Rural radiation exposure feared

Thursday, Nov. 15, 2001 | 10:11 a.m.

A panel of experts will debate the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in a two-part program scheduled to air on KLVX-TV Channel 10.

"Battle Born, Nuclear Torn" is scheduled to pit political and scientific views on the nuclear waste repository at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and again at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 23.

Both segments of the program will be rebroadcast at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 24.

Rural residents could be exposed to "very large" amounts of radiation from trucks of nuclear waste being shipped to a Yucca Mountain repository, even if no accident ever occurs, a consultant to Nevada said.

Scientists for the state Agency for Nuclear Projects have come up with preliminary estimates of 30 to 200 millirems of exposure per year, transportation consultant Robert Halstead told a forum at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Wednesday. They assumed three shipments of nuclear waste a day for 30 years, he said.

That exposure would be in addition to about 300 millirems a year the average American receives from all natural radiation sources, such as the sun and Earth's rocks. A chest X-ray is 5 to 10 millirems of radiation.

The state Agency for Nuclear Projects is preparing a report on routine radiation exposures to people living close to possible rural routes in Nye, Esmeralda and White Pine counties. It is scheduled to be released next month, before Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham makes a decision on proposing the mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the nation's repository.

The DOE has studied radiation releases from severe railroad or trucking accidents, but the state's study is the first to analyze routine exposure from a closed container.

State scientists used information contained in the DOE's studies to come up with its preliminary estimates. The range of doses reflects different types of waste inside each container.

The state's study breaks new ground, because it analyzes radiation exposure from nuclear shipments without any accidents, Halstead said Wednesday night during the forum sponsored by the state, UNLV's Political Science Department and UNLV's Continuing Education Division.

No one from the DOE participated in the two-hour public discussion. Energy Department officials attended the forum, but left before it ended.

A DOE spokesman confirmed this morning that the state was using DOE numbers, and said that if state calculations were correct, routes would be adjusted to avoid passing close to rural residents.

Some rural residents live as close as 25 feet to possible shipping routes in the rural Nevada counties, the state's Halstead said. Actual shipping routes have not yet been proposed.

The state has also asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the agency that must issue the DOE a permit to build a repository, to review its transportation regulations for thwarting sabotage.

Long before terrorists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, the state had asked the NRC to update its rules for protecting nuclear waste shipments, Halstead said.

Since Nevada asked the NRC for the update in June 1999, there has been no response.

However, after the terrorist attack, NRC Chairman Richard Meserve ordered the staff to review all of the commission's regulations.

For example, under the current rules, the NRC does not require armed guards for high-level nuclear waste shipments in rural areas, Halstead said.

Nor has the NRC updated 30-year-old studies on full-sized transportation containers tested by dropping them 30 feet, nuclear physicist and state consultant Marvin Resnikoff said.

After the July 18 Baltimore tunnel train crash and fire, Resnikoff took data from firefighter records of the accident and did a computer simulation of how a single nuclear waste container would have fared in the flames.

Nuclear shipping containers are designed to withstand a fire burning at 1,475 degrees Fahrenheit, he said. The Baltimore tunnel fire, which burned for four days, reached an estimated 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit, according to firefighters. Spent fuel rods in a nuclear waste container at that temperature would burst within 24 hours, he said.

The bottom line is that a fire such as the Baltimore tunnel inferno would contaminate up to 40 miles downwind and cost almost $14 billion to clean up, Resnikoff said.