Letter: Storing nuclear waste in place is safest strategy

Friday, May 21, 2004 | 5:46 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

May 22 - 23, 2004

Your May 17 editorial headlined, "Suit adds to concern over Yucca," properly raises important safety questions about U.S. rail transportation for hazardous materials generally, and about the heightened safety standards necessary for rail shipments of high-level nuclear waste.

The problem you failed to acknowledge is that alternatives to rail are not just equally bad -- they're worse. Safety in the trucking industry is not exactly a pretty picture either.

The federal government, Nevada and the 40-plus other states on nuclear waste transportation routes to Nevada must grapple with the transportation safety problems before committing to sending thousands of shipments across the country.

Storing high-level nuclear waste in dry casks at the location where the waste is created (i.e., nuclear power plants), while the waste cools down, is safer by far than turning either our rails or highways radioactive.

MELINDA KASSEN

Boulder, Colo.

Editor's note: From the mid-1980s to 1993, Melinda Kassen was on the staff of Environmental Defense, a national, nonprofit organization, where she headed the program advocating the safe transportation of nuclear waste. She is now with Trout Unlimited, where she heads the group's Western Water Project office in Colorado.