(The Casper Star-Tribune posted the following story by Brodie Farquhar on its website on July 18.)
CASPER, Wyo. — A shipment of nuclear waste, on hold at its point of origin since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, passed through Wyoming this week.
The shipment of 125 spent nuclear fuel rod assemblies left West Valley, NY, on Sunday night. It pulled into the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory on Wednesday morning. During its journey, the train passed through southern Wyoming along the Union Pacific line.
Rick Dale, a spokesman for Bechtel BWXT Idaho LCC., which operates INEEL for the Department of Energy, confirmed that the special shipment arrived safely Wednesday morning with no incidents en route. He would not comment further about the shipment’s schedule or route.
Lara Azar, press secretary to Gov. Dave Freudenthal, said the governor’s office was contacted about the shipment.
The governor in each state involved in the shipment appoints a representative to decide who should be allowed to know the details of a shipment. In Wyoming, that representative is Captain Vernon Poage, commercial carrier officer for the Wyoming Highway Patrol. Poage was unavailable for comment Thursday.
The federal government halted all nuclear waste shipments shortly after the terrorist attacks. It was not immediately clear if other shipments have moved before now, or if the West Valley load was the first to cross the nation.
Just days before the attacks, Department of Energy officials announced their plan to ship 125 spent nuclear fuel assemblies by rail from the now closed nuclear fuel reprocessing plant to INEEL. Since then, the fuel rods have been stored loaded on a special train, guarded 24-hours a day by Cattaraugus County sheriff’s deputies.
The Times Herald of Olean, NY, reported that the train was composed of two engines, two flatbed cars with specially-designed casks to hold the fuel rod bundles, three buffer cars filled with crushed stone and a passenger car with Department of Energy and emergency response teams.
The spent fuel assemblies are left over from West Valley facility’s uranium-processing operations conducted between 1966 and 1972. The Energy Department is now cleaning up the nation’s first and only commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in West Valley.
The fuel assemblies will be placed in dry storage in a specifically-constructed facility at INEEL until a national repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is available.
Department of Energy officials have said communities along the train’s route should not be concerned about radiation doses from the fuel assemblies. They noted vastly higher amounts of radiation comes from the atmosphere, common appliances and even some natural sources of food and water.