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Saturday, June 15, 2002 |
Rhino here:
It doesn't seem that long ago that I was attending anti-nuke rallies and
going bookstore to bookstore convincing book buyers that they needed to have
an entire section devoted to educating people on the dangers of the nuclear
fuel cycle. Simultaniously, one of my heros, Dr. Helen Caldecott, was
traveling the world giving a medical doctor's perspective as summarized in
her classic book, "Nuclear Madness". We all kept saying, "What do they think
they're gonna do with the waste?". And the answer kept coming back, "We'll
figure out that technology when the time comes".
That was over 20 years ago, and here we are in the next millenium. There are
overflowing radioactive storage areas around every nuke plant and weapons
lab and they still haven't figured out anything definitive to do with it.
The best they can come up with is to put it on trucks and trains and take it
way out in the middle of nowhere (apologies to any Nevada folks) and bury it
as deep as possible. But wait! Whose gonna load those trucks & trains? And
how talented are they? And which highways and railroad lines will they be
cruising down? Is that near my house?
You can answer the last question, "Is that near my house?" now by visiting
the following web site and punching in your address:
http://www.mapscience.org
7:58:29 AM 
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Rhino again:
Here are excerpts from 2 recent related articles:
7:56:54 AM
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Chicago Tribune, June 11, 2002
by Jill Zuckman
WASHINGTON -- With the Senate poised to vote on whether to allow the
transcontinental shipping of nuclear waste for storage in Yucca Mountain, a
public interest research group has created a Web site that allows citizens
to find out how close their home, work or children's school is to the path
of that radioactive waste.
In Illinois, for example, 1,063 schools will be within 1 mile of rail, barge
and highway routes proposed by the Department of Energy. Chicago's Wrigley
Field is 5.7 miles from the nearest path. The White House is 1.1 miles from
Union Station, through which shipments are expected to pass on the journey
to Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Creators of the site (www.mapscience.org) say Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas
City, Mo., and Salt Lake City will become major hubs for containers carrying
waste from nuclear power plants that is 200 times more radioactive than the
atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II...
....Supporters of the Yucca Mountain project say putting nuclear waste in one
location is safer than keeping it at dozens of sites around the country.
"You can't leave nuclear waste in Illinois and 38 other states where it's
stored temporarily above ground next to schools, rivers, lakes and downtown
metropolitan areas," said Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Department of
Energy. "It's just not the smart thing to do in the interest of national
security and environmental protection." Davis called the Web site a "scare
tactic" that ignores a 30-year record of safely transporting spent fuel from
nuclear plants around the country...
....Congress voted in 1987 to have the Energy Department study Yucca Mountain
as a possible national repository for nuclear waste. If the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission grants a license, the site could open by 2010.
President Bush officially approved the site in February. Nevada Gov. Kenny
Guinn, authorized by a federal law to have a say on the siting of the
repository, vetoed Bush's decision. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee voted 13-10 last week to approve a resolution overturning Guinn's
veto. The House already has approved the resolution. The next stop is the
Senate floor, where opponents of the government proposal acknowledge they
are at least 10 votes short of the 51 necessary to block the project.
7:53:49 AM
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June 14, 2002 - Associated Press
by Ken Ritter
LAS VEGAS - A mild earthquake rumbled beneath the desert early Friday near
Yucca Mountain, the federal government's proposed site for a nuclear waste
repository. No damage or injuries were immediately reported. The quake had a
preliminary magnitude of 4.4 and hit about 5:40 a.m., 75 miles northwest of
Las Vegas and about 3 miles beneath the surface, said scientists at the U.S.
Geological Survey in Golden, Colo. Allen Benson, a federal Department of
Energy spokesman for the Yucca Mountain project in Las Vegas, told The
Associated Press that about 100 scientists and employees at the site on
Friday were not reporting any damage.
Yucca Mountain, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is the site that
President Bush picked in February to store the nation's spent commercial,
industrial and military nuclear waste beginning in 2010. Benson said that
while operations have been scaled back since February, employees and
scientists are continuing to monitor scientific studies and a five-mile
tunnel bored about 1,000 feet beneath the volcanic ridge...
....Opponents of the project have cited the possibility of earthquakes as one
reason to reject Yucca Mountain as the site. The waste, expected to remain
radioactive for more than 10,000 years, would be buried 1,000 feet below
ground. The Energy Department has said the earliest the Yucca facility could
open is 2010.
Reprinted under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright
law ( http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html ). All
copyrights belong to original publisher.
7:51:39 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Gary Rhine.
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