Nevada officials warn of hazards while transporting nuclear waste

Bart Jansen

Monday, Oct. 25, 1999 | 3:28 a.m.

WASHINGTON - Nevada officials were trying to drum up opposition Monday to a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, warning fellow lawmakers that moving nuclear waste across the country will be hazardous.

Citing potential risks from accidents or terrorism, Nevada's four congressmen and several administration officials tried to amplify concerns about burying nuclear waste at a single site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Shipments of spent fuel rods would roll through 43 states, they said.

"The Yucca Mountain project involves a massive and unprecedented nationwide nuclear waste shipping campaign that will directly impact millions of people in thousands of communities," Bob Loux, executive director of the state Agency for Nuclear Projects, said.

But Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a policy group for the owners and operators of nuclear power plants, called the warnings a red herring from opponents of nuclear energy, which supplies one-fifth of the country's power.

"It's been done 1,000 percent safely," he said.

The dispute came just a day before the Department of Energy's hearing on the environmental impact of creating a repository at Yucca Mountain.

The Nuclear Information and Resource Service and Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project plan a rally to protest the plan before Tuesday's hearing.

Nevada posted Web site maps of highway and rail shipments anticipated if Yucca Mountain is selected as a single waste depository.

State and federal critics of the Yucca plan said it would require up to 100,000 trucking shipments and as many as 20,000 rail shipments during the next 40 years.

Critics said 2,500 trucking shipments a year would nearly eclipse the total from the past three decades, although Kerekes said there would only be about 300 shipments a year.

Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., said there were 11 transportation incidents and accidents involving spent nuclear fuel shipments from the US Atomic Energy Commission and its contractors between 1957 to 1964. There are no comparable figures available from 1964 to 1970, but there were six accidents and 47 incidents involving spent fuel shipments from 1971 to 1990, he said.

"Most Americans are completely unaware of the prospect that their communities may be facing the possibility of thousands of shipments of high-level nuclear waste traveling through their own back yards," Bryan said.

Kerekes said 3,000 shipments of nuclear waste have been transported during the past 30 years without any release of radioactive material.

"Families should wish that other hazardous waste was handled as responsibly and safely," he said.

Ratepayers have paid $16 billion to create a single storage facility for the waste, he noted.

A number of lawsuits have been filed over the government's failure to dispose of more than 40,000 tons of used reactor fuel now kept at plants in 34 states. The highly radioactive waste is growing at the rate of 2,000 tons a year.