In Mid-May 1999, NBC (and its parent company, General Electric, the worlds second largest nuclear reactor manufacturer) decided to remove all references to radioactive waste transport from the much-ballyhooed made-for-TV movie, Atomic Train. Instead of the original plot, which concerned a train carrying commercial high-level atomic waste and a smuggled-aboard nuclear weapon that detonates, destroying the city of Denver, the train now will carry some unidentified "hazardous" waste.
In its original promos for the movie, star Rob Lowe said, "it could happen." In fact, the accident portrayed in Atomic Train couldnt happen. But the danger of nuclear waste transport that caused the movie to be made in the first place is genuine, and no amount of self-censorship by General Electric and the nuclear industry can change that fact.
What follows is a fact sheet based on the original Atomic Train movie provided by NBC, a movie which apparently never will be aired.
Fact #1: Atomic Train is fiction, but the threat of radioactive waste transport is real.
The NBC-TV movie Atomic Train is a highly-fictionalized account of an accident involving transportation of high-level atomic waste. Lets get things straight: the accident depicted in Atomic Train could not happen. First, nuclear weapons and nuclear waste are never transported together. Second, atomic waste is not transported on loose barrels sitting on top of a train car. Third, a runaway train? Only in Hollywood fantasies.
So theres nothing to worry about, right? Wrong. In fact, the nuclear power industry is now promoting legislation that would begin the transport of tens of thousands of casks of high-level atomic waste from commercial nuclear power reactors. This waste would travel through 43 states on its way to a "temporary" storage site near Yucca Mountain, Nevadathrough more than 100 cities, through Americas agricultural heartland. The largest of these casks would carry the long-lived radiological equivalent of some 200 Hiroshima bombs. The smallest would be able to create a local disaster, a local "Mobile Chernobyl."
The nuclear power industry is proud of its "safety" record. Over the past 40 years, some 2,400 shipments of high-level radioactive waste have been made in the U.S., mostly of fuel from nuclear submarines. Even the nuclear industry acknowledges there have been accidentsa bunch of them in fact. A few of these accidents have caused very localized contamination, but nothing too serious. So, is this a "safety" record, or a warning of things to come? When we consider that the nuclear industry wants to do 40 times as many shipments, each one larger than any that has come before, can we be sure that none of these will result in a disastrous accident? The odds arent with us
Fact #2: Shipping radioactive waste now wont reduce the number of atomic waste sites; rather, it will increase the number by one.
The nuclear power industry likes to say that embarking on a radioactive waste shipping campaign will remove waste from across the country and consolidate it in one "desert location."
That is, by any objective measure, untrue.
First, its worth knowing that 95% of all the radioactivity ever created by man is contained in high-level atomic waste from commercial nuclear reactorsthats including all the radioactivity created by nuclear weapons programs.
Second, high-level waste cannot be moved from fuel pools at nuclear reactors (kind of like large swimming pools, but dont put on your goggles and jump into these!) for at least five years: it is too hot, both radioactively and thermally (it might melt the transport casks). Thus, as long as nuclear reactors keep operating, every reactor will be a high-level nuclear waste dump. Its the physics, stupid, and there is nothing anyone can do to change that. So instead of one "consolidated" site, well just have one more storage siteand the added risk of waste transportation added to the mix.
Fact #3: The real reason the nuclear utilities want to move the waste has nothing to do with its safe storage; its because once the waste leaves their property, we taxpayers own the waste, and we are liable for any accidents.
Thats right, when the high-level waste moves off the utility property, under current law it becomes the taxpayers responsibility, not the utilities. So its no wonder they want to move itbut that doesnt mean its right.
Consider that the nuclear industry itself says that onsite storage of this waste is "safe." So does the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy. (Actually, it isnt safe, but its the best option we have now, see below).
Why should taxpayers have to foot the bill for any problems caused by this utility-generated waste? Especially when it neednt be moved now at all, and when the place it would be moved to: Yucca Mountain, Nevada is unsuitable for atomic waste storage?
