Nuke casks can be damaged

Benjamin Grove

Monday, Feb. 11, 2002 | 8:02 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- As Nevada officials mull their next strike in an intensifying battle against the Yucca Mountain project, a videotape may be their new weapon.

Nevada's lawmakers in Congress are analyzing the 4.5-minute video, three sources told the Sun. The footage shows a small missile blowing a hole in a metal cask used to store highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel rods. The rods are the waste product from nuclear power plants and would be transported in the casks by truck to Yucca Mountain.

The video was obtained by the four-member congressional delegation in recent days. They believe it may be powerful evidence that high-level nuclear waste casks are vulnerable to terrorist strikes. They believe the video could slow the federal plan to ship 77,000 tons of the nation's high-level waste to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, for permanent burial.

The plan is at a critical point: President Bush is widely believed to be ready to approve the project as soon as this week.

Nevada lawmakers are keeping mum and keeping the tape under wraps as they verify details of the footage and devise a strategy.

"If the goal is to cast doubt on the safety of transporting this waste, I don't think there is a better piece of evidence out there," said one source, who viewed the tape and declined to be identified.

The tape, reviewed by the Sun, features a metal cask that the video claims is commonly used to store and transport nuclear waste today. The video was produced by International Fuel Containers, a U.S. agent for a German waste-cask manufacturer.

In the video the cask is called "Super Castor," but it is not clear who makes that cask. According to the congressional delegation's fact sheet, the cask is licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for storage but had not yet been licensed to transport waste at the time of the experiment. It is licensed for transport in other nations, according to IFC.

The nuclear industry currently uses NRC-licensed casks to make shipments of high-level waste in this nation.

The tape shows two experiments conducted in cooperation with the U.S. Army at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland on June 25, 1998.

In one test, a TOW anti-tank missile, less than 50 pounds and common worldwide, is placed on the cask and detonated. The explosion pierces the cask, which is more than one foot thick. The missile creates a softball-sized hole all the way through the container.

In the second test, the cask is protected by a "flak jacket" of concrete, to simulate how waste storage casks currently are protected at the nation's nuclear plants. The missile cracks the cask surface but does not completely penetrate it.

The tape does not show what would happen to both casks if the missile had been fired. A TOW missile is about six inches in diameter and in use by 40 nations, according to manufacturer Raytheon Co. It has a range of more than 3,000 meters.

Still, the experiments may bolster arguments that it is safer to leave nuclear waste casks encased in concrete at nuclear plants than to ship casks cross-country to Nevada, state officials could argue.

If the Yucca project is eventually approved by Bush, Congress, and the NRC, as many as 100,000 shipments of high-level waste could roll across America for 30 years or more.

The potential risks of shipments are already a key argument against the Yucca project for its Nevada foes.

But nuclear industry officials stress that more than 3,000 shipments of high-level nuclear waste have been made in America without a single radiation release.

"Transportation, as we see it, is safe," Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Mitch Singer said in a recent interview.

And NEI has a videotape of its own to prove it.

In recent weeks, NEI, the industry's top trade group, has shipped 222 nine-minute videotapes to television news stations nationwide as part of a public relations campaign.

The tape shows dramatic tests in which the casks are dropped from great heights, burned at high temperatures, and even struck by a speeding train. The casks emerge bruised but not breached.

The tape's message: the sophisticated metal casks are virtually indestructable, so shipping high-level waste is safe.

"It's fair to say the idea was to educate the public and suggest to them that there is a lot of disinformation and scare tactics out there," Singer said.

But Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said the tape was "pure propaganda" last week after viewing the NEI video.

Berkley sent a letter last week to Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta referencing a Department of Transportation Inspector General's report that questioned whether the DOT could handle regulating nuclear waste shipments. Berkley asked Mineta for answers to specific questions, including whether a waste transport canister could withstand a terrorist strike.

And in a meeting last week with President Bush, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he raised Bush's interest when he outlined the dangers of shipping waste.

"We're confident the president is going to be concerned about transportation," Reid said after the meeting.

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