Website depicts perilous path of nuke waste

Benjamin Grove

Thursday, Sept. 30, 1999 | 11:21 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Nevada Democratic lawmakers in Congress and a liberal Washington, D.C., advocacy group have teamed up to launch an Internet website today that details the transportation routes nuclear waste would travel to Nevada.

The website is designed to show Americans that storing nuclear waste in Nevada could be dangerous for people all over the country, the delegation members said.

To haul this stuff around the highways and railways of this country would be very unsafe, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said.

Reid, Sen. Richard Bryan, D-Nev., Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., and representatives from Public Citizen announced the start-up of the web-based Atomic Atlas Project.

Public Citizen, founded by consumer advocate Ralph Nader in 1971, designed the website in partnership with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, another Washington-based group.

"Waste is going to go through 109 cities in this country that have populations of 100,000," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's critical mass energy project. "How many of you really believe there isn't going to be an accident?"

The site, www.citizen.org/cmep/atomicatlas/atlas.htm, was launched this week after months of development.

The waste transportation routes have been published before, but the site allows browsers a new kind of interactivity, its creators said. The site allows users to type in their cities to find out exactly where nuclear waste would travel through their towns on highway and rail routes. The site also shows Internet users the proximity of the routes to their hospitals, colleges and schools.

The U.S. Department of Transportation provided the information about the likely routes, said Public Citizen policy analyst Amy Shollenberger. There are no rail lines that travel directly to Yucca Mountain.

People in states that produce nuclear waste may think, "Why not send it to Nevada that's as good a place as any," Shollenberger said.

"The message that this site gives is that this waste may not just be coming through your backyard, it's possible there could be an (nuclear) accident in your backyard."

Nevada's four members of Congress -- Bryan, Reid, Berkley and Rep. Jim Gibbons, the group' sole Republican -- have united to oppose waste shipments to Nevada. A key part of their strategy has been to educate people nationwide that transporting waste is a national problem -- not just a Nevada one.

"It absolutely boggles my mind that this Congress is even entertaining this proposal," Berkley said.

Gibbons was not invited to the press conference, but he said this week, by its very nature, waste transport exposes "the people of this country to an unreasonable risk of loss of life and property damage. It's critical that we explain that not just to those people who live along the transportation routes, but to those (Congress) members who represent those people."

Reid and Bryan last year traveled to Denver and St. Louis to spout their warnings.

Most of the citizens in those two cities had no idea what was at stake in their city, Bryan said.

The Nevada delegation faces strong opposition among some members of Congress who want to ship waste to Nevada. Debate on the issue is likely to continue in the Senate in the next few weeks.

A spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute said the federal government has shipped waste around the country for decades, with only eight accidents.

No radioactive material was released in those accidents, Steve Kerekes said.

"The truth is it's perfectly safe as demonstrated by 30 years of history and 203,000 shipments of waste in this country," Kerekes said.

Kerekes said the website amounts to unfair scare tactics.