Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Report: Minimal harm from transport of nukes

WASHINGTON -- Federal studies on transporting nuclear waste show little risk of public harm from accidents or terrorist attacks, the General Accounting Office concludes in a report to be released today. But the report admits the most serious terrorist threat or accident scenarios have not been studied.

The GAO report said the Energy Department does have options to further increase safety of the waste set to go to the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage site, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, including re-evaluating the order in which it will move the waste. The department plans to store 77,000 tons of nuclear spent fuel in the site, which the GAO called "one of the most hazardous materials made by man."

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, reviewed federal studies that assessed potential health effects of a terrorist attack or severe accident on spent fuel storage or transit at the request of Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, chairman of the House Energy and Air Quality subcommittee. The report said there has been an increase in concern over spent fuel storage and transport since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

More than 50,000 tons of commercial spent nuclear fuel exists at 72 sites in 33 states, according to the report. Additional waste will be generated between now and when the site is scheduled to open, if approved, in 2010. It will also hold material from the Energy and Defense departments. The waste will need to be shipped from the sites via truck or rail.

In the report Robin Nazzaro, GAO director of Natural Resources and Environment, wrote that studies by the department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission "have consistently found that the likelihood of widespread harm to human health from a terrorist attack or a severe accident involving spent nuclear fuel is low." The report drew the conclusion based on different data from various reports.

"Opponents of nuclear power exploited fears of terrorist activity and said waste should not be moved off-site," Barton said in a statement. "Not only is that a back-door way to try and stop nuclear power, but that argument is also wrong."

Rep. Shelly Berkley,D-Nev. who looked through the report, said it was just "regurgitating the same old information," without factoring in the threats of a post-Sept. 11 world.

She pointed out Barton and Rep. Bill Tauzin, R-La., who also signed onto the report, are some of the most passionate supporters of Yucca Mountain in the House.

"The nation has done nothing -- nothing -- to see how they are going to transport this safely in the event of a terrorist attack," Berkley said, adding that there is not plan to protect the waste from attacks once it gets to the site either.

Berkley and Reps. Jim Gibbons and Jon Porter, both R-Nev., have sponsored a bill saying the department could not submit its license application until a thorough review of security threats since Sept. 11, 2001, were evaluated.

Berkley spokesman David Cherry said the report also includes the fact that the NRC "has ongoing and planned studies of the safety and security of spent fuel, including the potential effects of more extreme attack scenarios, including deliberate aircraft crashes."

For these studies, the Sandia National Laboratory will examine the effects of a 20-passenger aircraft loaded with explosives crashing into shipping containers and an attack on the cask using a variety of weapons. NRC expects these and other studies to be done by 2006.

Nazzaro wrote that studies have found that transportation containers would be "very difficult" to penetrate and in worst-case scenarios where they would be breached "only a small fraction of materials would be released."

But Robert Halstead, transportation adviser to the Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, said numerous studies have shown the casks can be breached in certain scenarios and can be vulnerable to attack. He pointed out in the department's final environmental impact statement says a successful terrorist attack on a truck cask in an urban area would result in 48 latent cancer deaths with clean-up estimated at $10 billion. Halstead added that the figure does not include the potential for lawsuits, whose "costs would be astronomical."

In a response to a draft of the study included in the report, NRC Executive Director for Operations William Travers said he did not consider the reports GAO evaluated "to be appropriate for characterizing the consequences of terrorist attacks at spent fuel pools." He noted that the reports, which included one on fuel shipment risk estimates, were unrealistically conservative, which is why they are being re-evaluated.

GAO recommends the department minimize the number of shipments, take the older fuel first and used dedicated trains to move the waste to reduce some risk. It said the plan it has now to pick up fuel based on dates the owners removed the fuel from the reactors would force DOE to pick up small amounts of spent fuel from reactor sites. Changing the order could allow larger shipments from each site that might eliminate 300 shipments.

However, the report said, "it is not clear that the benefits of these measures would justify the potential costs" associated with renegotiating contracts between the department and owners of the spent fuel.

In response to the report, Margaret Chu, director of the department's office of civilian radioactive waste management, which oversees the Yucca project, said the Transportation Department is already conducting a study on the safety and security implications of transporting spent fuel by railroad trains that move only spent fuel.

"Since it will be approximately seven years before (the office) begins transporting spent nuclear fuel, we have the ability to incorporate relevant recommendations in our operational plan," Chu wrote.

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