I disagree with the Feb. 7 editorial that Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is “the best site” for an underground repository for high-level nuclear waste, and that the Energy Department’s proposed plan to transport spent nuclear fuel from reactors around the country to Yucca Mountain “appears more than reasonable.”
Current estimates are that transportation of spent fuel to Yucca Mountain will involve 100,000 truck and rail shipments over a 30-year period. Such shipments will go through 43 states and occur within a half-mile of 50 million residents. Current estimates are that 210 to 354 accidents can be expected during the 100,000 shipments.
How bad these accidents will be depends in part upon the adequacy of the truck and rail casks used to transport the spent fuel. Unfortunately all casks currently in use are only computer designed (they’ve never been physically tested) to withstand a 30 m.p.h. crash and a half-hour fire at a temperature of 1,475 degrees. Because many accidents exceed these standards, significant releases of radioactivity are likely.
How dangerous such releases are depends, in turn, upon how well trained and equipped emergency personnel are in the 43 states that will experience the 100,000 shipments. Most are neither trained nor equipped to deal with such emergencies.
High-level nuclear waste needs to be isolated from the environment for tens of thousands of years. Extensive research indicates that Yucca Mountain is an unacceptable repository for such waste because:
– At least 33 seismic faults lie close to or within the site.
– 621 earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater have occurred within 50 miles of the site within the last 20 years. In 1992, a 5.6-level quake occurred just 12 miles from the site.
– A magnitude 5 or 6 earthquake at the site could dramatically raise the water table, flooding the repository, and create a rapid corrosive breakdown of the metal disposal canisters and possible steam explosion. Either event would allow plutonium to leak into the water table (which serves Las Vegas), groundwater and atmosphere.
– Rather than taking thousands of years for rainwater to reach the proposed repository as previously predicted, rainwater was recently found that was only 40 years old.
– A volcano 12 miles from the site is now thought to have erupted within the last 20,000 years, rather than 270,000 years, as previously estimated.
Let’s adopt plans based upon thorough and unbiased science, and reject plans based upon quick fixes, wishful thinking and political expediency.
