TOUR DIARY:
RADIOACTIVE ROADS AND RAILS CAMPAIGN
On July 3, 2000, NIRS and Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy and Environment Project (CMEEP) kicked off a nationwide Radioactive Roads and Rails Campaign, designed to bring new attention to the looming issue of high-level atomic waste transport. Despite President Clinton’s sustained veto of this year’s Mobile Chernobyl bill, the issue has not gone away. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott still is threatening to bring the bill back for a second veto vote this session. A new administration may not possess Clinton’s determined resolve to veto such a bill. And a utility-funded effort called Private Fuel Storage has been making headway on its plan to build an "interim" storage site on Native American land in Utah—which could cause high-level waste casks to begin moving across the country as early as 2003.
NIRS and CMEEP together are holding meetings, workshops, press conferences and rallies in 12 states, plus Nevada, this year. As part of the campaign, NIRS staffer Kevin Kamps—armed only with some food, some water, and a nearly full-size mock high-level atomic waste cask--embarked upon a tour of America’s heartland that took him from the Cook nuclear power station in southwest Michigan (one of the Private Fuel Storage utilities) to Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
NIRS gave Kevin, and his wife Gabriela, a laptop computer and digital camera so he could record the tour. Following are excerpts from his tour diary; the full diary and dozens of photos are available on NIRS’ website (www.nirs.org).
Monday, July 3rd, 2000
Our mock nuclear waste cask set out from the front entrance of the Cook Nuclear Power Plant, which days ago restarted one reactor after a three-year forced shutdown due to severe safety violations. Just two weeks earlier, on June 19th, the Nuclear-Free Great Lakes Campaign and NIRS held a protest rally at Cook. The demonstration marked the first day of Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing hearings in Salt Lake City for the proposed "interim storage site" for high level nuclear waste on the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian reservation in Utah. We flew an airplane banner overhead reading "Don't Cook Native Lands with Nuclear Waste Dumps!"
50 protestors were there with placards calling attention to American Electric Power's environmental racism in trying to dump these deadliest of poisons on a small, destitute indigenous community out West.
One placard carried the words of Keith Lewis, from the Serpent River First Nation (an Ojibwe community in Ontario on Lake Huron): "There is nothing moral about tempting someone who is starving with money." His own community had been "tempted" by uranium mining corporations from the 1950's to 1996. Now that the mines are all closed, his community is left with poverty, and the health and environmental devastation from the massive radioactivity and toxic chemical contamination left in the mine tailings which blow with the wind and flow with the water.
Another placard read "Nuclear Waste: The Modern Day Small Pox Blanket"-- alluding to the early form of germ warfare practiced against Native Americans in North America. Why is it that both proposed high level nuclear waste dumps in the U.S. -- the permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada (Western Shoshone land) and the "interim storage site" at Skull Valley, Utah --are targeted at Native American lands? Actually, during the late 1980's and early 90's, the U.S. Department of Energy had a long list of Native American tribes it was targeting for nuclear waste dumps and "tempting with money."
The Fourth of July, 2000
Today the mock high-level nuclear waste cask took part in the annual 4th of July parade in Evanston -- hometown of Illinois' nuclear power watchdog group Nuclear Energy Information Service. Our "float" was situated between two marching bands. 15,000 on-lookers got a good look at our large-as-life warning about the Mobile Chernobyl. One of our signs read "36,300 More for Illinois," the number of projected shipments, reluctantly admitted to by the Department of Energy at the Yucca Mountain Environmental Impact Statement public hearings in Chicago last February. Despite being one of the hardest hit states by high level nuclear waste transport, DOE had refused for months to schedule a hearing in Chicago, but citizen and finally Congressional pressure forced them to hold a hearing.
We had a surprise encounter with none other than Illinois' senior Democratic U.S. Senator Richard Durbin. Durbin cast a critical vote against the most recent incarnation of the Mobile Chernobyl bill in February, and cast a deciding vote to sustain President Clinton's veto of the legislation in May. Durbin got a big kick out of the cask, as well as the bold headline on our Illinois specific Mobile Chernobyl informational hand out: "Durbin Was Right!" It was gratifying how many people watching the parade applauded our float, gave us the thumbs up, or even cheered their approval. Seems that we're not alone in feeling that opposing the Mobile Chernobyl and Screw Nevada is indeed patriotic, and a stand to preserve our democracy against the big money corruption of the nuclear industry.
Wed., July 5th, 2000
Leaving Chicago I hit a long traffic jam. The mock nuclear waste cask crawled along I-94 and I-90 past downtown Chicago, under the shadow of the towering skyscrapers, at 20 miles per hour, and sometimes came to a dead stop. The cask was stuck next to the same neighboring cars for well over an hour. During a particularly long standstill, people nearby rolled down their windows to ask me what in the world I was hauling behind me. I explained to them that–at their distance of six feet--had this been an actual high level nuclear waste cask, they would have been exposed to the equivalent of one chest x-ray per hour in harmful neutron and gamma radiation. This is because it would take so much shielding material to completely contain all the radiation in the waste that the container otherwise would be too heavy to transport.
High level radioactive waste shipments are like mobile x-ray machines that cannot be turned off. Such exposures would be especially harmful to pregnant women and the babies within their wombs, infants and small children, the elderly, and the infirm--persons whose immune systems are already challenged.
Thursday, July 6th, 2000
Traveling along the I-80/I-90 toll road to our events in northern Indiana, I had some interesting encounters with tollbooth attendants. The first attendant actually thought that the mock cask was real, and asked, "can I see your papers?" I explained that this was only a model of what an actual truck cask would look like. The attendant was very interested to see our literature, and even phoned his co-workers up the toll road. At each tollbooth, attendants asked me many of the same questions: how much radiation would such a cask expose them to? how many such casks were projected to travel this toll road? how soon would such shipments begin? Tollbooth attendants are yet one more forgotten sector of the population who unknowingly would be exposed to multiple radiation doses from high level nuclear waste shipments.
