Demonstration of hazardous materials plan sought

Jeff Schweers

Thursday, Dec. 18, 1997 | 11:19 a.m.

With an average of 800 trucks a year carrying nuclear waste through Southern Nevada, two local politicians thought it might be a good idea to test Clark County's radioactive emergency response reflexes.

Clark County Commissioner Myrna Williams and Las Vegas Mayor Jan Laverty Jones have asked for a demonstration of the county's hazardous materials management plan.

Specifically, they want to see how emergency personnel would respond to a radioactive leak or spill on U.S. 95 and the Spaghetti Bowl, the route trucks take to haul low-level waste to the Nevada Test Site for storage.

"What would we do if it happened on (U.S.) 95, at a high drive time, or in the Spaghetti Bowl?" Williams asked.

The exercise is more timely since the Department of Energy disclosed at least four trucks arrived earlier this week at the Test Site with ruptured and leaking containers. A fifth truck was stopped in Kingman, Ariz., Tuesday after the driver noticed a clear liquid leaking from the trailer onto the ground during a fuel stop. The liquid, however, was not radioactive.

All the trucks were shipping low-level radioactive waste from a federal Superfund clean-up site in Fernald, Ohio.

"It just so happens a radioactive leak was exactly the kind of disaster I had in mind," Williams said Wednesday. "How would we respond if there was an incident at the Spaghetti Bowl? That's exactly where these trucks were heading."

County Manager Dale Askew said the emergency response office has a hazardous materials plan "on paper." The haz-mat plan was approved in July, but has yet to hold a shakedown drill or exercise.

The last emergency preparedness drills the county held were a simulated flood in the summer of 1996 in Henderson and a simulated commercial airline crash in Sunset Park last July.

Russell DeBartolo, assistant director of the nuclear waste division of the Clark County Comprehensive Planning Department, said a simulated radioactive waste spill run-through would be conducted first as a table-top exercise.

"Then, if we feel that we need to, we will do a full-scale drill," DeBartolo said. "We're talking about doing this within the next six months."

The drill has been in the planning stages for two months, DeBartolo said.

In the event a truck containing radioactive materials spilled its contents on U.S. 95, DeBartolo said, county officials would control the scene, determine the nature of the material that was spilled and notify other agencies, he said.

The next step would be to assess the long-term and short-term impacts of the incident, he said.

"There may be short-term impacts like injuries, fatalities, or contamination of some sort," DeBartolo said. "The immediate impacts occur during cleanup like congestion and delays."

Long-term effects may be economy-based.

"The perception of danger among residents and tourists could be very dangerous for us even if the material posed no health or safety hazard," DeBartolo said.

Emergency management officer Gerard Page said the county would focus on human casualties and property damage.

"Typically the fire department would be called in first, and notice that there was radioactive signage on the shipment and measure radiation levels," Page said.

If the levels around the vehicle indicate radiation leakage, Page said, the fire department would call the state radiological health section.

The radiological health people would coordinate the response from there, cordon off the area and make sure nobody entered it.

"If they had to evacuate, we have a section in our plan on how to handle that," Page said.

Then, based on the state's assessment, he said, a clean-up scenario would be put in motion, typically done by a private company that specializes in haz-mat spills.

Up to 30 DOE staff could be at a spill measuring the contamination and assisting the state and affected counties if the incident involved a DOE vehicle, said spokeswoman LaTomya Glass.

But if it's a non-DOE vehicle, about 10 people from her office would respond, she said.

While the storage of high-level waste at the Test Site continues to be debated in Congress, federal facilities from around the country are shipping low-level waste on a regular basis and storing it in unlined pits at the site. Almost 24,000 containers since 1984 came from Fernald alone.

Low-level waste comes from defense activities, reactor parts, almost everything except nuclear fuel, DeBartolo said.

"That doesn't mean there's any less danger or hazard to the public," DeBartolo said.

DOE public information officer Nancy Harkess disagreed about the danger factor when transporting low-level waste, saying the risk to the public is minimal.

"These shipments (this week) were sand used to filter water being emptied out in the river, used parts," Harkess said. "We only take low-level waste from defense complexes, no commercial at all ... The stuff we get here is 99 percent debris that results from downsizing of the nuclear complex."

Harkess said the material is so low in radioactivity that "when our people handle it they don't have to wear protective clothing."

Even in a worst-case scenario, the chances for widespread contamination are small, DeBartolo agreed, "unless the incident occurred whereby a container fell into water, or there was a breach in the container and the contents became airborne. That could happen if it fell off an overpass into oncoming traffic."