WASHINGTON — Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) says her “worst nightmare” has terrorists blowing up a truckload of lethal nuclear waste and contaminating a heavily populated stretch of Interstate 15 between Los Angeles and Nevada, according to the Washington Post.
Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) sees danger in moving thousands of tons of nuclear waste through Chicago’s dense hub of railways and highways or, “God forbid,” on barges crossing the Great Lakes or traveling on the Mississippi River.
And Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) dreads a repeat of last year’s Baltimore rail tunnel accident and fire, but this time conceivably involving spent fuel from Maryland’s Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant. “We cannot risk this happening with nuclear cargo,” she said.
As early as this week, the 20-year debate over whether to consolidate much of the nation’s spent nuclear waste will come to a head when the Senate votes on whether the Bush administration should move ahead with plans to build a permanent repository 1,000 feet beneath Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. Conceding they face an uphill fight, opponents are pinning their hopes on wavering senators who worry about the long-term risks of launching the largest cross-country transfer of highly radioactive material in the nation’s history.
For years, the major concern was the safety of the Nevada facility’s design and the possibility of groundwater contamination. Now, lawmakers and environmentalists are focusing on the problems associated with shipping as much as 70,000 metric tons of radioactive waste from 131 above-ground nuclear power plants and facilities in 39 states to Nevada over a quarter-century.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has played down the risks, saying the United States has an “enviable” record of transporting more than 2,700 loads of spent nuclear waste over 1.6 million miles since the 1960s “without one accident resulting in the harmful release of radiation.” Administration officials also say the proposed repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is far superior to the alternative offered by Nevada officials and other opponents — which is to store the waste where it is, in leak-proof steel and concrete cylinders, under increased security.
“We have an incredible track record,” said Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Energy Department. “The amount of shipping would increase, but we think we could safely and securely continue to move it.”
Still, the scope of the administration’s preliminary plans for moving waste to the proposed $58 billion repository would dwarf anything attempted before. The government intends to ship at least 11,100 large casks of radioactive waste on 4,600 trains and trucks through 44 states, according to the Energy Department.
Critics say the plan will significantly increase the risk of accidents and spills while presenting an enticing array of moving targets for terrorists with explosives or shoulder-held missiles.
Moreover, they say, the project won’t solve the nuclear waste problem. Waste shipped to Yucca will be replaced by an almost equal amount of new waste generated by nuclear power plants in the coming decades, according to government figures. Because Congress limited the storage capacity of the Yucca project to 70,000 tons, additional space — at Yucca or another site — will be needed around 2034 at the earliest.
The spent fuel from nuclear plants, among the deadliest substances known to man, will be solidified into ceramic pellets secured inside an assembly of strong, multilayered metal tubes. Ninety percent of the material would be shipped by rail in containers weighing about 140 tons, and the rest would go by truck, as envisioned by the Energy Department. Each rail shipment would carry 240 times the amount of long-lived radioactive material that was released in the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), who opposes the Yucca project, says transportation problems are a “huge concern” to his colleagues, especially the handful of Democrats undecided on the issue.
Sen. Jean Carnahan (D-Mo.) recently announced she would oppose the repository after learning there probably would be more than 19,000 truck shipments and 4,000 rail shipments of nuclear waste through her state in the coming 24 years. “I don’t want Missouri to become the nation’s nuclear waste superhighway,” Carnahan said.
The House voted overwhelmingly in May to affirm President Bush’s decision to seek a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build the massive repository. A majority of senators appear to favor the project, although Senate Majority Whip Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) are trying to change some votes by exploiting nagging concerns about transportation.
James E. Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board and now an adviser to a group of opponents, said it would be “irresponsible” for the administration to proceed with the project before completing a risk assessment, a detailed transportation plan and full-scale testing of containers. Opponents say the casks could become ready-made “dirty bombs” in the hands of terrorists.
