Lawsuit warns of Yucca train troubles

Suzanne Struglinski

Friday, May 14, 2004 | 11:06 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- A railroad company that could potentially move nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain consistently violates federal railroad safety laws, railroad employees claim in a lawsuit filed Wednesday.

Employees of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad say the company does not disclose actual safety records, including accident reports, to the government, and that management at the Sioux City, Iowa, terminal directs employees not to follow safety standards, including when they handle shipments of hazardous materials.

The lawsuit also expresses concerns that the company could handle high-level nuclear waste, which the Energy Department plans to ship by rail to Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The Energy Department "is relying on the representations made by the BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) that ... BNSF has the capacity to safely move high-level nuclear waste," the lawsuit says. "In turn, DOE is informing the public and state and local government that using BNSF and other rail carriers is a very safe method to move high-level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain from all over the United States and that the citizenry and its representatives has nothing to worry about."

"DOE is wrong, it is not safe to move nuclear waste by rail across the BNSF," the lawsuit says. "DOE would not enter into such contracts if it knew the truth of the unsafe conditions of BNSF operations."

Allen Benson, spokesman for the Yucca Mountain project, who had not heard of the suit, said no rail lines or companies have been selected to move the waste to Nevada and that it was premature to discuss.

He said that the department will be involved with the safe transport of nuclear waste and that all of the safety elements are still under development.

Nevada officials, though, said the lawsuit raises a concern they have voiced for years.

"The more time that goes by, the more evidence there will be that this situation is chaotic," Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said. "We know railroad tracks around the country are in terrible disrepair. There are railroad accidents all the time."

Reid said if the railroad cannot even handle the hazardous waste shipments, how will it manage the 20,000 train load of nuclear waste to Nevada?

"The more people find out about this, the less good they will feel about this going past their homes, their schools," Reid said.

Reid said he has been hearing for years that the department will figure out a safe way to move the waste, but he is not sure how, especially in light of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks it plans to do it.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has primary responsibility for overseeing the movement of nuclear waste, but the Federal Railroad Administration also has oversight of shipments.

The railroad administration, the Energy Department, the Association of American Railroads, state officials and rail labor groups coordinated the plan, which was put in place in 1998.

A plan for Yucca Mountain has not yet been developed.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said not only is there a lack of rules and regulations for moving the waste to Nevada, but there is the threat of a possible terrorist attack that has not been addressed.

"We are totally unprepared," she said.

"There is no safe way to transport 77,000 tons of toxic nuclear waste across the country," Berkley said. "It's an impossible situation."

She said under the Price Anderson Act, a federal law that makes the government responsible for nuclear accidents, it is not clear who would pay for cleaning up an accident or how workers on the trains would be compensated if they find themselves sick from radiation exposure after moving all the material.

Berkley said she was glad the railroad workers took it upon themselves to point to the safety problems.

"It's only going to get worse," she said.

The federal lawsuit lists 18 train accidents in 2003 alone including head-on collisions and derailments that could be traced back to "consistent disregard of federal safety requirements."

The Energy Department announced in April that it would use rail lines to ship waste to the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain. It plans to build a new track in Nevada, but would use existing tracks, such as BNSF's, across the country to move waste from the 77 sites storing it.

The department and the nuclear industry insist the shipments are safe and point to numerous shipments by commercial power plants, the Navy and the department itself that have been done without incident for years.

The state and other critics of the site point to the problems with moving waste to Nevada from plants mainly concentrated in East Coast states. Threats of accidents, acts of terrorism and sabotage and basic human error could have dangerous effects with cleanup costs in the billions of dollars.

But this is the first time attention has been called to possible problems with railroad management itself as another reason waste should not be sent to the state.

Plaintiffs, which include Local 418 of the United Transportation Union, members of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes, 18 named individuals, including a train conductor who was allegedly fired in 2001 for trying to adhere to federal standards testing air brakes and several others, filed suit May 12 in the federal District Court for the Northern District of Iowa, in the Western Division.

Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway Company, which is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, does not comment on pending litigation, spokesman Patrick Hiatte said Thursday.

Lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Harry Zanville, said the employees, some of whom are shareholders in the company, say it owes them the truth about its safety records as well as the true risks association with shipping hazardous waste, including spent nuclear fuel.

The lawsuit notes: "Railroad employees in this terminal (Sioux City) face an impossible choice between being dismissed/disciplined if they do perform and comply with required tests, inspections and standards or being disqualified and fined by the government if they do not perform such inspections and tests."

The suit says employees have been "repeatedly ordered or otherwise coerced," to skip inspections for defective cars, run trains without required monitoring or communication devices and other violations in order to "be more profitable when train departures and overall operations can be expedited."

"Many trains are leaving with both known and unknown defects in equipment," plaintiffs claim.

The Federal Railway Administration inspections have found numerous defects, including 11 times when trains loaded with hazardous materials were put in the wrong place, a direct rules violation, according to the lawsuit.

"It is critical in nuclear shipments in where you put it on a train," Zanville said.

Zanville said if the company was doing this with "carrots," "timber" or something else, safety would still be important but the consequences of a train crashing with carrots are nowhere near as problematic as one crashing with spent nuclear fuel.

Plaintiffs also bring up problems with the FRA taking action on any of the accidents or other safety violations that do get reported.

Bob Halstead, the state's transportation consultant on Yucca Mountain issues, said he could not tell the real motivation behind the case, whether is was valid safety concerns or unions worried about general employee cutbacks and dealing with management.

"But they have raised some really good points," Halstead said. "It makes people aware of rail safety as an issue. The rail road option may not be a safe as the official statistics imply."

Halstead said he is glad this came out now rather than after a railroad to the site is completed, if it is.

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