Official details cancer risks of nuke shipments

Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2000 | 11:37 a.m.

High-level nuclear waste shipments to a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain would cause about 400 people nationwide to die from cancers over 34 years because of exposure to radiation, a state transportation consultant told a national scientific panel Monday.

Robert Halstead, a consultant to the state Agency for Nuclear Projects, told the National Research Council's Board on Radioactive Waste Management that between 356 and 432 people would contract a fatal cancer from exposure to the shipments.

The Department of Energy, which is charged with studying and ultimately building the repository if it is approved, estimates that 31 people would die from cancer during the 34 years that the waste would be shipped to Yucca.

Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the only site being studied as a repository for 77,000 tons of highly radioactive waste from commercial reactors and nuclear weapons sites. If it is found scientifically feasible, it could open by 2010.

The National Research Council board met in Washington, D.C., Monday to hear concerns about transporting nuclear waste through 43 states and past 53 million people living within two miles of road and rail routes.

The state reached its estimates using a DOE computer model, but assuming a worst-case scenario and using current population figures along the routes. The DOE estimates represent the low to average risk and use 1990 Census figures.

An accident along the roadways involving high-level nuclear waste would cost between $20 billion and $50 billion to clean up, Halstead said.

If the DOE relies on trains to haul the waste, the costs of a severe accident would skyrocket to between $63 billion and $108 billion, he said.

The DOE estimates a cleanup along roadways or rail lines would cost $10 billion to $20 billion.

Although no rail line leads to Yucca Mountain, the DOE and the state have studied the impacts from both train traffic and truck hauling.

Nevada officials said the DOE is underestimating the risks from such shipments in its report expected next summer.

Before Congress singled out Yucca as the sole site for study by the DOE as a repository, the DOE concluded that running a rail line to Yucca Mountain through U.S. Air Force bombing ranges could pose a risk.

The dangers from building a rail spur across U.S. Air Force gunnery property were "unfavorable," the DOE said.

The risks from such a rail spur had not been examined by the DOE at the time, according to its 1986 environmental assessment.

Compared with candidate repository sites in Mississippi, Texas, Utah and Washington, Yucca had the poorest access to national transportation routes, the most difficult rail access, the highest mileage, the highest transportation costs and the highest number of accidents, DOE found at the time.