States grapple with nuke train trek

Benjamin Grove and Mary Manning

Friday, Aug. 17, 2001 | 4:28 a.m.

Politicians and protesters who oppose a federal plan to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain conjure up frightening images of rumbling trucks and trains hauling thousands of tons of waste to Nevada.

Now the Energy Department is offering a sneak preview of that future.

The DOE is finalizing plans for one of the most complicated train shipments of high-level nuclear waste ever devised: a secret, cross-country trek from New York to Idaho before Oct. 31. Yucca critics say the shipment is an eerie glimpse of a future when up to 10 truck and train shipments a day would bring waste to Yucca. In fact, the waste bound for temporary storage in Idaho is slated for permanent burial in the Nevada desert.

But DOE officials say the imminent shipment, while unusually large and traveling unusually far, was meticulously planned, will be extremely safe and will not foreshadow Yucca.

"Emphatically, no," DOE spokesman John Chamberlain said. "This isn't a forerunner of spent-fuel shipments to the (Yucca) repository."

The train, which for weeks has been ready to roll at the DOE's former waste-reprocessing center in West Valley, N.Y., is headed for the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory for temporary storage.

High-level waste shipments in America are common -- about 2,900 shipments have been made since 1964, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a leading trade group. Most shipments involve the Energy and Defense departments hauling waste from site to site, typically on short trips.

But this shipment will travel roughly 2,300 miles on a route specially chosen by the DOE.

The shipment involves four rail companies hauling about 47 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel rods from commercial -- not government -- nuclear reactors. The DOE began making plans for the complex shipment two years ago and budgeted $16 million for the job, Chamberlain said.

"This is a fairly (unusual) move," Norfolk Southern railroad spokeswoman Susan Bland said. Nevada officials are interested in it because waste stored at the Idaho facility is destined for burial in underground tunnels at the proposed Yucca repository, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Yucca Mountain is the only site under study by the DOE as a potential national nuclear waste dump and is not expected to open until after 2010. If completed, 77,000 tons of waste would be shipped by train and truck to Nevada from the nation's 103 nuclear reactors and Energy and Defense department sites.

If Yucca was to open, more than 11,000 train shipments of waste would pull into Nevada over three or four decades -- roughly one a day, according to one DOE-commissioned study.

Nevada officials often emphasize the dangers of transporting nuclear waste as part of their strategy to drum up nationwide opposition to a Yucca repository.

The DOE's extensive preparations for the New York-to-Idaho shipment give no solace to Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., he said.

"I'm glad that everyone is watching this shipment -- but what about all the ones they're not watching?" Reid said. "We're talking about moving more than 70,000 tons of nuclear waste to Nevada. To think that they will all be like this one is a joke."

But moving high-level waste is always carefully planned, DOE and nuclear-industry officials say. Nevada leaders use unfair scare tactics, Nuclear Energy Institute officials say. If regular shipments are made to Yucca Mountain, planning and shipping waste would become a far more efficient operation, Chamberlain said. "Some of this has been breaking new ground," he said.

Shipment history

The waste has been sitting for years at the DOE's West Valley reprocessing plant, which operated from 1966 to 1972 when the government "recycled" waste from nuclear reactors. West Valley, about 40 miles south of Buffalo, N.Y., was the only private plant in the United States to reprocess spent nuclear fuel. The plant closed for renovation in 1972, but never reopened. President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s halted reprocessing spent nuclear fuel because of security risks. As part of waste reprocessing, workers chemically separated and recovered plutonium, which Carter said could fall into the wrong hands.

The government started cleaning up West Valley in 1982 and should complete the project soon. The waste is being shipped to Idaho, where it could be kept in dry-storage casks for 30 years -- at least until a permanent repository opens.

Reasons for moving the spent fuel before November are weather-related -- the DOE wants to avoid blizzards or tornados, Chamberlain said.

The shipment consists of 125 bundles or "assemblies" of 7- and 14-foot-long radioactive rods, filled mostly with solid uranium pellets once used as fuel inside nuclear reactors.

The assemblies were inserted into two 77-ton, dumbbell-shaped casks, each with 9-inch steel walls, Idaho facility spokesman Tim Jackson said. The casks, both roughly 20-by-11 feet, with 85 assemblies in one and 40 in the other, have been secured on two rail cars, he said.

Satellite tracking

DOE officials will use TRANSCOM, a satellite positioning system, to track the shipment, Jackson said.

A three-member DOE team, including a TRANSCOM operator, a veteran radiological technician to monitor for radiation release and an emergency-response expert, will accompany the shipment, Chamberlain said.

The train will travel through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Wyoming on its way to Idaho.

It will take nearly five days, with about 10 to 12 stops, including three to hand the train over to another crew. The train's eight cars will not change on the trip: two locomotives, including a spare; two flatbed waste cars; a passenger car; and three cars filled with crushed stone to act as "spacers," Chamberlain said.

The rail companies are required to put a security officer or railroad policeman, who may be armed, on the train, Chamberlain said. Other details about security are not being released, he said.

The DOE has notified emergency-response crews in each state on the route and will notify a governor-designated point person in each state seven days before the shipment.

Special requirements for the rail companies complicated contract negotiations. For instance, the DOE insisted its crew be on board and required that it -- not the rail companies -- choose the route.

The rail companies -- Buffalo & Pittsburgh, CSXT, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific -- were concerned about protesters damaging or blockading freight lines, Chamberlain said. CSXT last week was the last to sign the contract, he said.

The DOE notified the FBI so that it could be on alert in case protesters threaten the shipment, Chamberlain said.

"All of these special requirements make it a real challenge for (the rail companies) to integrate this into their traffic flow," Chamberlain said.

Alert activists

Anti-nuclear activists are getting ready.

The Washington-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service is holding next week in Chicago an international "action camp," where up to 300 activists will discuss possible protests along the route, organizer Kevin Kamps said.

A blockade of some kind "will definitely be discussed at the action camp," Kamps said. But he said it wasn't likely that demonstrators would interfere with the shipment beyond peaceful protests along the route.

Washington-based Public Citizen, a watchdog group, is in touch with groups along the route, spokeswoman Lisa Gue said. Because the shipping date is secret, it is difficult to plan a specific protest, she said.

"There is concern," Gue said. "Imagine this times 100,000, which is the number of shipments being proposed for Yucca Mountain." Tri-Valley Care, a citizens group in northern California, has signed a national letter protesting the shipment even though the train will not enter the state, spokeswoman Marilia Kelly said.

"The DOE and the nuclear industry are playing a shell game, putting nuclear waste on the road, rather than involving the community in a technical, scientific discussion of disposal alternatives," she said.

Activists in Indiana, which has no nuclear plants, resent the waste traveling through their state, but don't plan to blockade the shipment, said Chris Williams, executive director of Citizens Action Coalition. But they'll be watching the DOE closely, he said.

"They want to make sure this goes off without a hitch, given all the attention and concern people have shown around the country," Williams said. "They really want this to go right."

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