Potentially deadly mistake

Thursday, Aug. 30, 2007 | 10 p.m.

A runaway tanker car filled with chlorine barreled across the Las Vegas Valley on Wednesday, hitting 50 mph and traveling 22 miles before it stopped.

The car had broken free from a Union Pacific Railroad yard near Blue Diamond as workers were trying to move it to another track. None of the potentially deadly chlorine leaked from the car, and no one was injured. Federal authorities are investigating the incident, which Union Pacific Railroad officials on Wednesday said posed “no danger to public safety.”

We disagree.

Although the Las Vegas Valley escaped a potentially disastrous event this time, it remains unclear how a tanker car loaded with a dangerous chemical could slip away from workers -- a car that, once disconnected from a train, is virtually uncontrollable until workers can find a way to stop it. And there is essentially no way to ensure that it could never happen again.

We cannot help but wonder: What if this car had been carrying high-level nuclear waste?

The Energy Department and Bush administration officials who are pushing to bury the nation's high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain say trains would bring the toxic substance across the country to Nevada. The idea of a runaway train car loaded with nuclear waste rolling down the tracks at 50 mph is nothing short of horrifying.

Add to this a Government Accountability report released on Thursday that says the federal government's role in overseeing the safety of the nation's railroad tunnels and bridges is limited because the Federal Railroad Administration “has determined that most railroads are sufficiently ensuring safe conditions” of their own accord. And the agency has no consistent, systematic method of selecting the railroad facilities that it does inspect, the GAO says.

Bad things can happen in tunnels, as illustrated by a 2001 fire in a CSX railway tunnel in Baltimore. Tunnel temperatures topped 1,500 degrees as chemicals aboard the train fed the flames. That tunnel was along one of the Energy Department's proposed transport routes for high-level nuclear waste.

As a runaway tanker car reminded Las Vegas residents Wednesday, mistakes happen -- potentially deadly mistakes. There is no way to safely shuttle lethal nuclear cargo across our nation -- to Nevada or anywhere else.