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Colleagues —
The following article appeared this morning in the Salt
Lake Tribune.
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Jim Hardeman
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High Drops to Be Used to Test Nuclear Waste Shipping
Casks
BY JUDY FAHYS
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
LAS
VEGAS -- The federal government wants people to feel secure about the burly,
steel containers used to haul nuclear waste.
So, in a
testing program now being designed, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans
to prove the containers' strength by dropping a 140-ton cask from 270 feet --
the height of a 27-story office building -- onto a thick, reinforced slab.
Then the test team plans to cook the casks in a jet-fuel
fire about as hot as the inferno that melted the World Trade Center towers on
Sept. 11, 2001. Even with a beating like this, the team doubts the container
will leak its contents, which remain lethally radioactive for 10,000 years.
But no matter what the NRC learns from these tests, the
agency appears unlikely to sway critics.
Even before
testing has begun, skeptics are accusing regulators of ignoring crucial
questions about the durability of the transport casks. The proposed tests are a
public relations stunt intended for showy video clips, critics contend, not
safety assurance.
At an unprecedented public workshop
last week in Las Vegas, Mike Baughman, representing Lincoln County, Nev.,
disputed the NRC's stated premise that the cask tests can instill public trust
in the transport of high-level nuclear waste.
"Focus on public safety," he
urged the test team. "I doubt you are going to win the public over."
The cask tests represent the first time the NRC has asked
for public input on a major research program. Nonetheless, the agency faced a
hard sell at a meeting in a region of the nation where downwinders, especially
residents of Utah and Nevada, still suffer harm done by three decades of
atomic-weapons testing by the federal government.
"We're
trying to get all the input so we can get it right when we carry it out," said
NRC technical adviser Andrew Murphy.
The state of Utah is
among outsiders dogging the NRC to make the tests meaningful and aggressive. The
reason? Utah roads and railways would be used for about nine of every 10 waste
shipments headed to the federal government's proposed underground repository at
Yucca Mountain, Nev., projected to open in 2010.
Plus,
100 acres of the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, about 45 miles
southwest of Salt Lake City, could be home to an above-ground parking lot for
the waste. The Goshutes and an electric utility consortium, Private Fuel Storage
(PFS), have been working with the NRC for six years to license the site and hope
to be taking waste within two years.
The waste would come
from 104 commercial reactors at 64 sites in 32 states.
The Environmental Working Group, a Washington, D.C.-based environmental group,
calculated last year that there could be as many as 2,408 trucks or 448 trains
carrying high-level waste through Utah each year, for 38 years, to Yucca
Mountain and/or Skull Valley. Four of every five Utah residents, and 520 Utah
schools, are within five miles of the shipping routes.
The Skull Valley project encountered a delay last week when the Atomic Safety
& Licensing Board told PFS it must address the possibility that the storage
containers could be hit by a crashing jet fighter from nearby Hill Air Force
Base.
At the NRC public workshop last week, the test team
emphasized its cask-durability study is independent of the Utah and Nevada
proposals. And the results, the NRC said, won't necessarily affect future
shipping container regulations.
The NRC certifies cask
designs based on scale-model tests and computer simulations. Of the 16 rail and
truck casks the NRC has certified, none has been tested full scale.
Backed by cask manufacturers and the nuclear industry and
more than two decades of nuclear waste shipments, the NRC and the nuclear
industry insist current cask standards have an unblemished record.
"I have a high confidence level in what we have on the
road and the [regulatory] criteria we have in place," said test-panel member Tom
Danner of Georgia-based NAC International, a cask supplier.
Such assertions did not sit well with Dianne Nielson,
executive director of the Utah Department of Environmental Quality and leader of
the state's opposition campaign against the Skull Valley facility.
She said the public deserves a full explanation of the
tests.
Nielson also noted the test findings probably will
be released too late to be a confidence-building tool in Utah. The utility
consortium wants to begin taking waste in Skull Valley within two years --
perhaps before the cask tests have even begun.
"This is
absolutely critical information [about the durability of the containers] and the
public expects it," she said.
Workshop participants urged
the NRC to:
* Test all the cask models that might
actually be used, including reused outer transportation shells.
* Find out what it takes to stress the containers to the
point that they release their contents.
* Immerse them in
water.
* Fly aircraft into the casks.
* Subject the casks to a mock terrorism attack, possibly
including nuclear materials.
Yucca Mountain opponent Judy
Treichel of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force said the worst-case scenarios do
not look far-fetched to many Americans, especially since the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks.
Accusing the test team of catering to nuclear
industry concerns, she urged them to "do more than an ad campaign."
The NRC and its supporters warned that the number and
kinds of tests would be limited.
One reason is the
expense, which the NRC puts at $20 million but the state of Nevada estimates to
be as high as $70 million. Some casks that might be used in the test cost up to
$3.5 million apiece.
In addition, it will be expensive to
develop a facility capable of conducting a full-scale study of the casks,
including a 30-ton truck model and a 140-ton train model.
Regulators said they expected to pay for the tests with money from the Nuclear
Waste Fund, a $13.5 billion account that nuclear-utility ratepayers have been
stoking for two decades to help cover the costs of nuclear waste disposal.
"Even a Cadillac or Rolls Royce testing program is not
that expensive," said Fred Dilger of Clark County, Nev.'s nuclear waste
division.
Another factor, test planners said, is
"realism" -- the idea that the focus should be testing for the sort of accidents
most likely to occur during high-level waste shipments.
"We can do a lot of testing under extreme conditions and get something to fail,"
said John Kessler of the nonprofit Electric Power Research Institute. "I'm just
suggesting we do it with a touch of reality."
Exactly
what tests will be done and to what casks will be the subject of review over the
next few months. The NRC has posted its test proposal on a Web page, http://www.nrc. gov/reading-rm/doc-collec
tions/nuregs/staff.
The final of four public workshops is
scheduled for Wednesday in Chicago. The public may comment on the cast testing
proposal through May 30. A final container-testing protocol is expected by
year's end.
fahys@sltrib.com
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