Friday, July 7th, 2000
Our events in northern Indiana have gone well over the past couple days. Dr. Marvin Resnikoff and Matt Lamb from Radioactive Waste Management Associates in New York City gave slide show presentations to an environmental studies class at Calumet College in Whiting, and to the Citizen Action Coalition canvassers in South Bend. Citizen Action Coalition of Indiana (CAC) has worked against the Mobile Chernobyl for years. Their door to door canvass campaign generated 15,000 letters to then-newly elected U.S. Senator Evan Bayh in just a few weeks.
Resnikoff and Lamb's presentation is based on their analyses of the risks to health and the impacts to the economy of a severe accident involving high level radioactive waste transport. They used the Department of Energy's own models to perform these analyses, yet arrived at very different results. One of the more startling findings was that health impacts could be more than ten times worse than DOE reported
in its Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for Yucca Mountain.
DOE, assuming 25-year old fuel, calculated 31 latent cancer fatalities attributable to a "maximum" hypothetical rail cask accident. However, by substituting 10-year old irradiated fuel (which would have had less time to decay and thus would be more radioactive), Resnikoff and Lamb found that 355 to 431 latent cancer fatalities could result.
Another startling finding involved economic impacts of a severe accident. DOE mentioned categories of economic impacts that could result from a severe transport accident (such things as emergency response costs; survey, cleanup, and decontamination; relocation costs; loss of business due to interdiction and evacuation; stigma effects for an area impacted by a nuclear accident). But even though its model could calculate dollar values for such economic impacts, DOE chose not to reveal such information in its DEIS. Resnikoff and Lamb, using DOE's model, performed such calculations. What they found was shocking. A severe truck cask accident could result in $20 billion to $36 billion in cleanup costs for an accident in an urban area. A severe rail accident in an urban area could result in costs from $145 billion to $270 billion.
Saturday, July 8th, 2000
In Indianapolis, Judy Treichel from the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force and Steve Frishman from the State of Nevada Nuclear Waste Project Office sat down with City and County Councilors. These public officials were most concerned about the local impacts such a transport program would mean, especially in terms of emergency preparedness and consequences for property values along nuclear waste transport routes.
Dave Menzer of CAC will follow up with these officials, in hopes of advancing a City/County resolution prohibiting high level radioactive waste shipments. A few years ago, the Indiana State Legislature passed such a resolution, prohibiting high level nuclear waste shipments through the State until generation of high level wastes had ceased. Indiana has no nuclear power reactors within its borders, thanks in large part to the effective activism and legal intervention of CAC in the early to mid 1980's.
Monday, July 10th, 2000
From Indy our cask tour traveled into Illinois to the capital of Springfield. Here I was hosted by Dr. Alex Casella, a professor of physics in the Energy and Environmental Studies program at Illinois University at Springfield. We held a press conference at the State Capitol building, with the cask parked at the foot of the Abraham Lincoln statue. Honest Abe would be ashamed of the nuclear establishment's dishonesty regarding high-level nuclear waste transportation risks.
Radioactive Waste Management Associates' slide presentation focuses in on the nuclear industry's and DOE’s misuse of cask tests performed at Sandia National Labs, New Mexico in the late 1970's. The tests were only designed to verify computer models, not to test the safety of transport casks. But the DOE and nuclear industry used the spectacular footage of high-speed crashes and fiery infernos to produce an "educational" film, which they distributed by the thousands to emergency management agencies, journalists, and emergency responders. One of the newspaper reporters in Springfield had actually viewed the film. What DOE and industry did not tell audiences viewing their film was that the casks used in the tests were obsolete and no longer in service at the time of the tests.
Also, the casks contained fresh uranium and not irradiated nuclear fuel, thus exerting much lower pressures and temperatures within the cask. Some of the tests actually breached the containers. Valves operated as designed and opened to relieve pressure during the long duration fire test, spewing forth steam that would have been radioactive had irradiated fuel been inside. The high temperature fire also began melting and vaporizing the lead radiation shielding, and opened a crack on the cask.
A cask was breached by a missile in a terrorism test. The test looked spectacular on the film, but the narrator failed to point out that the cask merely sliced through the locomotive's sheet metal, missing the real test of colliding with the train's solid structure below. That cask also bounced twice after the impact; another cask subjected to two consecutive drop tests cracked. When he learned such information had never been communicated in the nuclear establishment's film, the Springfield journalist agreed that the film represented a propaganda tool designed to sedate the public's concerns about high level nuclear waste transportation.
He and a number of other local reporters were eager for information on high level nuclear waste transport cask safety, and how rail shipments on a DOE-targeted train line through Springfield would affect the region. I relayed to them information from Marvin Resnikoff's 1983 book "The Next Nuclear Gamble" about nuclear waste storage, transport and "disposal." Marvin documented that the tests for transport cask safety are decades old and inadequate. For instance, the fire test was first developed way back in 1947, and has not changed much since. Casks are only required to be able to survive a 1,475 degree Fahrenheit fire for 30 minutes. However, many flammables on the roads and rails today burn at much hotter temperatures. Diesel fuel, for example, burns at 1,800 degrees. Other chemicals burn at temperatures over 3,000 and 4,000 degrees. In addition, there have been countless real life accidents that have burned for much longer than 30 minutes.
The 30-foot drop test onto an unyielding surface was developed in the early 1960's. It represents only a 30-mile per hour collision. Speeds on the roads and rails these days are a bit faster than 30 mph…. Crush tests are not even required. Cask valves designed to relieve pressure within the shipping container represent direct pathways for radiation escape into the environment under accident conditions. Cask seals and welds are other weak points in the event of accidents.
