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NJ concerned about yucca transport issues
mailbox@gsenet.org wrote:
> 020502
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> GARDEN STATE ENVIRONEWS
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> TABLE OF CONTENTS
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> {*} TRANSPORT OF NUCLEAR WASTE AWAITS APPROVAL
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> TRANSPORT OF NUCLEAR WASTE AWAITS APPROVAL
>
> Date: 020428
> From: http://www.northjersey.com/
>
> By Bob Ivry and Alex Nussbaum, Staff Writers, April 28, 2002
>
> At the Indian Point nuclear plant, just north of New Jersey, hundreds
> of tons of highly radioactive waste are piling up in cooling pools
> never intended for long-term storage.
>
> The scene is repeated at 130 other nuclear sites nationwide.
>
> But amid post-Sept. 11 jitters, this pressing storage problem has
> been intensified by worries that the waste pools pose risks as
> potential targets for terrorists.
>
> The federal government's solution to the mounting pile of nuclear
> waste at Indian Point and elsewhere is to store it 1,000 feet under a
> desolate patch of Nevada desert, where it would remain radioactive for
> 10,000 years.
>
> To get to Yucca Mountain, however, tons of spent fuel rods would have
> to travel thousands of miles by truck, train, or boat. In New Jersey,
> that trip would bring waste from New York's Indian Point,
> Connecticut's mothballed Millstone plant, and the state's own four
> nuclear reactors rolling through some of the nation's most heavily
> populated areas. It would travel along Routes 287 and 80 through
> Bergen, Passaic, and Morris counties; in and out of Newark on roads
> and rail lines; or on barges past the Statue of Liberty and the New
> Jersey shore.
>
> The nuclear waste would be ferried through New Jersey for at least 38
> years, beginning in 2010 - but only if Congress approves the Yucca
> Mountain plan by July 26. The plan is expected to breeze through the
> House of Representatives as soon as this week but faces a tougher
> challenge in the Senate.
>
> Even with these pivotal votes nearing, few North Jersey officials
> reached for comment knew about the proposed transportation routes.
> Some who did know believe nuclear industry and federal officials who
> say the waste will be moved in ultra-strong, well-guarded shipments
> that won't threaten the public.
>
> But others say they're worried, and they promise to fight.
>
> "Moving nuclear waste in the most heavily traveled parts of the
> metropolitan area is not a good idea," said Sen. Robert G. Torricelli,
> D-NJ "The Department of Energy should go back to the drawing board."
>
> MULTIPLE SITES MEAN MULTIPLE TARGETS
>
> Torricelli echoes a coalition of environmental groups and Nevada
> officials that has fought ferociously against Yucca Mountain since the
> Energy Department proposed the repository 20 years ago.
>
> But the proposal has support from the nuclear industry, which is
> running out of space for spent fuel. And since Sept. 11, local
> officials around the country have fretted that leaving depleted
> uranium at scores of reactor sites gives terrorists multiple targets.
> As for moving the waste, advocates say the fuel will be safely encased
> in massive steel-and-concrete casks.
>
> In tests, the casks have been rammed with trains traveling 80 mph,
> dropped onto hard surfaces from 30 feet, spiked on steel rods,
> submerged under water for eight hours, and baked at 1,500 degrees.
>
> "The hell's been knocked out of them," said Robert H. Jones, a
> nuclear industry consultant from California, "but no radiation has
> been released."
>
> Almost none, actually. The government did blow a 6-inch-wide hole in
> a cask with a TOW antitank missile, and a "small amount" of radiation
> leaked out as far as 33 feet, Jones said.
>
> Nonetheless, "it wasn't the mobile-Chernobyl, evacuate-Chicago
> scenario envisioned by the anti-nuclear folks," Jones said.
>
> HARROWING SCENARIOS ABOUT TERRORISM
>
> But despite satellite tracking, armed guards, and other safety
> measures, anti-nuclear activists warn that the casks will not be
> invulnerable. A hijacked shipment, they say, could be useful to
> terrorists seeking radioactive material to make a "dirty bomb."
> Scientists hired by the state of Nevada rebut Jones' estimates and say
> an attack with a TOW missile would contaminate up to 5 square miles
> around the cask attack with deadly radiation.
>
> More likely than an anti-tank attack, according to one researcher,
> would be a hijacking, with terrorists detonating an explosive attached
> to the cask. Another scenario imagines a bomb planted in a gasoline
> truck that would pull alongside a truck hauling nuclear waste.
>
> "Something like that could be done on the Tappan Zee Bridge," said
> Bob Halstead, a transportation adviser for the state of Nevada. "It's
> harrowing."
>
> Even normal traffic and rail accidents are a worry, say critics.
>
> Just look, they say, at the Baltimore train accident last year, which
> set off a chemical-fueled fire that burned in an underground tunnel
> for six days. Or, closer to home, the truck collision that ignited an
> inferno in Denville and shut part of Interstate 80 for three months.
> Or the 1996 train derailment that spilled 92 tons of soil contaminated
> with radioactive thorium from a Wayne Superfund site onto Illinois
> farmland.
>
> As U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, testified Thursday
> at a House subcommittee hearing, accidents involving spent fuel might
> "occur very rarely but, when they occur, have a potential to be of
> incredibly catastrophic nature. We shouldn't be tempting them."
