Nuclear containers called into question

Tuesday, Dec. 7, 1999 | 11 a.m.

Hearing

Public hearing on transportation of nuclear waste.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

8 a.m.-4:30 p.m., 7-9:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Henderson Convention Center.

(301) 415-8527.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hear state and local concerns Wednesday on the survival of nuclear waste containers in case of a road or rail accident en route to Yucca Mountain.

If Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, becomes the world's first high-level nuclear waste repository, 100,000 truck shipments could travel to the site.

Yucca Mountain is the only site being studied as the nation's repository to hold 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive defense waste. A Nuclear Regulatory Commission report lays out a trucking route to the site, if the repository is built, over Hoover Dam on U.S. 93 and on the Las Vegas Beltway, routes that pass through Henderson.

The commission has regulated nuclear shipping containers for decades and would license a repository if it passes scientific muster.

If a repository is built, up to 10 shipments of highly radioactive waste would roll through Nevada each day until the repository is full.

Based on better testing techniques, more public concern over high-level nuclear waste shipments and more trips in the future, the commission decided to conduct the public meeting in Henderson.

"This project will support the NRC's efforts to assure our regulatory actions are effective, risk-informed and open to public input and review," a commission statement announcing the meeting said.

The commission's last study said that one in 100,000 nuclear waste accidents involving trucks might release a catastrophic amount of radiation. In the case of train crashes, one in 10,000 could release harmful levels of radiation. The commission said such a disaster was highly unlikely.

About 3,000 shipments of highly radioactive materials from nuclear reactors have been shipped since the U.S. entered the atomic age in 1945.

Nevada and other Western states have complained to the commission for the past 10 years that its conclusions had never been verified by real-world experiments, state transportation consultant Robert Halstead said.

At least the states want the commission to tell the public how dangerous nuclear waste from those commercial power reactors is, Halstead said.

If a single fuel assembly has been removed from a reactor and cooled for five years, a person exposed within 3 feet of it without a lead shield would die in less than 30 seconds, Halstead said.

After cooling for 26 years the same nuclear assembly without a lead shield could kill a person in less than five minutes, he said.

"So it is extremely dangerous," Halstead said.

The radioactive elements contained in a nuclear waste shipping container could contaminate all of Lake Mead, he said.

The Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico conducted a crash test of a nuclear waste container in the 1970s. The lab dropped a container on a spike, burned it in a fire and submerged it in water for eight hours, concluding that nothing would leak.

Once again the commission has hired Sandia to conduct any further studies, if public comments persuade the NRC more tests are needed. Some of the questions the commission is asking include how long a nuclear container should be exposed to a fire to prove it safe, what kind of puncture test is necessary and what speed the shipping vehicle should reach before simulating a crash.