The Waste to Be Moved Is Hot; So Are Tempers of Plan’s Foes

The lethal waste would be locked up tight.

The experts promise.

It would be sealed inside double-layered metal crates of unsurpassed durability. You could drop these crates on a fat steel spike and they would not be breached. You could immerse them in water. Engulf them in flames. Drop them three stories onto a concrete floor. The poison inside would not escape.

The experts promise.

The mothers doubt.

In 20 public hearings across the nation, including one here last week, experts from the U.S. Department of Energy have set forth their plan to ship tens of thousands of crates of radioactive trash to permanent underground storage at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

This is nuclear waste so hot that momentary exposure kills. It would be shipped to Nevada by rail and by truck, week after week for decades. The caravans would wind through 43 states, past about 50 million people.

Trucking radioactive hazards is nothing new: Since 1965, the government has supervised 2,500 shipments of nuclear waste. There have been several minor accidents, but no radiation leaks--and no fatalities. “Our safety record is outstanding,” said Allen Benson, a Department of Energy spokesman.

The Yucca Mountain project would hugely expand the scale of waste shipment. (By one analysis, two trucks a day would pass through Missouri. That’s two trucks a day for 39 years.)

Many along the route are queasy with foreboding.

As one woman put it at the St. Louis hearing: “This kind of thing scares the daylights out of me.”

Her comment--and all others, including objections from Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan--will be incorporated into the Department of Energy’s final report on the environmental impact of entombing 70,000 tons of waste at Yucca Mountain.

The president must then decide whether the Yucca dump is viable. If he approves it, the project will pass to Congress for a vote. If the process moves smoothly, transport will begin in 2010.

That’s not a moment too soon for many in the nuclear industry.

Ever since the 1950s, the government has been promising to find safe long-term storage for the radioactive waste that nuclear power plants produce. Other nations, including Japan and Britain, reprocess their nuclear waste and reuse much of it to generate more electricity. America doesn’t--as a matter of public policy. (The U.S. initially opposed recycling waste for fear the plutonium produced in the process would fall into the wrong hands. Now, the holdup is cost.)

Because they can’t reuse the waste, nuclear power plants must store it, often in above-ground tanks. Consolidating the 77 existing waste sites into a single underground repository would reduce the risk of accident or terrorist attack, argued Alan Passwater of AmerenUE, which operates a nuclear plant in central Missouri.

“It’s the environmentally responsible thing to do,” he said.

But dozens at the hearing here disagreed, hurling angry questions at government representatives:

Would the trucking contract go to the low bidder? Yes, but “everything possible will be done to ensure . . . well-qualified carriers.”

Would the public be notified in advance of each shipment? Governors along the route would get a heads-up, but specific times and places would be secret.

How many people might die in an accident? At worst, a crate would be punctured, releasing radioactivity and causing 31 eventual cancer deaths.

“This is the most dangerous material known to man, and you’re going to ship it through our cities?” asked Gavin Perry. Caustically, he scoffed: “I don’t think so.”

He and others instead urged keeping the waste where it is until scientists discover how to neutralize it. Or building railroads through desolate areas so shipments could avoid big cities.

Energy officials promised to consider those comments. But by law they must take a narrow view: It’s official U.S. policy to bury nuclear waste, and Yucca Mountain is the only site on the table.

Those constraints left hearing participants in St. Louis steaming.

“I’ve learned a lot,” Frances Moyle said. “I have not been reassured.”

The applause for her was wild.