Friday, June 28, 2002 | 4:34 a.m.
A CANADIAN company is quietly pitching its radical alternative to Yucca Mountain: burying America's high-level nuclear waste in a remote, uninhabited expanse in Canada.
Officials with the secretive company called Securad Inc. say the safest place to bury nuclear waste is not the desert mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, but in an uninhabited, Texas-size area of northeastern Canada.
And despite the momentum behind the U.S. government's 20-year, $7 billion investment in Yucca, Securad is determined to launch a private venture offering an alternative underground waste dump at the remote -- thus far undisclosed -- Canadian site.
Of course, Securad faces numerous, seemingly impossible obstacles -- not the least of which would be getting Canada's government, whose nuclear regulatory agency hasn't heard of the company, to agree.
Then there's the matter of convincing the U.S. Congress to re-write its nuclear waste laws and put the brakes on Yucca. It's a little late -- the Senate is poised to approve it next month.
But long-shot odds have never deterred nuclear waste dreamers.
Entrepreneurs of all kinds -- from two-bit hucksters to more legitimate, high-finance executives -- have schemed since nuclear energy was born. One early idea was blasting waste into space.
Other proposals include:
Roy first unveiled his theory, dubbed the Roy Process, to much acclaim and media attention in 1979, saying it could eliminate the need for a waste dump. But three years later Congress committed itself to burying waste, and Roy never got the backing he believed his idea deserved.
Government scientists still study transmutation, although they favor a different approach than Roy advocated, and they say the expensive technology is a long way from being developed. But Roy's longtime friend Dennis Nester of Phoenix is still trying to convince scientists, reporters and government officials that the Roy Process is the answer.
Nester has written to many senators and each president in the last 20 years. Roy died of cancer in 1994.
"Before he died he told me, 'Keep trying. They will see someday that my method is the best way to do it.' " Nester said. "So I keep doing it. I keep hoping."
As for Securad, company officials say that unlike Yucca Mountain, the cold, flat Canadian site has no fissures, earthquakes or volcanic risks, and no water table beneath it. It's also isolated enough that barges could haul much of America's nuclear waste up the Atlantic coast, off-load the waste for rail transport to the site -- and pass virtually no inhabited areas.
"All I am saying is: why not at least take a look at this alternative?" company spokesman Lou Grasso said. "Maybe there is something wrong with it, but we can't find it."
Company officials are pitching the project to the Canadian government, Grasso said. They have kept the project under wraps to avoid sparking widespread opposition.
"Canadians would not want to become the dumpsite for the United States, that's clear," said Shawn-Patrick Stensil, coordinator for Campaign for Nuclear Phaseout, a coalition of Canadian anti-nuclear groups.
Securad has hired a leading Washington law firm, along with Maryland-based consultant Grasso, to help shepherd the project in this country. Grasso has spoken with staffers in the offices of 20 members of Congress, and raised eyebrows, he said.
The Canadian site could be developed within just a few years, if it ever managed to obtain numerous approvals, Grasso said. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, similar to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, would have to license and regulate the site. But the Canadian commission has not seen any proposals from Securad, commission spokesman Jim Leveque told the Sun. He had never heard of the the company.
Neither had the Canadian Nuclear Association, the industry's trade group, spokeswoman Claudia Lemieux said.
In good time, that will change, determined Securad officials said.
"There must be a lot of fruitcakes out there who say they have the answer to what to do with nuclear waste," said one Securad board member. "This is not a fruitcake idea."
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