Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Barge scheme all wet

Thursday, March 21, 2002 | 8:38 a.m.

SHIPS SINK. The government lies or, to be charitable, just blunders a lot. Sheep lie.

Only one of the above is the punch line to a joke. The other two are immutable facts of life. It is the ships sinking part that I want to talk about today because there is not much we can do about the imperfect people who work for our government on such short notice.

I don't know about the rest of America, but I was absolutely floored when I picked up the Tuesday Las Vegas Sun, which carried a front page story headlined, "Nuke waste may travel waterways." It referred to an environmental impact study prepared by the Energy Department that showed the various routes by which some 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste would find its way across America to Nevada.

Those of us who have been living with this radioactive nightmare in the making know that getting this garbage to Nevada is as much of a challenge as laying it to a quiet and stable rest in Yucca Mountain, right in the middle of one of the most active earthquake zones in the country. What our fellow citizens in the other contiguous 47 don't know is the dangers that await just moving this stuff out of their back yards and into their front yards.

For that, we have been waiting for the Energy Department's plan to avoid the wrath of at least 100 million Americans who live along the roadways and railways of this country upon which this deadly waste must travel. The other 150 million people will still be in jeopardy, but that probably wouldn't happen until the first 40 percent of the country is poisoned should the inevitable accidents happen.

What came from the perverted DOE minds and their puppet masters in the nuclear power industry through the EIS report is absolutely astounding. It is probably the only sure thing that would shake the firm foundations of support which so far have defined Nevada's uphill battle in the U.S. Senate.

The Energy Department geniuses have proposed a method of getting the high-level nuclear waste from power plants across the country to railroad cars that defies logic, common sense and any sense of understanding about real life.

These guys want to ship that stuff on barges and boats across the oceans, down our rivers and over the Great Lakes! Don't they know that ships sink?

I tried my best to look up the number of ships and barges that have sunk just on Lake Michigan -- one of the lakes that will carry out this harebrained scheme -- over the last century and found close to 100 of them. Ships and cargo lying at the bottom of the largest fresh water lake in the United States. And waiting for more. Can you imagine the threat to the drinking water of Chicago, Detroit and hundreds of other cities along that lake.

And what about the plan to ship the radioactive poison over the Pacific Ocean from San Luis Obispo, Calif., to Oxnard, Calif. The department wants so badly to avoid the huge population centers along what would be land-based routes that it thinks putting our oceans in jeopardy is a safer course of action. Hello! Anybody home at the DOE?

A fatal flaw in the efforts to make billions of dollars for the power companies is apparent in this plan. They know this stuff is dangerous. Hell, they know it is deadly. So, rather than risk the public outcry that will ensue from the mothers and fathers in other states whose children will be needlessly exposed, they have tried to avoid it by putting this stuff on ships that sink.

Am I the only person who sees the madness in this plan? If we can safely ship this stuff on the water, why not buy some deserted island far away from the United States and send all of the nuclear waste there? The answer is because we can't guarantee the inevitable, which is that ships float and ships sink. And one of the last places we want radioactive plutonium waste is at the bottom of the ocean at the beginning of the food chain.

The other place we don't want that stuff -- which the DOE tacitly agrees -- is traveling through our cities and towns, not where the food chain begins but where it ends -- near the homes of at least 100 million Americans.

Loose lips sink ships. So do terrorists, uncharted rocks and the ever-present storms that continually fill Davey Jones' locker.

There is a better way. It isn't by land or by sea. It is by using the brains we have been given to do no harm to others while we try to do right for the rest. That is not the path of this administration, its Energy Department or the profiteers in the nuclear power industry who care not about those of us who will pay a price far greater than the dollars they stand to make on this foolishness.

This is no joking matter.