U.S. transit plan for waste questioned
WASHINGTON (AP) – Every year the Navy and a few utilities ship about 60 loads of highly radioactive used reactor fuel from submarines and atomic power plants over short distances, usually by rail, without public notice or protest. The national numbers will soar as shipments start moving by rail or truck through all but a handful of states if a nuclear waste dump is put 90 miles from Las Vegas, as President Bush hopes to do.
The Senate plans to decide soon whether to remove the last political hurdle to burying the waste in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, and opponents are using the transportation issue in an uphill effort to sway lawmakers to vote against the project.
The government has spent $7 billion over two decades studying Yucca Mountain as the preferred site for the proposed dump, but it has devoted only $200 million to figuring out how to get the wastes there.
“They’re trying to downplay transportation because they know once the American people realize their homes lie on these transportation routes they’ll be outraged,” said Kevin Kamps, an anti-nuclear activist.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has asserted repeatedly that the wastes – mostly used reactor fuel – can be shipped safely to Nevada. Once there, he has argued, the material will be more secure than at dozens of reactor sites in 31 states where it is being stored now.
The Energy Department, however, is at least a year away from providing any detailed plan on how waste shipments will get to Nevada, or how cities and towns along the route might be affected.
Also undecided are whether the shipments would be mainly by rail or by truck and the design of shipping containers. Railroads have suggested that if they are to be the primary carrier, special trains should be devoted to the shipments. The government hasn’t made a decision on that either.
The leading Senate opponent of the project, Democratic Whip Harry Reid of Nevada, says the Bush administration “has refused to focus” on the danger posed by hundreds or thousands of waste shipments, most of them from the eastern third of the nation.
A preliminary Energy Department estimate predicts 10,600 shipments to Yucca Mountain over 24 years – beginning in 2010 when the facility would open – if most of the waste was moved by train.
If trucks are the primary transport, there would be more than 53,000 shipments. On any given day, several dozen trucks would be on a highway somewhere in the country. In all, the waste site would hold 77,000 tons with 3,000 tons going there each year on average.
Abraham recently told senators that as few as 175 shipments a year are likely. But that assumes virtually all-long distance shipments going by dedicated trains, each carrying two to four railcars full of waste and no other cargo.
Bob Halstead, a transportation consultant hired by Nevada, calls such a scenario unrealistic, saying it would require building a 100-mile rail line to Yucca Mountain as well as other rail lines from barge or truck connections to at least two dozen reactor sites in the East. Shipping costs also would soar, he maintains.
Energy Department officials concede that transporting the wastes has not been a priority.
“We are ramping up very quickly on the transportation program,” Margaret Chu, head of the DOE office that oversees the Yucca project, recently told a panel of scientists. Added Energy Undersecretary Robert Card: “We feel quite confident that we can arrive at a successful transportation plan.”
Department officials and the nuclear industry argue it’s only logical that a detailed transportation plan await a decision on the site itself. Others contend the public and lawmakers ought to know details of where wastes will travel and how the shipments will be protected before they agree to the Nevada dump.
“They’re trying to slip this through before (the transportation questions) are focused on by the American people,” says Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board and now a consultant for the state of Nevada.
If the Senate affirms overriding Nevada’s objections and letting the administration proceed with the project, “the momentum of the decision will sweep everything else aside,” Hall said.
Supporters of the Nevada project say critics are ignoring the protection afforded such shipments and the fact that wastes have been shipped for years without a release of radiation.
“It all boils down to the waste canisters,” says Scott Peters, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s trade group.
The cylinders – with 15-inch thick triple-layer walls of steel and lead – are designed to withstand severe accidents. Tests have shown them to stand up to impacts equal to a 120-mph collision, puncture tests and exposure to a 1,475 degree Fahrenheit fire.
Still, the September terrorist attacks brought a new dimension to the issue and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is re-examining the vulnerability of waste shipments to potential terrorist attacks.
Tests by the government’s Sandia National Laboratory have concluded that waste containers could be penetrated by a missile or other high energy weapon.
Nevada officials say the radiation released from such an attack would produce cancers in 48 people at some point in their lives and billions of dollars in economic and cleanup costs.
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On the Net:
Yucca Mountain Project: http://www.ymp.gov
State of Nevada: http://www.state.nv.us.
ucwaste
Environmental Working Group: http://www.mapscience.org