Recalling all the countless miles of corn fields that stretched to the horizon that I had passed driving into Springfield, I told the reporters about the DOE's own calculation on severe accident consequences in a rural area. Several years ago, DOE estimated that a severe transport accident in a rural setting that released only a miniscule fraction of the cask's radioactive cargo would contaminate a 42 square mile area of land. The cleanup would cost $620 million and take one year and three months. Such radioactive contamination, albeit on a much larger scale, has ruined the breadbasket of the former Soviet Union--northern Ukraine and southern Belarus. Chernobyl's radioactive cesium and strontium, absorbed into crops through their roots, has turned fertile farmland into a deadly zone. Only 14 years have passed since the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe--radioactive cesium and strontium will poison the food supply for 300 years or more.
A severe accident with a high level waste shipment could cause such long-term damage to a region, albeit on a smaller scale. That's why the bold banner headline on our mock cask reads "Stop the Mobile Chernobyl!"
Tuesday, July 11, 2000
Today we crossed the mighty Mississippi and entered into St. Louis, Missouri. Driving across the tall bridge over the river, I wondered how many hundreds of feet down to the water below, and how deep the water? Had the NRC tested casks for such an accident?
We held a press conference with the Missouri Coalition for the Environment at City Hall in downtown St. Louis. The mock cask made for a sobering picture framed beneath the monumental St. Louis arch. This gateway to the west holds a different, somber symbolism in the Atomic Age. The vast majority of commercial nuclear power reactors are located east of the Mississippi River, yet both the proposed "interim storage site" and the proposed permanent national repository for high level nuclear wastes are located in the far West, and on Native American land.
Tens of thousands of high level nuclear waste shipments would pour through St. Louis if the dump sites at Skull Valley, Utah and Yucca Mountain, NV are opened. If DOE chooses to use mostly truck casks to transport waste, St. Louis would see two shipments per day for decades. If mostly train casks would be used, three train casks per week would pass by the Gateway to the West. Each truck cask could hold up to 40 times the long-lasting radiation released by the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Each train cask could hold 260 times the long-lasting radiation released at Hiroshima.
Our press conference faced a memorial to firefighters located in a park across Market Street, a reminder that emergency responders would be on the front line in the event of a radioactive waste transport accident. A city alderman and a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives attended; a deputy delivered a mayoral statement expressing opposition to high level nuclear waste shipments through St. Louis.
In the evening, 80 people attended my slide show presentation at Hixson Middle School in Webster Groves. This community lies on the Union Pacific railroad tracks, a primary nuclear waste transport route that already saw two dozen shipments of Three Mile Island's melted fuel pass through on its way to Idaho in the mid-1980's and early 1990's.
Attendees feared for loss of property values, as well as the health of their children. Many of those in attendance had made strong statements of opposition to DOE's Yucca Mountain plans at a public hearing in St. Louis in January. It took citizen pressure to win that hearing, which was not originally scheduled.
It seems that citizen pressure is again needed to win public hearings in transportation corridor states, this time from the NRC in regards to the proposed "interim storage site" for high level wastes on the reservation of the Skull Valley Goshute Indians in Utah. The nuclear power industry, impatient with the "slow" pace of the Yucca Mountain Project, is intent on buying itself a waste dump, and quickly. 8 nuclear utilities, led by Northern States Power in Minnesota, have entered into private negotiations with the tribal council of the Skull Valley Goshutes to "temporarily" store 40,000 tons (all that presently exists) of high level atomic waste.
The State of Utah, a Utah wilderness protection organization, and Utah Downwinders who have suffered from nuclear weapons testing fallout have filed contentions against the dump before an NRC Atomic Safety Licensing Board. NRC recently published its Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the proposed dump. NRC plans to only hold two public hearings, both in Utah. Just as DOE attempted to do with the Yucca Mountain DEIS, NRC is attempting to downplay the environmental, economic and social impacts of high level radioactive waste transportation by not holding public hearings in corridor States.
Monday, July 17th, 2000
Today we entered Omaha, Nebraska. For a state with "only" two nuclear reactors, Nebraska would be hard hit by transportation to a repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Up to 34,000 truck shipments would travel through Nebraska along Interstate 80, or up to 14,000 train shipments along Union Pacific and Burlington Northern/Sante Fe train routes.
We parked the cask at the corner of 72nd and Dodge, near the University of Nebraska-- "the busiest intersection in the State." Thousands of passersby saw our message, and we began to hear a buzz around town about the cask.
Our hosts in Nebraska are Nebraskans for Peace. NFP generated so many phone calls to Nebraska's U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey earlier this year that Kerrey's staff person begged for mercy. They failed to swing Kerrey to vote against Mobile Chernobyl, probably because the retiring Senator no longer felt the need to respond to the wishes of his constituents.
Tuesday, July 18th, 2000
We held a press conference with the cask at the "Heartland of America" park on the edge of downtown Omaha. Highway overpasses spanned overhead, an appropriate symbol of the dark shadow that the Mobile Chernobyl casts over Heartland States like Nebraska.
We held a public presentation at an area church, attended by a State Senator, a State emergency response official, and members of the public from both sides of the political aisle. Issues that hit home with conservative members of the audience included the negative impacts on property values along transport routes for high level waste, as well as the huge subsidy to the nuclear power industry represented by the Price-Anderson Act, under which American taxpayers are held financially responsible for the cleanup costs after a severe transport accident.
Wednesday, July 19th, 2000
Today saw the mock cask parked in front of the towering Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln, for a well-attended press conference. A school bus filled with small children on a field trip pulled up directly behind the cask, adding a note of irony to the scene. Public Citizen's "Atomic Atlas" at its website (www.citizen.org) shows how close to elementary schools projected transport routes pass.
