Protesters Keep on Truckin’ : Opponents of Nuclear Waste Shipments Take Show on Road

In a city where earthquakes, freeway gunslingers and dark clouds of pollution are endured as typical inconveniences of life, the sudden appearance Thursday of a truck towing a 17-foot-long gray canister with ominous “Radioactive” signs on its flanks did not exactly stir panic in Los Angeles’ streets.

The massive barbell-shaped tank, designed to replicate a trailer laden with deadly nuclear waste, rumbled into view on the Ventura Freeway in the midst of morning rush-hour traffic. Towed by a camper truck driven by anti-nuclear activists, the tanker is on a one-week trip on California highways, touring as a worrisome symbol of federal plans to haul cargoes of atomic waste through the state to a proposed desert dump site beneath Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

On Thursday morning, the truck of doom was just another barely noticed freeway attraction. Bleary-eyed southbound commuters passed by in the fast lanes, oblivious to its purpose. And when the ersatz nuclear tanker parked near City Hall just in time to spook downtown office workers and bureaucrats out on their lunch-hour strolls, the truck was regarded by most passers-by with the same indifference that Angelenos reserve for intrusive film crews.

“What are they shooting?” said one man who gave the tanker a passing glance.

A grizzled homeless woman, eyeing the truck from a nearby bus shelter, ignored the “Radioactive” signs. She was more impressed by Polo the dog, the mascot for the weeklong protest caravan that the anti-nuclear activists refer to as “Radwaste Tour ’90.”

“Look at that pretty dog,” said the woman, who identified herself as Jane. “Woof, woof, woof.”

Still, there were a few who kept more than a healthy distance.

Deliveryman Johnny Germany and two co-workers were about to try to revive their stalled pickup truck near the nuclear tanker replica when they noticed the “Radioactive” signs. “Boys, I think we ought to do this somewhere else,” Germany said nervously.

He and his co-workers pushed the truck backward on Main Street until they were certain they were safe. “I don’t take chances,” Germany said. “It’s kind of amazing to have that kind of stuff in the middle of the city. Really crazy.”

Nearby, Bob Fulkerson, 29, a National Nuclear Waste Transportation Task Force member who is one of the tour leaders, informed gawkers that if the tanker had really been carrying nuclear waste, they would all be well on their way to receiving doses of radiation equivalent to a full set of chest X-rays.

“And I just had one!” giggled paralegal Dora Salazar, 23, as she passed by, too intent to make a lunch date to stop and sign a petition.

The activists were not discouraged by those who passed them by. “How ya doing?” Fulkerson cheerily hailed pedestrians. “Radioactive waste here!”

Fulkerson and four other activists from Nevada set out from Reno on Sunday to persuade Californians to join in their drive to scuttle U.S. Department of Energy plans to turn Yucca Mountain into an underground tomb for 10,000 metric tons of spent fuel from commercial reactors and nuclear weapons plants.

Despite recent delays, energy officials’ assurances that the burial site will last 10,000 years and a recent DOE announcement that the project would not even be able to start until the year 2010, Fulkerson and his fellow activists are worried that political opposition in their state alone will not be sufficient to halt the project.

So, after building the 450-pound fiberglass replica of a trailer that in reality will weigh 23 tons, they came to California to find new recruits to frighten--although they insist they are not really out to scare anyone.

“It’s more of a reality check,” said Fulkerson, a clean-cut organizer whose only affectation is a star-shaped earring. “The government is talking about 350 shipments a year for 28 years through California alone.”

Carl Gertz, the DOE’s Yucca Mountain project manager, said the transportation of nuclear waste will be safe and well-monitored. “The trucks will be able to withstand all conceiveable accidents,” he said, adding that there have been 20,000 worldwide shipments of high-intensity radioactive cargo “without a single known release of radioactivity.”

Unconvinced, one activist on the tour, Marvin Resnikoff, a senior associate with Radioactive Waste Management Associates, warns of the possibility that waste-laden trucks could run into deadly highway mishaps. “Their accident rate will be the same as any big trucks,” he said.

But the drive down U.S. 101, from the Bay Area through San Luis Obispo to Los Angeles, was uneventful, said Radwaste Tour driver J. R. Wilkerson. They encountered none of the jarring bumps, collisions or terrorist attacks that activists claim could unloose the poisonous cargo from real nuclear tank trucks. A CHP car did follow them for a stretch of highway, pulling alongside to peer at them, Wilkerson said, but it finally peeled away, satisfied no laws had been broken.

“People tend to give us a lot of room,” Wilkerson said.

Not so in downtown Los Angeles. Stopping at a pedestrian crossing, Fulkerson barked into a copper-colored bullhorn: “Nuclear waste entering Los Angeles! Dangerous radiation! Stop it now! Better Los Angeles than Reno!”

The pedestrians ignored him.

Vans parked close by the trailer, their drivers either ignoring or unconcerned about the danger signs. “Awww, it’s all right,” said the driver of one yellow city van. “I won’t be here long.”