The NRC requires the Energy Department to conduct scale-model testing and computer simulation to determine how well the casks would withstand sudden impact, punctures, fire or immersion in water. However, NRC Chairman Richard A. Meserve said in April that his agency is “considering certain full-scale testing focused on cask performance in severe accidents,” such as last summer’s train derailment and fire in Baltimore.
Temperatures in the Howard Street tunnel reached 1,000 degrees to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, according to news reports. A study last September by Lamb & Resnikoff, a radioactive waste management firm, concluded that a similar accident involving a nuclear waste shipment would result in a “massive” failure of the transportation cask that could lead to thousands of cancer-related deaths. However, Meserve has told Congress that a preliminary NRC staff analysis concluded that a nuclear waste cask would have survived a comparable fire without “any melting of the fuel.”
The Environmental Working Group, Public Citizen and other environmental organizations have fanned concerns about nuclear waste traffic by disseminating data and detailed maps of the potential transportation routes based on an Energy Department environmental impact study. Colorful maps on EWG’s Web site, for instance, show that more than 2.7 million people in Illinois live within one mile of a likely nuclear transportation route, while there are 153 schools and three hospitals within one mile of the proposed transportation routes through the District.
There would be daily shipments of nuclear waste through Atlanta, Cleveland and San Bernardino, Calif., according to a U.S. Public Interest Research Group analysis. Trucks or trains carrying the cargo would rumble through Chicago every 15 hours, through St. Louis, Kansas City and Denver every 13 hours, through Des Moines and Omaha every 10 hours and through Salt Lake City every seven hours.
“If the terrorists miss the 10:30 truck, they can pick up the 1:30 truck — it will be that simple,” said Fred Dilger, a transportation and anti-terrorism adviser to Nevada’s Clark County.
But administration and congressional advocates say existing, stationary stockpiles of nuclear waste pose far more inviting targets to terrorists than would secretly scheduled, heavily guarded shipments to Yucca Mountain.
“Without Yucca Mountain, companies with nuclear waste stored in temporary containers near waterways and population centers nationwide will begin contracting with private storage outfits to ship the waste to off-site locations” at even greater risk to the public, Abraham said last week.
Energy Department officials also stress that it will take years before a final transportation plan is developed, and that state and local officials will be consulted on specific routes. The government hopes to begin shipments in 2010.
Most of the nuclear waste is in the East; trips to Yucca would average 2,000 miles.
More than 123 million people live in the 703 counties traversed by the Energy Department’s potential highway routes, and 106 million live in counties along potential rail routes, according to analyses of government figures. Between 10.4 million and 16.4 million people will live within half a mile of a transportation route in 2035.
Few states are likely to be traversed by more rail and highway shipments than Illinois. Durbin, who is undecided on Yucca, has peppered the Transportation Department and other agencies with questions about how the government would ensure the safety of shipments. How will the routes be selected? Are tests for the casks tough enough in light of post-Sept. 11 risks? He has gotten some answers but wants more.
The transportation risks have a special meaning for Chicago, Durbin says. “Chicago grew and prospered because of transportation, so we’re honeycombed with railroad yards, railroad crossings, interstate highways,” he said. “It has been a blessing for us in many respects and a challenge for us in others.”
In Nebraska, Sens. Ben Nelson (D) and Chuck Hagel (R) view the transportation risks through different lenses. Nelson was governor in 1996 when an Energy Department tractor-trailer carrying nuclear warheads ran off U.S. Highway 83 in Nebraska, slid down an embankment and overturned during an ice and snow storm. Although no one was injured and there was no contamination, the incident left its mark on Nelson.
Among his concerns is that the small farming town of Gibbon, with a population of about 1,500, would become a major crossroads for waste shipments.
“It doesn’t take much imagination” to figure what could happen if something goes wrong on either the highway or rail lines,” Nelson said. “Tom Clancy could write quite a story about it.”
Hagel, however, discounted the transportation risk in a recent Senate speech. “There is risk with everything we do,” he said. “What is important is that the risk is acceptable in order to accomplish the objective. In this case, the risk is absolutely acceptable, because it is a risk we can control.”