We met some very supportive State officials. Gabriela and I were treated to a private tour of the Capitol building. Built in the late 1920's and early 1930's, the ornate architecture and interior design are a tribute to the spiritual and religious beliefs of Native American and pre-Christian Europe. Given Nebraska's reputation for conservative politics and religion, the Capitol building is considered by some the best trick ever played on Nebraskans. Mobile Chernobyl would be the worst trick ever played on Nebraskans.
Gabi and I drove the mock cask through the South Salt Creek neighborhood of Lincoln. This was the first neighborhood settled in the city. In the 1860's, a large influx of German settlers moved into the neighborhood. They are known as "Germans from Russia" because they had moved from Germany to Ukraine in 1763 at the invitation of Catherine the Great in her attempt to "Europeanize" her empire. When the Czar attempted to draft the Germans into the Russian Army, the Germans packed up and moved to Lincoln, Nebraska. Today, the South Salt Creek neighborhood is home to a diverse ethnic community, including recent low income immigrants from Mexico and Central America, many young families, and lots of children.
The Union Pacific and Burlington Northern train tracks pass through the neighborhood. One resident told us you can almost reach out her window and touch the passing train cars. We spoke at a neighborhood association meeting, and parents were very concerned to learn that gamma and neutron radiation streams out of these casks, even without an accident. The association is determined to get the Lincoln City Council to pass a resolution opposing high-level atomic waste shipments through their neighborhood.
Friday, July 21, 2000
We pulled into Cheyenne, Wyoming just in time for the 104th annual "Frontier Days" rodeo. We parked in front of the Capitol building for our press conference, a prime spot to be seen by the hundreds of thousands of visitors descending on Cheyenne for the week-long rodeo. The Union Pacific rail yard is only several blocks south of the Capitol building, and I-80 not far beyond that. Up to 34,000 truck shipments, up to 14,000 rail shipments, or some combination of the two could pass very close to Wyoming's capital.
Saturday, July 22, 2000
How could we not at least attempt to sneak into the Cheyenne "Frontier Days" parade? Warren Air Force Base, HQ for Strategic Air Command, is based in Cheyenne. It's the only Air Force Base lacking an airstrip: its primary mission is to staff the missile silos situated in the Nebraska, Wyoming and Colorado range land. Warren Air Base usually takes up half of the two mile-long parade with its floats. Our local hosts, the Wyoming Peace Initiative, have tried for years to enter their anti-MX missile floats in the parade, only to be told by the "Frontier Days" Committee that such floats are not in the "Western theme" of the parade. How actual missiles are in the Western theme, while peace protests against them are not, the "Frontier Days" Committee did not say. Unfortunately for the West, the nuclear power industry and its allies in the federal government are attempting to make nuclear waste a new Western theme.
Despite 90% of the commercial nuclear reactors being east of the Colorado River, their high-level nuclear wastes are targeted for Nevada. The tens of thousands of shipments that would have to pass through states such as Wyoming (which has no reactors) to get the wastes to Yucca Mountain make for a quite undesirable nuclear waste transportation theme for the West. So with the cask in tow, we slowly rolled up into the column of floats as they lined up on a side street awaiting the start of the parade. We happened to be directly behind a neon green fire truck, the Air Force hazardous materials response unit, which seemed quite appropriate. Several parade officials passed us by without a batting an eye, so after 30 minutes in the line-up I thought our chances were good to make it into the parade.
But then I spotted them, a phalanx of cowboys carrying clipboards--the dreaded Frontier Days Committee with the roster of permitted floats--making their way towards me. The Superintendent of the Parade gave me the official boot. "Nope, not in this parade," he said sternly as he pointed to the exit. "Why not?" I asked. "Nothing political is allowed," he said gruffly. In front of me, dozens of floats glorifying the U.S. military; behind me, dozens of floats advertising large corporations like McDonald's and Wal-Mart. It seems that, at least in the star-spangled Cheyenne Frontier Days parade, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly do not apply to anything that the local power holders deem controversial.
Corrupt campaign finance laws have allowed the nuclear power industry to purchase a huge amount of "free" speech on Capitol Hill--tens of millions of dollars have been poured into Congressional, and now Presidential, campaigns - drowning out the concerns of tens of millions of people across the U.S. about the Mobile Chernobyl. Millions more have been spent on lobbying and nationwide advertising campaigns--all an attempt to lock in the unsuitable Yucca Mountain site, and launch Mobile Chernobyl as quickly as possible.
On Earth Day 2000, both myself representing NIRS and Wenonah Hauter (director, CMEEP) were arrested with 30 others (including Granny D, Doris Haddock, the 90 year old woman who walked from sea to shining sea for campaign finance reform) during a civil disobedience action in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. Part of the Alliance for Democracy's "democracy brigade" campaign, our Earth Day action demanded that public health and the environment take priority over Big Business' Mega Millions on such vital national policy as energy and nuclear waste disposal.
Monday, July 24, 2000
Driving west across Wyoming, we stopped in Laramie and Rawlins for press conferences. These and other smaller towns were built right on the Union Pacific rail line, their downtowns immediately adjacent to the tracks. Reporters' questions centered on such issues as lack of emergency preparedness, the doses to the public even without accidents occurring due to the "mobile x-ray machines that cannot be turned off", the consequences to human health and the environment due to severe accidents releasing radiation, and the loss of property value along transport routes.
Wednesday, July 26, 2000
Our drive through Idaho Falls and Pocatello, Idaho, took place on the very day that dozens of TRU-PACK shipping containers filled with plutonium-contaminated wastes departed the Idaho National Engineering Lab bound for the Waste Isolation Pilot Project dump site in New Mexico.