>
> THE ONLY LONG-TERM SOLUTION PROPOSED
>
> The nation's reactors were never designed to store waste for long
> periods. But a federal program to recycle spent fuel was discontinued
> in the 1980s for security and economic reasons, leaving nuclear plants
> with swelling stores of radioactive waste. Undersea storage and
> rocketing the waste into space were considered, but now Yucca Mountain
> is the only long-term solution proposed.
>
> The waste consists of ceramic pellets containing uranium, the
> byproduct of reactors that make power and weapons or aid research. In
> reactors, the pellets are sealed into metal rods, 15 feet long and a
> half-inch thick, that are assembled into bundles to fuel the reactor.
> Nuclear plants retire the rods after two years, submerging them in
> water for five years of cooling.
>
> Most shipments that could come through New Jersey would originate at
> the state's four nuclear reactors - Hope Creek and Salem 1 and 2 in
> the southwestern corner of the state, and Oyster Creek, near Toms
> River. But 1,717 truckloads could cross North Jersey from New York's
> Indian Point and Connecticut's Millstone.
>
> The Energy Department says its routes, shown on the department's Web
> site, are merely proposals. It would prefer to ship by rail. A train
> can carry up to five casks of spent fuel weighing 100 tons each - 20
> times as much as a truck, which can handle a single cask weighing 25
> tons. But the agency has prepared multiple options.
>
> For Indian Point, a rail plan probably would bypass New Jersey
> altogether, sending the rods through Albany before heading west.
> Another proposal would have the waste barged 42 miles down the Hudson
> to a railhead in Jersey City, then west on Central Railroad of New
> Jersey tracks to Pennsylvania.
>
> Trucks, however, would rumble down Route 9 in Westchester County,
> cross the Tappan Zee Bridge, continue along the New York State
> Thruway, and then head south on Route 287 into Mahwah. They would roll
> through Bergen, Passaic, and Morris counties before negotiating the
> tricky interchange at Parsippany and heading west on Route 80.
>
> The interchange's tight, steeply banked ramps have always been
> difficult for tractor-trailers, says Earl Hofker, Parsippany's
> emergency management coordinator, and may require upgrades.
>
> "It's smart to be thinking about this now, even though it's going to
> be 10 years into the future," Hofker said.
>
> Passaic County Freeholder Lois Cuccinello, informed of the nuclear
> waste transit routes, said she will push the area's congressional
> representatives to oppose them.
>
> Other officials were less concerned - not thrilled to have the
> material rolling through town, but comfortable that people would be
> safe.
>
> "Our emergency management people have every confidence spent nuclear
> fuel would be adequately protected and properly safeguarded," said
> Thom Ammirato, a spokesman for Bergen County Executive William "Pat"
> Schuber. "There's always some worst-case scenario, but most of those
> belong to fiction novelists or TV writers."
>
> 220-FOOT TRUCKS HAUL RAILWAY CASKS
>
> The Energy Department has assured states they will have a say about
> where the waste travels. Where Trenton stands is unclear. Governor
> McGreevey's office did not respond to repeated requests for an
> interview last week.
>
> From Oyster Creek, the agency proposes either barging waste up the
> coast to trains in Newark or trucking it up the Garden State Parkway
> or out Route 195, past Trenton. Waste from the Hope Creek and Salem
> County reactors would travel to a nearby rail line, cross the Delaware
> Bay by barge to Wilmington, Del., or go across the Delaware Memorial
> Bridge.
>
> To reach the railroads, the casks would be carried on huge, "heavy-
> haul" flatbeds stretching 220 feet - four times as long as a typical
> 53-foot tractor-trailer.
>
> The casks would emit a modest amount of radiation, acknowledges
> Jones, the industry consultant. The highest amount allowed by law is
> 10 millirems, about as much as a chest X-ray. To receive that dose, a
> person would have to stand 6 feet away for an hour.
>
> Lower-level radioactive waste is already a common cargo on the
> nation's highways - items such as medical equipment and discarded
> clothing from reactor workers - and some spent fuel rods have already
> been transported, mostly to plants trying to recycle them into new
> fuel, the Energy Department notes. About 3,000 fuel rod shipments have
> been completed without incident, the agency says.
>
> "There are 3 million radioactive shipments a year in this country,"
> said Joseph Davis, a department spokesman. "We've never had an
> accident that resulted in the harmful release of radiation."
>
> Local emergency officials agree. They say they are far more worried
> about hazardous chemicals that crisscross North Jersey daily, with far
> fewer precautions than the fuel rods would receive.
>
> The irony is that even at mid-century, after 38 years of spent fuel
> transport, nuclear plants will still have to store some waste until it
> is cool enough to move. It's an issue that has brought
> environmentalists and industry boosters into the same boat, asking the
> same question: What's the best way to deal with radioactive waste?
>
> "The claims that Yucca Mountain reduces the threat of terrorism by
> eliminating waste at the 131 sites in favor of one site is a lie,"
> U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, a Nevada Democrat, said at a hearing this
> month. "Yucca Mountain will not reduce the threat of terrorism at
> operating reactors. It adds one more site to protect."
>
> * * *
>
> Staff Writer Bob Ivry's e-mail address is ivry@northjersey.com. Staff
> Writer Alex Nussbaum's e-mail address is nussbaum@northjersey.com.
> Copyright (c) 2002 North Jersey Media Group Inc.
>
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