They Did What !

Or at least, that’s the way today’s problem solving seems to work. Take for example the dilemma of our energy use. The supply of oil is rapidly being outstripped by the demand for it. And the use of oil and petroleum based products is polluting our planet. So o o o o figure the genius’ of today, let’s switch to an energy source that produces toxic waste for which we have no safe disposal plan. This is radioactive waste we are talking about, the kind that not only poisons land for thousands of years, but in amounts as small as one millionth of a gram can cause cancer.

Perhaps I am missing something but it seems to me that trying to solve one problem by creating another with deadly consequences, just doesn’t make sense. And yet that is what the proponents of nuclear energy seem to be doing as they push ahead with plans to build 15 new nuclear plants. Without a permanent repository for the spent fuel currently stored on site around the country, the industry can’t possibly move forward with these plans for additional construction and that explains why the nuclear power industry and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have spent around $72 million lobbying in favor of the Yucca Mountain dump.

No new nuclear plants have been built since the accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979. However, we have accumulated what is variously reported as 70,000 – 77,000 metric tons of radioactive waste from the existing reactors. It will cost $70 billion to create the Nevada nuclear waste dump to store it. That is if the people of Nevada lose their fight to keep this dump from being built at Yucca Mountain, a fight that has been going on for years. But with the high cost of oil and the push for “green” living as excuses, the government is pushing hard once again to get this dump built.

Californians should be concerned because Yucca Mountain is only 17 miles from the California border. The nuclear waste, currently being stored in 39 states, would have to be transported by truck and rail across the country to reach Yucca Mountain. There are 109 cities with populations of more than 100,000 along the proposed routes. That means there are a lot of other states that should be concerned as well because an accident could occur anywhere en route with calamitous results.

Some of the interesting facts that should be considered before supporting the building of more nuclear plants are:

Yucca Mountain, itself a volcanic ridge, has 7 young volcanoes and 39 faults in the area surrounding it, with earthquakes occurring as recently as 2002. In 1996 even the Energy Department admitted that some water from the waste repository could go to the water table within 50 years. This water eventually flows into wells and springs.

Nuclear fuel consists of uranium pellets encased in metal rods. Used or "spent" fuel is removed from the reactor to water-filled pools, where it cools for about 10 years. It is then moved to "dry" storage, where it has been piling up at reactor sites because there is no place to dispose of it.

The metal containers designed to carry spent nuclear fuel from the Calvert Cliffs plant and other reactors to a proposed storage site in Nevada would have failed if the transport train had been engulfed in the estimated 1,500- degree heat of the Baltimore rail tunnel fire in the summer of 2001. Each rail cask weighs about 145 tons fully loaded and contains 260 times the amount of radioactive cesium released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. The fire would not have triggered a nuclear blast, but the city would have been exposed to a catastrophic release of radiation.