Just a few days earlier, we were passed by what appeared to be smaller HALF-PAC containers as we traveled west on I-80 across Wyoming, plutonium waste containers probably bound for INEL. Idaho residents were interested to learn how high-level waste shipments from INEL to Yucca Mountain would impact their lives if that dump is similarly rammed down the throats of Nevadans. Concerned Idahoans encouraged me to tell Nevadans to fight with all their might against the Yucca Mountain dump, because they had started a lifetime too late to fight against INEL radioactive contamination of Idaho's soil, air, underground aquifer, and Snake River watershed. Ironically, activists who called Idaho potato growers and barley growers to warn them about INEL's plans to incinerate plutonium wastes were met with suspicion. "Are you trying to threaten us?" a spokesman for the potato growers jabbed. Similar responses came from a McDonald's--which gets most of its french fries from Idaho potatoes--and Budweiser, which gets most of the barley for its beers from Idaho. It seems such corporate institutions would rather there be plutonium incineration--so long as their customers do not know how it might be affecting the foods they're eating--than to get involved in the resistance that could put an end to such insanity in the first place.
We pulled into Salt Lake City to take part in press conferences and public presentations declaring the formation of "Citizens Opposed to Radioactive Waste in Utah," a new organization formed to fight the nuclear industry's "Private Fuel Storage" high-level nuclear waste "interim storage" dump targeted at the reservation land of the Skull Valley Band of Goshute Indians just an hour's drive west. Held in the Salt Lake City/County Building under a portrait of Brigham Young, Citizen's Opposed to Radioactive Waste spokesman Jason Groenewold stated boldly that "Utah is NOT the place for the nation's nuclear waste!" The group claims prominent Salt Lake City and Utah citizens on its board of advisors, including current and former Governors, Senators, Representatives, U.S. Attorneys, and business leaders, and promises to form a roadblock to the nuclear industry's plans to "fast track" their dump's application through the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Thursday, July 27, 2000
I was interviewed on the "Doug Wright" radio talk show, beamed to several States and as far away as Guam on a powerful radio signal. Dr. Marvin Resnikoff spoke on his calculations that a severe train accident in Salt Lake City involving irradiated nuclear fuel bound for Skull Valley, Utah could result in costs between $14 and $300 billion, and could cause 115 latent cancer fatalities, not to mention other health impacts. His calculations predict 25 accidents involving high-level radioactive waste casks bound for Skull Valley. He acknowledged most probably would be minor accidents, but said that some could be severe, and that casks are not designed to survive severe accidents without releasing radioactivity.
Connie Nakahara from the State of Utah Department of Environmental Quality spoke on Utah Governor Leavitt's staunch opposition to the dump, and her agency's legal efforts to stop it before the NRC’s Atomic Safety & Licensing Board. Private Fuel Storage executive director Scott Northard phoned the show to assure Utahans that Private Fuel Storage (PFS) would be completely safe. Connie and Dr. Resnikoff then asked him why PFS is incorporated as a Limited Liability Company—why, if it will be so safe, are the eight member nuclear utilities refusing to accept liability for their project?
Thursday evening was very powerful. After another public presentation at a local college, we drove the cask back to the front entrance of the Salt Lake City/County Building, where it served as the backdrop for a Citizen's Opposed to Radioactive Waste in Utah rally. The cask then drove slowly across downtown, leading demonstrators in a march to the NRC’s public hearing on its Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Skull Valley dump. The hearing was held at the posh Little America Hotel, where we were in for an unpleasant surprise. Several people from the rally were being denied entrance to the hearing--in fact, they were being escorted off the premises. When I came upon the scene, I asked the hotel security officers who were doing the kicking out and why. They pointed to the placards from the rally the people were still carrying and said NRC regulations prohibit such signs in public hearings. When I asked to see a copy of the regulation, I instantly joined the hotel security guards' list of "unwelcome" guests. A guard grabbed my arm, pulled me away from the building, and threatened to have me arrested if I tried to enter "his private property" --all this on the public sidewalk OUTSIDE a supposedly PUBLIC hearing. The others handed their placards over to the security so that they could attend the hearing, and seeing as I had no placard, I was also allowed to enter.
At the door to the hearing room, a Salt Lake City police officer was checking each and every backpack, bag, and purse that entered the room. The hotel security guard who had given me such grief outside took the opportunity to further harass me, demanding to search my backpack himself. Thank goodness, concerned citizens from Utah did not let such intimidation deter them from voicing their opposition to the proposed Skull Valley dump.
Nearly 200 people packed the hearing room to overflowing. The NRC had allotted only three hours for public comments, and used a significant fraction of that with their opening remarks. The NRC officials told the public attendees that because so many had signed up to speak, each would be limited to 2-3 minutes. The NRC seemed to be blaming the public for coming out in such large numbers and overwhelming what was obviously an inadequately structured public hearing, and continually pressured speakers to keep their remarks short. Several people requested that NRC hold more public hearings in Salt Lake City to accommodate the large numbers. For most of the evening, NRC refused. But as the hearing went two hours over and midnight approached, NRC at last agreed to hold another local hearing. This was a real victory for the fledgling Citizens Opposed to Radioactive Waste in Utah, whose good work over the course of just two weeks turned out such large numbers to the hearing.
Friday, July 28th, 2000
We drove for an hour west, past the pungent salt air and surreal landscapes of the Great Salt Lake to do a public presentation at the Grantsville City Hall, not far from the proposed Skull Valley dump.
That evening, the Middle School Auditorium was again packed with local concerned citizens. Once again, the vast majority of those who spoke opposed the proposed dump.
One of the Skull Valley Goshute tribal members, Arlene Bear, said "we're all going to die one way or the other someday," and so she supports the dump. She is related to tribal chairman Leon Bear, who is heading the effort within the tribe for the dump. Larry Bear, the chairman's father, admitted Skull Valley is a "desperate land," the main reason for the dump even being considered. He added that any accident "would only be local" in its consequences, little comfort to all the locals in attendance.
