Report: Radioactive material would dwarf Hiroshima

Wednesday, June 26, 2002 | 9:51 a.m.

Trucks and trains each carrying 240 times the radioactive material released at Hiroshima could travel through hundreds of U.S. communities if the Senate approves Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear dumpsite in the next few weeks, according to a report released Tuesday.

The 63-page report issued by the nonprofit, nonpartisan U.S. Public Interest Research Groups says the Department of Energy's proposal could send truck shipments of highly radioactive nuclear waste each day for four decades through towns along planned routes in 44 states.

Chicago would see a shipment every 15 hours; St. Louis, Kansas City and Denver, every 13 hours; Des Moines and Omaha, every 10 hours; Salt Lake City, one shipment every seven hours.

Shipments of nuclear waste would travel on interstate and local highways as well as mainline rail routes. Other waste shipments could be carried by barge over waterways like the Mississippi River and Lake Michigan.

The Energy Department intends to ship the waste in transportation casks, but size and weight limitations make it impossible to build a transportation cask that does not leak some radiation, the report says.

A truck carrying a nuclear cask will emit the equivalent of one chest X-ray per hour of radiation to those who are caught in traffic nearby, according to the report.

"In the best-case scenario, these shipments are rolling X-ray machines," said Pierre Sadik, a U.S. PIRG staff attorney. "In the worst-case scenario, these shipments are mobile Chernobyls."

According to one DOE estimate, during transport 310 accidents will occur. There have been at least eight reported nuclear waste transportation accidents in the U.S. The proposed shipments would represent a 30-fold increase over U.S. shipments in the past.

Emergency medical services officials have stated that they do not have the training or equipment to respond to a severe nuclear accident that could involve thousands of deaths and billions of dollars in property damage, the report says.