Response to former Senator Bob Kerrey

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

I have written the attached letter as a response to an op-ed piece by former Senator Kerrey that appeared in this morning's paper.  You can probably find the piece at www.ABQJournal.com, and I'm pretty sure it has appeared in other newspapers.  I did not respond to everything in the article:


Dear Editor,


I am writing in response to the article about Yucca Mountain by former Senator Bob Kerrey.  I have been a Democrat all my life, almost always voted for Democrats, and I thought Bob Kerrey was a pretty good Senator.  Therefore, I am ashamed and astonished by his ranting about Yucca Mountain in Sunday's Journal, and his mindless repetition of  lies and distortions about Yucca Mountain.


Let me respond to a few of  his charges. The data and the numbers that I cite are from the federal  Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the Yucca mountain EIS,  and the Health Physics Handbook:


· "...will increase the risks of radiation exposure  to millions of Americans....Sharing our highways with tens of thousands of radioactive shipments is a disaster waiting to happen..."


Presumably this increase is from transportation, because the risks from a single site are certainly far fewer than the risk from 77 sites - not that there is any great risk in the first place.  DOE has repeatedly said that rail is the preferred mode of transportation, which would mean one or two shipments a day, somewhere in the U. S., for a 24-year period.  But let us suppose that shipment will be by highway, with between five and seven shipments a day somewhere in the U. S.   This compares with the approximately 1,400 hazardous materials shipments per day in the U. S., most of which are gasoline tank trucks.  Are these considered "disasters waiting to happen?"  In fact, spent nuclear fuel is being shipped around the U. S. now, and has been for the past 45 years.  Ninety spent fuel casks were in accidents between 1970 and 1998, and there was not any damage to the cask resulting in release of radioactive material - even the release allowed by NRC regulation (10 CFR Part 71 Table A2) - in any of these accidents. 


· "...accidents will happen, though no one can predict their likely impact."


Apparently former Senator Kerrey doesn't read any of the reports or environmental impact assessments that the Senate provides funds for, nor any of the documents produced by the federally funded national laboratories, or chooses to ignore them.  The "likely  impact"  of accidents involving spent fuel casks has been under intensive study since at least 1975.  The most recent study funded by NRC and published in 2000, NUREG/CR-6672 (available on the web) goes into considerable detail on this question, as does the study of possible deliberate attacks on spent fuel casks published by Sandia Labs in 1999.   Kerrey's statement is simply untrue.


· "The government approved casks ... leak radiation and could become portable x-ray machines that cannot be turned off."


No, Mr. Kerrey, they don't "leak radiation;"  "leak" implies a defect.  Yes, the casks emit radiation.  If the trucks are "portable x-ray machines," maybe dentists could save a buck or two and just have patients stand next to the freeway while the trucks roll past.  Actually, at three feet from the surface the radiation is at most (the regulatory limit) 14 mrem/hour.  To a person 36 feet from  the freeway  this would be at most  about 0.0004 mrem if the truck is traveling at 55 mph, a fraction of  the average annual background dose, and about 1/100,000 of a fast-film x-ray exposure.  If the regulatory limit is not stringent enough, Why didn't Mr. Kerrey address this when he was in the Senate?  Why doesn't he petition the NRC now?


· "...irresistible targets for terrorists...still analyzing risks based on terrorist attacks from the 1970s and 1980s....these shipments could easily be used as a 'dirty bomb.' "


Irresistible?  Since such shipments are taking place even as I write, why did terrorists target the World Trade Center instead of a spent fuel shipment?  Why does the Attorney General warn us about threats to banks and shopping malls?   The latest study of the consequence of a terrorist attack was published in 1999, not "the 1980s"; "risk" cannot be calculated because no one can estimate the probability of such an attack, so consequences are studied.  A shipment cannot "easily" be attacked under any circumstances.  Even a successful attack would not be likely to result in release of enough material to kill or immediately harm any member of the public, although the truck crew would certainly be at risk, but not from the radioactive releases.  A terrorist attack on a gasoline tank truck would result in greater harm.


The most egregious aspect of  Mr. Kerrey's article, however, is not the distortions but the eleventh-hour nature of his diatribe.  The Nuclear Waste Policy Act, authorizing a  mined geologic repository, was enacted in 1982, and amended in 1987 to characterize Yucca Mountain first.   Why didn't Mr. Kerrey object to, amend, or repeal this legislation when he was in the Senate, if he finds its implementation so objectionable?  Why didn't he act to cut off funding?  Why didn't he rebuke NRC for what he now calls inadequate regulation?  Why didn't he have his staff follow the studies of casks and transportation that he voted to fund?  Why, above all, didn't he complain about the spent fuel and radioactive materials transportation that was taking place even then?


Isn't it suspiciously late for him to be expressing this concern?




s/Ruth Weiner




Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com