Many others stated that Skull Valley and Tooele County already shoulder a heavy burden of toxic substances in their local environment. A huge magnesium factory on the shore of the Great Salt Lake is the single worst air polluter in the country, belching out shocking amounts of hydrochloric acid. There are two large-scale U.S. Army incinerators burning nerve gas and chemical weapons, having "accidental" leaks with alarming regularity. There are hazardous waste landfills, and a "low level" radioactive waste dump run by "Envirocare" that's now applying to accept all but the very highest level of "low level" atomic wastes. We had to slam on our brakes to avoid hitting a semi-truck trailer placarded with radiation signs that pulled out in front of us from a fast food joint parking lot as we drove into town.
Saturday, July 29th, 2000
Today we drove west to the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian reservation, 20 some miles down Skull Valley Road south of I-80, between the Stansbury and Cedar Mountains. Just off of the Interstate we interrupted a film. The entire company--actors, director, and film crew--read our message on the cask as we drove by, gave us thumbs up, cheers and applause. We stopped briefly and gave them our literature, then drove off as they resumed their shoot.
We passed several areas green with rich plant life. As a local geologist opposed to the atomic waste dump said at the Grantsville NRC hearing the night before, "Skull Valley is not a wasteland--it's rich."
We did not have directions to Goshute dump opponent Margene Bullcreek's house on the reservation, so we stopped at the general store/gas station to ask. Who did we run into but tribal chairman Leon Bear himself, the person leading the effort to dump 40,000 tons of high-level atomic waste on his community in exchange for tens of millions of dollars. Our encounter was actually pleasant enough, under the circumstances. He was gassing up one of the tribal council's brand new trucks, bought with money from Private Fuel Storage. We soon learned that Chairman Bear and dump supporters have been a little less pleasant towards dump opponents like Margene.
We found Margene's house directly across from Chairman Bear's house. Margene sat on an overturned plastic bucket while Gabi and I sat on a wooden bench under the shade of a cottonwood tree. She pointed to where the dump would be located, and beyond it to where her brother used to catch and break wild mustangs with a lasso. Margene worked on beadwork while she told us stories about her resistance to the dump, and some of the harassment she has suffered because of it.
Margene first became concerned about the dump not because of health risks to her community, but because of the secretive way in which Chairman Bear was moving forward on his deal with Private Fuel Storage. Bear had moved full speed ahead with lease negotiations even before a majority of voting members of the tribe has agreed to the deal. Since then, she said, Bear has used PFS money to entice additional tribal members to sign onto the lease agreement. Even though all tribal members are supposed to share equally in such income, Margene said that she and other dump opponents have been excluded from receiving any payments of PFS money. Not only that, she said she has been cut off from receiving their regular income disbursements from the tribe, as have their children, simply because they oppose the dump. Their families have had to go without at the Holidays, and even now when their children need new clothes and supplies for school.
Margene has been blocked at tribal meetings from discussing her objections to the dump proposal. Margene has been threatened with "termination," dismemberment from the tribe, and exile from her community.
Margene's water is continually turned off at the well head by tribal dump proponents. She and her family have to repeatedly turn their own water back on. Their house has been ransacked, and files taken from her computer. Despite such intimidation, they are not backing down in their opposition. Similarly, Citizens Opposed to Radioactive Waste in Utah are taking encouragement, rather than being discouraged, that all of their sign- up sheets were stolen during both the NRC hearings in Utah -- it's a sign that dump proponents are scared.
Sammy Blackbear and Margene both spoke at the NRC hearings. Sammy sat with his young children, and Margene carried a traditional spiritual staff for strength and direction. They spoke powerfully about their contention of environmental racism before the NRC's Atomic Safety Licensing Board, their lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs for approving the improper lease with PFS, and their continuing efforts to educate their own tribal members about the hazards of high level nuclear waste.
Sammy is excited about the prospects of their legal action, and is working on alternative economic development plans for the reservation. Margene wants to install solar panels on her roof and a wind turbine for electricity, which she currently goes without because she can't afford the bills. Both have plans to shift their opposition into higher gear. They hope to network with Citizens Opposed to Radioactive Waste in Utah, and other anti-nuclear activists in other States, to show their reservation community that they are not alone in opposing the dump. Many members of the tribe are opposed to the dump, but are afraid of speaking out for fear of reprisals like Sammy and Margene have suffered.
Both Sammy's lawsuit and Margene's organization are in serious need of financial assistance. Contact me at (202) 328-0002 if you are interested to donate money, and I can put you in touch with them.
Margene says that her land is sacred and beautiful, no place to dump nuclear waste. Sitting with the breeze blowing through the summer silence around us, we felt her passion to protect her homeland for her children, grandchildren, and future generations. After all, the reservation land is all that her people have left. As one speaker said at the hearing the night before, accepting nuclear waste would only be a continuation of the Skull Valley Goshutes' problems, not a solution. Citizens Opposed to Radioactive Waste in Utah have pledged to help the Goshutes with economic development alternatives to nuclear waste. Watch NIRS web site (www.nirs.org) for ways you can help stop the dump targeted at the Skull Valley Goshutes.
Sunday, July 30th, 2000
As we entered Nevada, we noticed that lots of people in passing cars honked in support and gave us the thumbs up. Citizen Alert, the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, Shundahai Network, and the State Nuclear Waste Project Office have down a tremendous job of educating Nevadans about Yucca Mountain and high-level nuclear waste transportation issues. One honk surprised us however. We turned to look for a thumbs up, and instead saw a truck carrying containers marked "Radioactive" and "Corrosive" pass us going at least 75 miles per hour. That was a strange moment, but untold numbers of "low level" radioactive waste shipments are already on the roads.
Monday, July 31st, 2000
We awoke today to find we had gotten our first parking ticket of the trip, in Carson City--just an appropriate little sign that Nevada is geared up to block high-level waste trucks and trains, even mock ones.
