Monday, Jan. 12, 2004 | 8:12 a.m.
Last week protesters gathered near Interstate 40 to oppose a truck shipment of nuclear waste through Albuquerque.
The shipment was from the Nevada Test Site. It was driven along I-40 through New Mexico's largest city on its way to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) 26 miles southeast of Carlsbad.
The low-level radioactive cargo included such items as protective gear contaminated by a type of alpha radiation. However, officials told the Associated Press on Thursday that none contained beta or gamma radiation, both of which are considered more dangerous than the alpha variety.
The Yucca Mountain site will get the nasty stuff -- if we get the Yucca Mountain site. Nevada officials and those from the Department of Energy are still battling that decision in court. But the DOE released a proposed route for the waste last month. Right before Christmas. Didn't even put a bow on it.
The proposed 319-mile route would transport waste via railroad from Caliente and through a portion of the state considered virtually vacant.
Well, cattle ranchers raising their children in Lincoln County are invisible when you never travel there. The DOE officials might not know about those folks because they didn't consult Nevada about the route, according a Dec. 24 report by Las Vegas Sun reporter Cy Ryan.
The nukeland express supposedly will cross four mountain ranges. Since we're all entertaining fiction, are they planning to do winter shipments along this proposed route to a waste dump that hasn't been approved?
In all fairness, DOE released the route nine days before a westbound Amtrak passenger train derailed because of snow in the Sierras between Reno and Sacramento. Maybe DOE officials will change their minds now. (Hey, if you're going to tell a tale, you may as well tell a big one.)
Anyway, when visiting New Mexico over the Thanksgiving holiday, we drove from Santa Fe to Taos in search of snow. We didn't find any snow, but we took a nice long ride on a road called the WIPP Bypass (also known as the Santa Fe Relief Route, Highway 599 or Veterans Memorial Highway).
The road was built to divert shipments of nuclear waste from Los Alamos Laboratories around Santa Fe as it was trucked to the Carlsbad facility.
But as the Albuquerque residents learned last week, one route doesn't always fit. The waste from the Nevada Test Site doesn't go near Santa Fe. It travels on the interstate like so many loads of french fries.
According to the WIPP website, the waste is driven south on State Road 373 to California 127 to Interstate 15. At Barstow, the truck takes Interstate 40 into Arizona, where it travels through Williams (gateway to the Grand Canyon South Rim, Kingman, Flagstaff, Winslow and Holbrook) before heading into Gallup, N.M.
From Gallup, it travels on I-40 through Alburquerque to U.S. 285 and into Carlsbad after rolling through a whole lot of cities a whole lot bigger than Caliente.
Sort of makes you wonder where the proposed Yucca Mountain waste will go on its proposed route in the middle of a hypothetical snowstorm that blocks the supposed train, doesn't it?
No?
Maybe it should.
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