Students paint nuke disaster picture

Friday, May 17, 2002 | 10:53 a.m.

With the U.S. government poised to approve Yucca Mountain as the site of the nation's nuclear waste repository, a ninth grade class at an Arizona school near the Colorado River undertook research into what could happen if a truck carrying waste crashed on a major local bridge.

"Our research found that the water would be contaminated for a 42-mile radius and fish in the area would die instantly," said Alex Ozuna, 15.

Ozuna was one of 15 students at Mohave Accelerated Learning Center Public Charter School in Bullhead City who built a model depicting theoretical results of a tractor-trailer carrying four tons of nuclear waste crashing on the Laughlin Bridge.

"We studied what Nevada officials have been saying and what the Department of Energy has said. What the Nevada officials said seems more accurate, based on our research," Ozuna said.

The U.S. Senate is now debating whether to designate Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste repository. The plan calls for transporting and burying 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste at the ridge, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The Senate is expected to vote by July.

Nevada officials have argued that the transportation of nuclear waste is unsafe and in danger of terrorist attack. Officials would take waste from across the country on barge, truck and train to Yucca Mountain. Nuclear industry leaders argue that the transport is safe and say storage casks have survived everything from simple accidents to major train collisions in field tests.

In the students' study, the bridge would not collapse because of a single tractor-trailer accident, Ozuna said, but should the casks carrying the waste be breached, the radioactive contents would leak into the river that flows by the gambling boomtown of Laughlin across the river from Bullhead City.

Ozuna is trying to raise money to take the model made in teacher Hannah Hazen's class to Washington to show lawmakers who will be voting on Yucca Mountain. He wants to try to convince the lawmakers that the transportation of nuclear waste from 31 states and military sites is fraught with peril.

"We have a small hazardous waste team here, but to clean up a disaster of this size, we would need to wait for crews from Las Vegas and Phoenix to get here," Ozuna said.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, all tractor-trailers in the Colorado River towns have been rerouted from the Davis Dam Bridge to the Laughlin Bridge, the main thoroughfare linking the two communities.

"It is highly subject to sabotage," Ozuna said, noting that Yucca Mountain is not just a Nevada issue, but rather one that can affect many cities along transportation routes.

The school will pay for one-half of Ozuna's airfare and a three-night stay in Washington. Donations can be made to the Mohave Accelerated Learning Center for Alex Ozuna. Donors are asked to mark all donations to the attention of Michelle Dyer, P.O. Box 21288, Bullhead City, AZ 86442.

All donations above the sum needed for Ozuna's plane ticket, hotel room and reasonable daily expenses will be donated to the Nevada Protection Fund to aid Nevada's legal battle and education efforts to stop the dump.