Headlines in the local newspaper, The Nevada Appeal, heralded Nevada’s Nuclear Waste Project Office efforts to scientifically show that the Department of Energy's proposed C-22 nickel alloy repository casks proposed for Yucca Mountain burial are not all they are cracked up to be. At first, DOE claimed the casks would last 750,000 years. DOE later lowered that estimate to 100,000 years. Most recently, DOE admitted the casks would last only 34,000 years. One experiment revealed the proposed cask alloy's degradation in just three weeks. The State agency will present its technical findings at the August 1st meeting of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board in Carson City. I will speak to the Board, which is charged by Congress to oversee DOE's Yucca Mountain science and also the technical aspects of high-level waste transport and packaging, about my experiences on the Radioactive Roads and Rails tour.
Wed., August 2nd, 2000
Today marked the second and final day of the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board meeting in Carson City, Nevada. Out of all the highly technical presentations that blurred into incomprehensibility for me, there were some highlights I would like to share.
Bob Loux, executive director of the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, told the members of the NWTRB that the State and people of Nevada look to them with hope. Loux urged the NWTRB to uphold the highest standards of scientific and technical integrity, for it is perhaps the only body somewhat removed from the intense political pressures aiming to force open the Yucca Mountain repository despite the site’s scientific unsuitability.
Ivan Itkin, director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, also addressed the NWTRB. When a panel member asked if and when a final repository design would be delivered by DOE, Itkin responded that the design is "evolving," and would continue to do so up until the license application, if not beyond. Itkin compared Yucca’s repository design to the Wright Brothers’ airplane. What if we were still flying around in the Kittyhawk?, he asked.
During the public comment period, Judy Treichel of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force criticized Itkin’s comparison. If Itkin is comparing the Yucca Mountain repository to the Space Shuttle, then he left a part out, Treichel said. Itkin failed to point out that the people of Nevada are unwilling passengers on this flight, and must be marched aboard at gunpoint. In addition, the launch will take place over the heads of all future generations of Nevadans, another risk the people of Nevada are not willing to take. (She didn’t mention it, but before the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on lift off, the chances of such a catastrophe happening were estimated to be 1 in 25,000. After the fatal explosion, the probabilities were adjusted to 1 in 25. That kind of experience is important to keep in mind, as DOE "experts" discuss probabilities of potential failures at the Yucca Mountain repository being infinitesimally small.).
Scientists contracted by the Nevada showed that C-22 (the "super metal" that D.O.E. proposes for containers to hold the high-level waste within Yucca Mountain for tens of thousands of years) began to crack, pit, and deteriorate after just days and weeks when subjected to mineral solutions that could be present at the proposed site. I overheard several attendees saying that this presentation electrified the NWTRB as none other had for five years, as evidenced by the barrage of questions panel members had for the presenters. Such a finding casts doubt on DOE’s main barrier to the release of radiation from Yucca Mountain, for their own studies have already shown the geology cannot be counted on to isolate the waste.
Geologists showed that there is a 25% chance that a "volcanic crisis" will occur near Yucca Mountain over the next 10,000 years, and a 5% chance for an actual eruption. The chairman and other members of the NWTRB questioned DOE charts apparently showing low radiation doses to the public downwind from an eruption. When questioned, DOE scientists admitted that they had multiplied the high consequences from an eruption with the very low probability of its occurring to yield the seemingly low dose rates to the public.
John Hadder, with Nevada’s State-wide environmental group Citizen Alert, criticized DOE during the public comment period for using just such deceptions in an attempt to lull the public into complacency.
Hadder added that, given the huge uncertainties associated with DOE’s "Total System Performance Assessment," individual disqualifying conditions (such as disqualifying Yucca Mountain if the flow rate of water through the site is too fast) should be applied all the more. Instead, DOE is attempting to rewrite its own guidelines and remove such disqualifiers, effectively undermining any shred of public confidence remaining in the process.
Perhaps it is hopeful that NWTRB panel members and their advisers had many questions about the huge uncertainties that DOE seems ready to discount in its drive to open the repository.
After the NWTRB meeting, John Hadder and I drove from Carson City to Reno to be interviewed on a cable access television talk show called "We the People." On the way there, we saw the lightning bolts that struck the mountains, igniting wildfires that burned large areas over the next several hours. Numerous fire trucks roared past us towards the fire. As we left the studio that evening, smoke was thick in the air. What an ironic reminder of the fires at DOE nuclear weapons facilities in Los Alamos, Hanford, and Idaho that spewed unknown amounts of radiation into the air, and threatened even worse catastrophes. A friend familiar with the Los Alamos area pointed out the irony that the town and lab--established to create weapons that could engulf the world in nuclear conflagration--found itself engulfed in flames.
A less publicized but equally ironic "wildfire with a radioactive twist" burned on the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation, just days after the NRC’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement public hearings in Utah. During the recent Atomic Safety Licensing Board (ASLB) hearings about Skull Valley, NRC dismissed the State of Utah’s contentions that wildfires pose a serious threat to the proposed site.
However, during the public comment period at the ASLB, Utah State Senator Ron Allen spoke powerfully about fire dangers at Skull Valley. Senator Allen represents Tooele County (site of the Skull Valley Reservation), where he formerly served as County Fire Marshall and still serves as a volunteer firefighter. In fact, all of the firefighters in Tooele County are volunteers. Senator Allen told the ASLB that he had spoken to firefighters across Tooele County, and most told him they would not show up to fight a fire at the proposed nuclear waste dump. They knew about the Chernobyl firefighters and "liquidators" – about the countless lives lost and lives ruined due to Chernobyl’s deadly radiation. Senator Allen had read Private Fuel Storage’s proposal for dealing with a wildfire, and found it misguided, even incompetent. In fact, PFS seems content to let a wildfire overrun its facility, claiming there would be no combustibles to feed the fire. But how would the surrounding high temperatures from a raging wildfire affect the high-level nuclear waste storage containers? Could they overheat? After all, the irradiated nuclear fuel inside them would already be very thermally hot, around 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Thursday, August 3rd, 2000
Driving from Carson City to Las Vegas, we passed some interesting sites: U.S. Ecology’s leaking "low level" radioactive waste dump in Beatty; the Nevada Test Site (where the Atomic Energy Commission and DOE have conducted hundreds of above-ground and below-ground nuclear weapons test explosions, and where "low level" DOE atomic waste is currently being dumped); and the proposed Yucca Mountain repository itself.