Fact #4: Yucca Mountain is unsuitable for "temporary" or for permanent high-level waste storage.
In the early 1980s, many people, including some environmental groups, supported the idea of researching the Yucca Mountain, Nevada site as a possible place to put high-level atomic waste. The idea was that if a suitable place could be found, deep inside a mountain, then the waste could be put there for eternity, and it never would leak.
As it turns out though, the research is in and the response is unanimous: Yucca Mountain is not suitable as a radioactive waste dump. In November 1998, 219 environmental groups petitioned the Department of Energy to disqualify Yucca Mountain as either a permanent or "temporary" radioactive waste site.
Yucca Mountain is in a seismically-active zone: there have been some 600 earthquakes nearby over the past 20 years, some causing serious damage to Energy Department test facilities near the site. Groundwater passes through the region much more quickly than understood 20 years ago. Traces of radioactive elements from nuclear weapons testing have been found deep inside the mountain: it took less than 50 years for these to reach the mountains depths; the law says it must take 10,000 years. And what goes into the mountain can come back outespecially when combined with fast-moving groundwater.
To get around this and other problems, the Department of Energy is considering gutting its radiation protection standards, so that everyone outside Nevada would have one standard, but people who live in Nevada and nearby areas would have a different standardone that would cause far higher cancer rates. This is not only unfair, it is immoral and unethical.
Because Yucca Mountain is unsuitable as a permanent waste dump, it makes no sense whatsoever to make the site a "temporary" radioactive waste dump. The only reason the nuclear power industry wants to begin shipping waste there is to try to force the opening of Yucca Mountain, regardless of whether or not it is an appropriate site. Why? See question 3 above! The nuclear power utilities are the biggest NIMBYs (not in my backyard) of allbecause they know how dangerous this waste is.
Fact# 5 Onsite waste storage isnt safe either.
Onsite storage of high-level waste isnt an especially good idea either. When it comes from the reactor core, the waste must be placed in a pool of water, in order to cool down, and must stay there at least five years. But pools can leak; plus they need circulating water in order to keep the irradiated fuel rods cool, and if the reactor loses offsite electrical power, the pumps that provide this circulating water wont work. Even worse, unlike the reactors themselves, the pumps that provide circulation to the pools arent considered "safety-related" by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and thus dont have to have dedicated sources of power in the event normal electrical power fails.
The other major option for onsite waste storage is called "dry casks." In essence, this is the same technology that would be used for "temporary" storage at Yucca Mountainthus there is no technological safety advantage for moving the waste. But dry casks have their problems too. First, they cannot take the freshest, hottest waste, so the pools are still needed. Second, they have their own safety problems. For example, some casks have been found to be built in a defective fashion, with the walls much thinner than specifications. At the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, waste was already loaded into a cask when it was learned the cask did not meet specifications. More than a year later, technicians are still trying to figure out how to unload the cask without killing themselves. And at Point Beach, Wisconsin, an unexpected chemical reaction blew the door off one cask.
The bottom line is that there is no safe way to store high-level atomic waste. On-site storage, at least until the waste cools down, is the least bad of several bad options. The real solution is to stop making atomic waste. 40 years ago, when the commercial nuclear power program started in the U.S., nuclear scientists admitted they didnt know what to do with the waste, but said it wouldnt be a problem. They were wrong. Now, we dont even need atomic power. Energy efficiency, efficient natural gas turbines, and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power are the fastest growing energy sources in the U.S. In fact, there hasnt even been a successful new reactor order in the U.S. since 1973. Yet we could still solve more than half the nuclear waste problem just by closing reactors nowthats how much of this high-level waste we could avoid creating. The key to pollution control is pollution prevention. Thats why NIRS believes in the fastest-possible phase-out of nuclear power, and the speedy implementation of a sustainable energy future. We hope youll join us.
Michael Mariotte
May 12, 1999
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
6930 Carroll Avenue, #340
Takoma Park, MD 20912
301-270-6477; fax: 301-270-4291,
nirs@nirs.org,
www.nirsnet.org