Copyright 2000 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St.
Louis Post-Dispatch
January 28, 2000, Friday, FIVE STAR LIFT
EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL, Pg. B6
LENGTH: 797 words
HEADLINE:
WEIGHING RISK
BODY:
NUCLEAR WASTE
WHICH is safer? Hauling tens of thousands of tons of radioactive waste
from nuclear power plants on one side of the country, through St. Louis, to a
permanent grave on the other side of the country, or leaving the waste scattered
around the country in the hope scientists develop a better way to handle it?
That's the difficult question citizens must weigh as the U.S. Department
of Energy advances its plan to ship more than 80,000 tons of radioactive waste
from more than 100 commercial reactors -- most of them east of the Mississippi
River -- to a burial site under Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
In 1982, Congress passed a law giving the government title to all the
nation's nuclear waste, including that generated by commercial reactors, by
1998. The law stipulates that the waste be shipped to a temporary disposal site
in Nevada until a permanent site could be built. The DOE's plans call for those
shipments to begin in 2010, although the Yucca Mountain
facility would not be completed until several years after that. The shipments
would continue for at least 30 years. Although the energy department won't say
what specific routes it has in mind, it's estimated that as much as 40 percent
of the nuclear waste shipments would pass through St. Louis and Kansas City. By
rail, the shipments would most likely pass through Madison or East St. Louis and
then from St. Louis to Kansas City. By truck, a likely route would be along
Interstate 70, connecting with Interstates 270 in St. Louis and 255 and 64 in
Illinois.
Last week the energy department got an earful from more than
200 people who attended two public hearings in downtown St. Louis. The hearings
are among the final four in the nation, after which the DOE will finalize its
plan and make a formal recommendation to the president.
Not
surprisingly, most of those who came to the hearing adamantly oppose the idea of
thousands of shipments of nuclear waste passing through the region-- in Webster
Groves, literally along back yards -- on trucks and trains. Anti-nuclear
activists are calling the DOE plan "mobile Chernobyl." They don't trust the
Department of Energy's shipping safety data, gleaned from tests in which
containment casks were dropped 40 feet, submerged under water, set on fire, shot
at and rammed into. There already have been 13 transport accidents, including a
fatal one in which a truck carrying waste overturned, without dangerous
radiation leakage. Some people also have grave concerns about what happens at
the destination: the long-term geologic stability of the Yucca
Mountain site, the safety of which is unproved.
The Missouri
Coalition for the Environment supports a "do nothing" option: Leave the waste
where it is. Instead of spending billions to move it around, they say, spend it
on research for treating nuclear waste and developing new, safer forms of
energy. In the meantime, they recommend the unrealistic option of shutting down
the reactors so they don't generate more waste we don't know what to do with.
No one wants to assume unnecessary risk. But the issue is not absolute
safety vs. total catastrophe, the American public's nearly irrational fear of
nuclear energy notwithstanding. The issue is relative risk.
To a family
living in Webster, the "do nothing" option is absolutely less risky than
whisking nuclear waste past the swing set. But nuclear scientists and the DOE
say the risk of "doing nothing" is all too real for the people who live near the
nuclear power plants. Long-term storage at the reactors is unacceptably risky.
There are too many storage sites, each one vulnerable, each one compounding
risk. Soils settle, ponds leak, groundwater could be contaminated and thousands
could be exposed to radioactivity. A single disposal site, fortified to the hilt
and buried deep, is a much safer alternative, the DOE argues.
As for
shipping, the government makes the case that the tight security (mostly a public
relations gesture to soothe the fears of terrorist attacks), good safety record
and bullet- and crash-proof design of radioactive waste containers have
minimized risks. The redundant safety regulations on shipping of nuclear waste
make it far safer to move across the country than other hazardous materials that
now blitz through town every day.
The utilities that own the reactors,
meanwhile, are anxious to rid themselves of the waste and the complicated
liability issues attached to it while it's on their property.
The
DOE is expected to make its final recommendation next year.
In the
meantime, keeping the waste from being shipped through St. Louis -- from St.
Louis's point of view -- may be safer to those of us who live here. But it's the
easy way out. Temporizing is not a real solution.
LOAD-DATE: January 28, 2000 
