Studies urged on nuke waste as terrorist target

Monday, Aug. 20, 2001 | 10:37 a.m.

Western governors, fearing the federal government cannot ensure the safety of nuclear waste transported to Nevada or Utah, asked for updated studies on terrorism and sabotage threats posed to spent fuel shipments.

Gov. Kenny Guinn and Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt succeeded at the Western Governors Association last week in passing a resolution that calls for more federal analysis on sabotage threats to nuclear waste shipments.

The nuclear industry and the Bush administration are seeking a solution to nuclear waste sitting at 103 reactors across the country, most of them in Eastern states.

Nuclear power advocates are supporting a plan for a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for burying 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.

Meanwhile, eight utilities are seeking a federal license to store spent nuclear fuel at the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. The Utah site is a temporary stop for waste while studies at Yucca Mountain are completed. A Yucca repository would open in 2010 at the earliest.

The governors noted that a DOE contractor reported in the 1970s that a spent fuel shipment ambushed in an urban area could result in hundreds of early fatalities and thousands of latent cancer fatalities, as well as "economic losses in the billions."

Nevada and Clark County officials have estimated medical costs and property losses from a nuclear accident en route to Yucca Mountain ranging from $1 billion to $12 billion.

Nevada officials have asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is licensing the temporary storage site in Utah and would have to license a Yucca Mountain repository, to analyze a terrorist attack using modern weapons such as anti-tank missiles.

While the governors can only suggest action, the resolution will be sent to Washington policymakers, including the secretaries of Energy and Transportation and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"The NRC should conduct a comprehensive assessment of the consequences of attacks that have the potential for radiological sabotage," the resolution says. The governors said the assessment should consider threats to roads or railroad tracks, the capture of a nuclear waste shipment and the use of high-energy explosives against a shipping container.

In 2000 Guinn persuaded the association to approve a resolution that requested Congress fund emergency training and equipment for shipping nuclear waste across the country for up to 30 years.