Copyright 2000 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
St.
Louis Post-Dispatch
March 4, 2000, Saturday, FIVE STAR LIFT
EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL, Pg. 31
LENGTH: 994 words
HEADLINE:
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: WHAT SHOULD WE DO WITH NUCLEAR WASTE?
BODY:
The proposal to transport nuclear
waste from throughout the country to the Yucca Mountain site in
Nevada should be abandoned. The production of nuclear power should be phased out
in favor of environmentally friendly methods of providing energy.
(1)
The Yucca Mountain site has not been determined to be a safe
permanent site because fissures found in the rock would leak and cause
contamination. Nevadans do not want the danger of contamination in their state.
We would not like it here, either. A safe disposal site may never be agreed
upon. (2) A mishap at the Nevada concentrated nuclear waste disposal site could
be catastrophic. It would be safer to keep the waste stored where it is, in
scattered sites, than to move it around the country before a safe permanent
disposal site is found. Trucks can be hijacked, trains can be wrecked.
(3) The shipment of thousands of tons of nuclear waste to Nevada is not
only hazardous but a gross waste of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money. Why
should the stockholders of the utilities be let off the hook for bad decisions
they made about nuclear power and unfulfilled promises of nuclear advocates.
(4) If the utilities cannot solve their own waste storage problem,
nuclear power should be phased out in favor of environmentally friendly ways
such as conservation, efficiency, hydro, solar, wind, biomass and fuel cells.
The solar water heater at our house is quietly providing 90 percent of our hot
water virtually free.
(5) The United States should not accept waste from
foreign countries. We already have too much of our own waste. Our leadership in
providing needed energy without contaminating the earth would be an example for
others to follow.
Walter and Mildred Henze
Des
Peres
===
Dealing rationally with risk has always been a
problem for our society. It is therefore gratifying to see that the
Post-Dispatch, in its Jan. 28 editorial, has come to a reasonable conclusion of
sorting real risks from perceived risks.
We still, however, are raising
our anxiety levels over radioactive materials way beyond what science tells us
makes sense. On the scale of risk, nuclear power and transporting radioactive
materials falls off the bottom of the list.
Our real concerns need to be
the air pollution from the power plants that burn coal, oil and gas, not the
minute amounts of radiation from nuclear plants. And we need to worry much more
about the drunk driver and the unsafe semi-trailer truck carrying gasoline
rather than the transport of nuclear fuel.
These more mundane events
claim many thousands of lives per year while no one has ever been harmed by
radiation from a fuel transportation accident.
It is a common
understanding that human beings in their minds exaggerate small levels of risk
when they believe the consequences are large, and underestimate high levels of
risk when the individual consequence is small. For radiation, people will
exaggerate even nonexistent levels of risk.
As the pace of technological
sophistication continues to quicken, it is important that we understand the real
risks of these activities so we can wisely choose our best safety path.
Susan M. Langhorst
Columbia, Mo.
===
A Feb. 10 letter wrongly stated that the nuclear waste shipping
casks have been tested. The casks involved in the testing are of a decades-old
design. They were designed for low- to medium-grade radioactive waste material
only.
The materials to be transported through the Midwest contain
high-level radiation, which have a half life collectively of 10,000 years. The
new casks have been tested only on a small scale and by computer-generated
programs. In a best-case scenario of a transport accident, a com puter-generated
report states, only about 1,135 lives would be lost. Since when has an
acceptable amount of loss of life been satisfactory to our government?
Officials in the Departments of Transportation and Energy, when
questioned, had no acceptable answer other than to state that all the scenarios
were done by computer. I find this to be most alarming in itself.
In
fact, most of the hazardous radioactive waste will be coming from Energy
Department-run facilities, which we are now supposed to willingly support
financially.
Most of my immediate family live in Henderson, Nev. They
have heard nothing but a negative response to storage at the Yucca
Mountain site. They and other residents wonder how the rest of the
nation can feel comfortable knowing that now it's not in our back yard but
theirs.
All citizensmust become educated and attend these public
hearings.
Scott B. Wildman
Spanish Lake
===
On Jan. 20 , I attended hearings held by the Department of
Energy that focused on a plan to ship nuclear waste across country by train and
truck to an underground depository in Nevada. I went there to express my
concerns about shipping this hazardous waste through my community - Webster
Groves.
Once there, however, I found out that this is not an isolated
problem that would go away once a few shipments have passed through my
community. It is estimated that waste would be shipped across the country for 30
years from nuclear facilities across country, most of which are in the East.
The Department of Energy needs to concentrate on devising a plan for
hazardous waste disposal suitable for both the government and private sector
rather than try to convince citizens that such waste should be stored in the
bowels of Yucca Mountain. The Energy Department can offer only
unreal and unproven long-term projections of what the consequences of such
disposal would be.
The transportation and storage of nuclear waste is a
larger problem than many of the present election campaign issues. Congress
should not be resting on laws that were passed in 1982. What might have been an
acceptable two decades ago is unacceptable now.
Harriet A.
Davidson
Webster Groves
GRAPHIC: GRAPHIC
Graphic / Illustration by TIM BRINTON - (Hazardous waste symbol)
LOAD-DATE: March 4, 2000 
