Letter: Transportation will be deadly

Friday, Nov. 16, 2001 | 9:56 a.m.

As usual, our great government has put the cart before the horse. It has spent over $9 billion planning for a repository at Yucca Mountain, but it hasn't any firm publicized plans for transportation.

They have ignored or just forgotten to tell the public that 140,000 metric tons of high-level nuclear power plant waste and 14,000 very hot metric tons of defense waste will pass through most of our major cities and farmlands from every direction to reach Mercury, Nevada's Yucca Mountain.

One hundred twenty-five thousand pound oversized canisters (70,000 or more) have never been tested for safe containment for 10 years, much less the prescribed 10,000 years. The 55-gallon drums containing the defense waste have corroded in 14 days. They won't last 10 years and don't comply with the Nelson Limits, which are catastrophic explosion.

There are no rail systems to Yucca Mountain. Our deteriorating highways will be destroyed by the caravans of the oversized trucks traveling at speeds of 20 to 30 miles per hour. Terrorists will be presented with a perfect slow-moving target.

The 200 million Americans who will be exposed to this high-level radioactive waste as it passes through their cities and farms will be missed. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows one death in a million civilians and the Environmental Protection Agency permits one in 10,000 people.

We in Nevada who live under the shadow of the proposed Yucca Mountain repository will miss all who have died from the radiation poisoning.

SALLY DEVLIN