We pulled into a Nye County "early warning system" well site directly downstream from Yucca Mountain. A geologist working for the county gave us a tour. A "fence post" of wells has been sunk downstream of Yucca Mountain to study the groundwater flow, and to give "early warning" if the repository is opened and begins leaking radiation into the aquifer. The geologist pointed across Highway 95 toward the farming community that draws its water from the aquifer that flows beneath Yucca Mountain--we had just passed the signs for "Amargosa Farms".
Looking over toward Amargosa Farms brought many memories and emotions welling up within me. Sponsor of the Mobile Chernobyl bills in the U.S. House of Representatives, Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), taking his cue from the Nuclear Energy Institute, declared Yucca Mountain oppressively hot, bone dry, even uninhabited, and thus the perfect place for nuclear waste. I wonder what those farming families down the road think of Rep. Upton’s words?
On the floor of the Senate earlier this year, Mobile Chernobyl bill sponsors Frank Murkowski (R-AK) and Larry Craig (R-ID) claimed that no one drinks the water at Yucca Mountain. I guess during their trips to Yucca Mountain, they failed to look down the valley to Amargosa Farms. They must have neglected to read the letter written to them by Ed Goedhart, owner of Ponderosa Dairy in Amargosa Valley, imploring them not to doom the largest dairy herd in Nevada to radioactive contamination via their water supply. Late last year, in an effort to convince his Senate colleagues to take away the Environmental Protection Agency’s radiation protection standard setting role for Yucca Mountain, Frank Murkowski said EPA’s groundwater protection standard would kill the Yucca Mountain repository. One has to wonder why he would so actively advocate dumping high-level nuclear wastes at an unsuitable site that cannot live up to radiation protection standards.
Those farming families in Amargosa Valley are the very people referred to by the DOE and NRC as "dose receptors" at all of the public hearings, educational meetings, and technical seminars. Simply by drinking their well water or eating veggies from their gardens or crops irrigated with well water, they would receive harmful doses of radiation leaking from the Yucca Mountain repository. When asked by a member of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board the day before, a DOE scientist admitted that he had not counted the additional dose people would suffer from using contaminated cow manure for fertilizer on their crops. Just one more little stone left unturned at Yucca Mountain. Of all the things overlooked, perhaps the biggest one is that the people of Nevada are unwilling to be "dose receptors," nor to doom their future generations forever with that fate.
As we pulled away from Yucca Mountain bound for Las Vegas, raindrops appeared on our windshield, making a tinny pang on the hollow mock nuclear waste cask. A cloud burst had formed directly over Yucca Mountain, darkening the sky. Presently, rainfall means refreshment for all life in Amargosa Valley. If the repository opens, rainfall would come to mean a ticking clock, a time bomb: how long would it take for the rain water, percolating down through the earthquake-fractured rock of Yucca Mountain, to corrode the high-level waste containers and wash the deadly radiation into the groundwater? DOE is betting that the answer to that question is more than ten thousand years, an arbitrarily short timeframe considering that the wastes would be deadly for hundreds of thousands of years. Others are betting much less time. The highest stakes gambling is not taking place in Las Vegas, but at Yucca Mountain.
Friday, August 4th, 2000
Our "Radioactive Roads and Rails" tour culminated with a press conference and street theater at the new Federal Building in Las Vegas. Nevada’s entire Congressional delegation was represented. U.S. Senator Richard Bryan, U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, and spokespeople from the offices of Senator Harry Reid and Rep. Jim Gibbons led dozens of Nevadans in symbolically stopping the Mobile Chernobyl in its tracks by blocking our mock nuclear waste cask in the street. Kalynda Tilges from Citizen Alert, Suzi Schneider and Greg Gable from Shundahai Network, and Judy Treichel from Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force were there, spearheading the grassroots Nevadan opposition to the Yucca Mountain dump. I’d never seen so many television cameras covering an event–further evidence that nuclear waste is at the top of the agenda in Nevada this election year.
We later cruised up and down the Las Vegas Strip for hours. Despite all the glitter and spectacle of the big casinos we passed, our mock nuclear waste cask still turned heads among the throngs of tourists we passed, alerting them to contact their elected officials and candidates for public office once they return home to their own States.
Saturday, August 5th, 2000
It was a dream come true to haul the mock nuclear waste across the country, to educate countless people about the risks of nuclear waste transportation and warn them about the Mobile Chernobyl. A friend and I built it 2 1/2 years ago with just such a vision in mind.
Driving the long journey back to Michigan, where the mock nuclear waste cask was used in the second annual Nuclear-Free Great Lakes Action Camp, I realized the end of this tour marks a new beginning of the national effort to defeat the Skull Valley and Yucca Mountain dumps. Given the incredible people we met across the country, who hosted us and made this tour possible and successful, I have renewed hope that our efforts will not be in vain. During our trip back, we were already on our cell phone taking first organizing steps on what to do next with the momentum we’ve built. Lisa Gue with Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy Project still has numerous "Radioactive Roads and Rails" events coming up over the next several weeks, building momentum in other States. The power is building to stop Mobile Chernobyl in its tracks. Please contact me to plug into this exciting national movement. ---Kevin Kamps