obligingly.  I was really glad to see Secretary Abraham denouncing the Nevada exaggerations.


3.  It is ENORMOUS fun to be a victim if it doesn't hurt at all.


4.  It's great to have some big, nebulous, agency, that in your mind has no real human beings working for it, to blame for your own troubles and inadequacies.


Why do I say this?  All the same rhetoric filled the media and airwaves and public hearings in New Mexico before the WIPP opened.  Now the WIPP is open and the TRUPACTss are rolling, and no one says much anymore.


Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com