Nuclear waste in the neighborhood

Benjamin Grove

Tuesday, June 11, 2002 | 11:19 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Nevada officials say a new website that shows users exactly how close they live to proposed nuclear waste routes could damage Yucca Mountain's popularity in the Senate.

The site, www.mapscience.org, was developed and launched today by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based nonprofit research organization.

The website is the most interactive and easy-to-use source yet for people who want to see exactly where the Energy Department plans to ship nuclear waste bound for the proposed Yucca Mountain dumpsite. The website is far more advanced than maps drawn by the Energy Department, the state of Nevada and other environmental groups.

The site asks users to put in an address and then using Census data and Energy Department proposals, shows how far the address is from a waste route, a nuclear reactor and how many people live within a mile of the route. As well, the site shows the number of schools and hospitals near the route.

If the website receives immediate, widespread attention, it has the potential to shock users and trouble senators, Sens. Harry Reid, D-Nev., and John Ensign, R-Nev., said. A Senate vote on Yucca, expected before July 25, could happen within days, Senate sources said.

Ensign and Reid are negotiating with Senate leaders to delay a vote, in part to buy time to publicize the website, sources said.

"It's a question of do we have enough time," Ensign said. "If we had gotten this six months ago, for sure it would have had an effect."

Energy Department and nuclear industry officials shrugged off the website launch as another ploy by anti-Yucca forces to influence the Senate vote.

The website relies on the Energy Department's proposed routes, which have not been finalized, said Mitch Singer, spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute.

"It's a bit irresponsible to say that this is going to come through your neighborhoods when nobody has determined that it is going to go there," Singer said.

Energy and industry officials say waste can be shipped safely on trucks and trains, based on nearly 3,000 shipments of high-level waste made with few accidents and no radiation releases in the past 38 years.

"If (the Environmental Working Group) is trying to scare people, they are not going to be very effective," Energy spokesman Joe Davis said. "Transporting waste has been safe and secure for years."

Davis encouraged people to visit the department's Yucca Mountain website, www.ymp.gov and follow links to the site's newly posted "spent nuclear fuel transportation" section.

The mapscience.org website allows users to type in their address for instant access to a map that shows them whether they are within one, two or five miles of a waste transportation route. Additional data reveals exactly how far, to the tenth of a mile, they live from the route.

"If we're going to do (Yucca) properly, people have to know what it means to them," Environmental Working Group senior vice president Richard Wiles said. "We're saying that before the Senate votes to continue with Yucca Mountain, the people ought to be included in the debate about whether it's the right thing to do."

The website also:

"This will offer, by far, the most accurate data available about the number of people along the routes," group president Ken Cook said.

As an example, the website says that the Bellagio's address, 3600 Las Vegas Blvd. South, at a busy intersection on the Strip, is 0.4 miles from the nearest nuclear waste route -- apparently, the rail tracks or Interstate 15.

The nearest nuclear power plant to that address is 226.2 miles away, the Palo Verde plant in Arizona, the website says. The United States has 103 commercial nuclear reactors that would ship waste to Yucca, but none in Nevada.

The website also offers data on how much waste the nation's nuclear plants will still have in 2046 -- even if the plants begin shipping waste to Yucca. If Yucca opens, Palo Verde, like all active plants, will continue to produce waste, even as it ships waste to Nevada that has cooled enough for transport.

By 2046, the Palo Verde plant will actually have 854 more tons than it has now, even after years of shipping waste to Yucca, according to the website.

Those numbers shame lawmakers who argue that the nation needs Yucca Mountain to eliminate waste accumulating in their states, EWG officers said.

"It's basically a lie," Wiles said.

The website is the result of a massive, three-week data-crunching project involving more than 600 billion calculations, group officers said.

The computers compiled data from a number of sources including the Transportation Department; Energy Department; U.S. Postal Service (ZIP codes); U.S.Census; and a number of private databases.

The project's cost -- about $400,000 to $450,000 to develop and publicize the website -- was paid for with private money, mostly from foundations that had contributed to the Environmental Working Group's project fund. Those contributors included the Bauman Foundation, the W. Alton Jones Foundation and mogul Ted Turner's Turner Foundation. Sun President and Editor Brian Greenspun contributed $200,000 directly to the website project.

The state of Nevada did not contribute, although the Environmental Working Group was initially inspired to take on the project after Reid asked the organization for help publicizing the risks of waste shipping, Cook said.

The challenge now for the group is to get the word out about the website -- before the fast-approaching Senate vote, group leaders said. They spent more than a week briefing reporters in advance of today's website unveiling, and a number of newspapers nationwide ran stories today.

The group's officers have shown the website to five senators and plan to meet with "lots more" in the next few weeks, Cook said.

"If people across the country realize that in terms of transportation, Yucca Mountain is in St. Louis, it's in Des Moines, in Washington, D.C., Wilmington and Miami -- I think we have a shot in the Senate," Cook said. "We can stem the tide here."

The Energy Department has been irresponsible by not presenting route information in a clear, easy-to-use format, Cook said.

"We need people to have what the government has denied them -- the right to know how this affects them," Cook said.

Energy's Davis countered, "We did provide people with route information as it applies to their states. The information the Environmental Working Group uses came from the DOE."

The Environmental Working Group prides itself on developing splashy projects that create a buzz inside and outside the Beltway. Group leaders hope their effort grabs as much attention as their last project, which created an easy-to-use Internet list of farm subsidies doled out by the federal government.

The list showed that most subsidies go a small number of the biggest producers. The project irked both the big producers and small farmers who suddenly found their financial information on the Internet. The project received media attention and helped change the way some lawmakers look at federal farm subsidies.

Davis called the farm subsidy project "forgettable."

"We believe this one will be, too."

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