latest info on EPA standards for Yucca Mountain... -Reply

[Michael S Ford <MFORD@pantex.com>]

Here's the latest from NIRS on Yucca Mountain....

I must admit that I really do admire their rallying skills... just not their
message.  Jim's RSH group does a great job, but the HPS is often
tragically silent.  HPS may be on the side of truth, accuracy, and
professional integrity, but if your message is days or weeks behind
the news cycle, your message is never heard.

What would it take to assemble a rapid response "bulldog group"
within HPS that would be armed with facts and respond to
erroneous and/or fallacious reports and press releases on the same
day?  'Just a thought....

Read on,
My own personal/non-corporate thoughts,
v/r
Michael
mford@pantex.com
TX Radiation Advisory Board

[SNIP]

NUCLEAR INFORMATION & RESOURCE SERVICE ACTION ALERT:

YOUR ACTION NEEDED NOW!!!! Nuclear waste traveling on a road
or rail near you! to YUCCA MOUNTAIN on Western Shoshone
Lands The Department of Energy (DOE) is moving ahead on
implementing the proposed--but doomed to fail--nuclear waste
dump at Yucca Mountain. The DOE has issued a Draft
Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and is holding hearings.
This would be the largest nuclear waste shipping campaign in
history. Tens of thousands of shipments will travel across 43 states,
continuously for 30 years or MORE! YUCCA MOUNTAIN IMPACTS
ARE NOT ONLY IN NEVADA! 

YUCCA MOUNTAIN HEARINGS WILL MOST LIKELY NOT HEAR
YOUR VOICE AND THAT OF THOUSANDS OF OTHER AFFECTED
COMMUNITIES UNLESS YOU DEMAND A HEARING IN YOUR
COMMUNITY!!!! Doesn't it make sense for your community to be
informed about this program? It is clearly the largest project DOE
has ever launched since the construction of the nuclear weapons
production complex, and has the potential for irreversible
consequences. No two stretches of highway or rail are the same,
and yet, DOE is doing only a "generic" transport analysis.

DOE will hold 11 hearings in Nevada which is good...but the only
places hearings will happen outside Nevada are Washington DC;
College Park, Georgia; Denver, Colorado; Boise, Idaho; and Salt
Lake City, Utah (See complete list of hearings below). If you live in
Hartford, Chicago or St Louis, Indianapolis, Cleveland, L.A. or
Kansas City -- all huge hubs for nuclear waste shipments, you have
a LONG way to travel for a hearing!!! 

There are hundreds of other communities that will have hundreds to
thousands of high-level nuclear waste shipments rolling through
them, on highly used roads and rails. 

To check out the projected nuclear waste shipping routes in your
state, visit the State of Nevada's Nuclear Projects Office and look at
the maps. http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/yucca/travel.htm
You might also visit
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/eis/yucca/index.htm
for more background information.

WRITE OR FAX Energy Secretary Bill Richardson (sorry, e-mail is
nonexistent terms of making a "presence felt" in Federal Agencies)
demanding a Yucca Mt. EIS Hearing in your community. 

Bill Richardson, Secretary of Energy
1000 Independence
Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 200585
fax 202-586-4403

Send a copy to Mr. Lake Barrett, Acting Director, DOE Office of
Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, same address. You might
also call his office to try and start the balls rolling (phone:
202-586-6850). 

Be sure to include in the letter (personally written material really is
the best) details about the routes in your area -- proximity to schools
or hospitals, details of weather or other challenges that make your
area unique. Emphasize what a large potential impact this is to your
community and the fact that DOE has no credibility when it comes to
generic statements. 

Please also examine list of hearings below. IT IS VITAL THAT WE
HAVE LARGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE ATTEND THESE HEARINGS.
NIRS will help you with materials--fact sheets, our famous
"Radioactive Waste Trucks and Trains Headed Your Way" brochure,
and contacting people in these areas on our mailing list. Please
network and help get the word out. 

If you get a hearing in your community we will help you too! Call
NIRS 202-328-0002 for more help. Staff are in and out getting ready
for ACTION CAMP, but we will get back with you.

BACKGROUND:
Yucca Mountain -- also known as "Serpent Swimming West" by the
Western Shoshone People -- is sacred land. The Western Shoshone
People have a treaty that the US federal government will not honor.
They reject the dumping of the nation's nuclear waste on their land. 

The data that DOE has collected about this Mountain show that it is
not capable of isolating nuclear waste. The little tube around the fuel
rod does more the isolate the tremendous radioactivity of this waste
-- more than 95% of the radiation produced by the Nuclear Age --
than Yucca Mountain itself will do. It is clear that once the containers
start to leak, radioactivity will reach the ground water in decades or
at best a century or two, not the tens of thousands of years that are
needed to protect the Earth. 

So we are setting out to move this waste through thousands of
communities, past the homes of 30 million people, over millions of
shipping miles resulting n multiple accidents in 30 years. The
original environmental analysis for a nuclear waste repository at
Yucca Mountain said that the radiological impact from nuclear waste
transportation would "not be significant"...only later did a DOE staffer
admit that the way that statement was arrived at is that they took the
number of people that they project would be injured by a nuclear
waste shipping accident --even a pretty bad one -- and average them
across the entire US population. It is after all, a national program.
Contaminating half of Indianapolis becomes "insignificant" when
averaged across the entire nation and over a 30 year period. 

This is not acceptable.

Each large rail cask will carry the radiological equivalent of 200
Hiroshima bombs -- when comparing the persistent radioactivity in
each.  

The numbers given on the projected maps on the Nevada website
are low. They do not include all the defense waste shipments that
would travel from Savannah River Site SC, Los Alamos and Sandia
in NM, INEEL in ID and Hanford in WA, as well as the West Valley
site in NY. 

They also assume that rail is used wherever possible, and yet a rail
cask hold 5 times more than a truck cask. So, if trucks are used
more than the original projection, some numbers of shipments go
up bay a factor of 5.

The number of shipments total could approach 100,000.

There is no real training program in place to help local emergency
responders and planners. This is another reason to demand
hearings in your community since most of these professionals are
completely unaware of this proposal.

If DOE moves ahead with current plan this program will be privatized
and the contractors will have full indemnity. They will not be liable
for any problems. We, as taxpayers will pay any settlement we might
win in the wake of an accident, or from the loss of property value.

If nuclear waste transport were a matter of party politics Republicans
should hate it, since it clearly could not pass the litmus tests
established by the 104th Congress -- it is clearly more of a cost then
a benefit when it comes to short term storage of nuclear waste, it is
an unfunded mandate since the training and emergency response
would fall to local communities, it is a "taking" since there would be
loss of property value associated with the use of certain routes for
this transport. The only way there is agreement with the 104th's
principals is term limits. When enough folks wake up to this
program, likely they will vote out who ever voted for it...thus creating
a nuclear waste term limit!

For more information, visit http://www.nirs.org

Nuclear Information & Resource Service 
1424 16th St. NW Suite 404
Washington, DC 20036
202-328-0002
202-462-2183 fax

Mary Olson
maryo@nirs.org

HEARING LIST 
EIS PUBLIC HEARING ALERT

The U.S. Department of Energy will be releasing a draft
Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Yucca Mountain
high-level radioactive waste repository on or about July 30, 1999. As
required by law, DOE plans to hold a series of public hearings in
cities/communities within Nevada and around the country.
Cities/communities and dates for these  hearings are as
follows (as of the publication of this alert, specific addresses and
times for the hearings are not available from DOE):

[see previous posting for web link]
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