Video shows nuclear cask risks

Benjamin Grove

Monday, March 18, 2002 | 10:58 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- In an attempt to grab national attention and rally opposition against the Yucca Mountain project, Nevada's congressional delegation today released a videotape showing an anti-tank missile blowing a hole in a nuclear waste shipping container.

Nevada officials say the footage makes the case that it is too dangerous to ship nuclear waste across the country to Yucca Mountain for permanent burial because the metal waste containers used to transport waste are vulnerable to a terrorist strike.

"The (video's) message is that it is inherently dangerous to transport 77,000 tons of toxic nuclear waste to (a site) 90 minutes from a major population center in the state of Nevada," Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said. "There is no guarantee that these containers can be protected under the circumstances of a terrorist attack."

President Bush last month approved Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as a suitable site to bury the nation's highly radioactive nuclear waste, which is now stored at nuclear power plants and U.S. defense sites around the nation. Congress likely will vote on the project this year.

Nevada officials have long opposed the Yucca project. Among their arguments: Shipping waste across the country risks accidents and terrorist strikes.

Highly radioactive uranium rods, after being used to fuel nuclear reactors around the country, would be put in one-foot-thick steel casks and put on trains or trucks destined for Yucca Mountain.

The video released today, which was done as part of a privately sponsored test in 1998 done in conjunction with the Army at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, shows a simulated missile attack on a shipping cask.

Nuclear industry and Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials acknowledge that a missile could put a hole in the casks but argue that potential health and safety dangers would be small.

A missile would displace very little radioactive waste material from the cask, nuclear industry experts say, although Nevada officials and their scientific consultants disagree.

"It is handleable," said John Vincent, a senior project manager at the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry's top trade group. "It does not create a huge exposure with thousands affected. That does not happen."

Experts point to a 1982 Department of Energy full-scale test at Sandia National Laboratories in which an explosive charge put a 6-inch hole in a waste container. If the test container had been hauling real radioactive waste, up to seven people could have died from cancer caused by exposure to the displaced radioactive material, according to early estimates. More recent estimates suggest up to 48 people could die.

Consultants hired by the state of Nevada say even more people than that could be affected.

"They are constantly saying that it's not as bad as you think," said Bob Halstead, a waste transportation expert hired by Nevada. "I don't believe it."

The 1998 video shows two experiments sponsored by International Fuel Containers. In one, a missile charge is attached to a cast-iron cask and detonated. The explosion put a softball-sized hole in the cask. The cask is similar in strength to casks licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for waste shipping. The charge was manipulated to simulate a fired missile strike, IFC president Thomas Kirch has said. Missiles are relatively common in use worldwide.

In the second experiment, a concrete compound "flak jacket" material marketed by IFC protects the cask from the blast. The missile charge did not breach the cask.

The video was produced by IFC as a promotional tool to sell its concrete flak jacket product to nuclear power companies, which store waste from their nuclear reactors in on-site storage areas.

The concrete material is too heavy to wrap around waste containers for shipping.

Nevada's lawmakers released the 4.5-minute videotape to local broadcast news outlets and have offered it to national media.

Nevada officials say the video demonstrates why waste should be left at nuclear power plants, where it can be adequately protected, and not shipped across 43 states for permanent burial in Nevada.

Berkley obtained the videotape from IFC's Kirch in early February, shortly after she first heard about the Aberdeen test. The video was reviewed by the Sun and described in a story Feb. 12.

Nevada officials have been reviewing the tape and mulling over how it fit into their anti-Yucca strategy. They are trying to interest national news media in the video, sources said.

Nevada officials say the video counters claims made by nuclear industry officials who say shipping waste is safe. Industry officials say they have a long record of shipping waste without radiation releases.

NEI has been promoting a video of its own that shows a waste container passing tests in which it is burned, dropped and hit by a train.

Nevada officials plan to send the Aberdeen videotape to local news outlets along rail and highway routes that would be used to haul waste to Nevada, said Bob Loux, director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

"It's very dishonest for the industry to send out tapes of Sandia tests that only show tests where the containers successfully survived," Loux said.