Las Vegas Sun

December 4, 2009

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Letter: Transportation of nuclear waste least of problems

Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2000 | 9:45 a.m.

If that truck had been carrying nuclear waste, the only fire would have been from the truck's own fuel tanks.

Knowing how waste is transported, especially high-level waste, no nuclear material would have escaped.

What Clayton should be more concerned about are the trucks carrying much more lethal materials.

If that accident had involved a truck carrying chlorine gas and the tanker would have breached, the dead could have run into the hundreds, and possibly thousands affected, and all of this within minutes. Someone exposed to nuclear material would not realize its effects for 20-50 years, if at all.

This state uses large amounts of cyanide to process gold and sulfuric acid to process copper.

There are currently many more potentially lethal materials being transported on Nevada roadways every day that no one pays any attention to.

That's what I and Clayton should be worried about.

MARK S. CLARK

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