By Roger Voelker SPECIAL TO THE ARIZONA DAILY STAR - 7/9/02
The nuclear power lobby has spent millions of dollars attempting to persuade
the American public to support the proposed high-level radioactive waste
repository at Yucca Mountain. The nuclear industry has asserted that, for
both security and environmental reasons, the waste would be better sent to
one centralized location rather than left at atomic reactor sites
nationwide, including here in Arizona.
Implicit in that argument is the notion that once Yucca Mountain in Nevada
has reached its legal capacity, the nuclear waste from the 103 operating
reactors in the United States will have been moved to that location. But
that is far from the case. The reality illustrates just how far the nuclear
industry is willing to go to mislead the public and our elected officials.
Palo Verde, located 36 miles west of Phoenix, now stores a little more than
1,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste in its spent-fuel pool. If
Yucca Mountain is approved by the Senate, over the next 24 years, thousands
of shipments, each containing 40 to 240 times the long-lived radioactivity
released at Hiroshima, would pass through Arizona (including through
Tucson). Yet when Yucca Mountain closes, around 2030, Palo Verde would
still have 1,899 metric tons of waste stored on site - an increase of more
than 80 percent!
These figures, based on the Department of Energy's Environmental Impact
Statement, can be found at www.mapscience.org ,
along with customized maps people can use to see how close any address -
home, school, hospital, etc. - is to likely radioactive waste shipment
routes.
A new federal program announced June 25 by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham
makes clear the speciousness of the nuclear industry's argument that Yucca
Mountain would significantly alleviate the nuclear waste problem. Abraham
revealed that the Department of Energy will give $17 million in taxpayer
funds to three nuclear utilities to begin the licensing process to construct
new nuclear reactors.
Among the beneficiaries of the department's largess: the Exelon Corp., the
world's largest nuclear power utility, Dominion Resources and the Entergy
Corp. The department is hoping that by encouraging these companies to build
new atomic reactors, more utilities will follow suit, increasing the
radioactive waste burden on all of us.
The nuclear industry's real goals are two-fold: first, to shift the cost of
radioactive waste storage from the utilities to ratepayers and taxpayers.
The utilities have to pay the cost of storing radioactive waste on-site
themselves or pass on the cost in the form of higher electricity rates.
Yucca Mountain, on the other hand, is supposed to be paid for by the Nuclear
Waste Fund, a federal tax collected by nuclear utilities.
But that fund (which so far has collected some $17 billion and is projected
to take in about twice that over its life) will be woefully insufficient for
the Yucca Mountain boondoggle, now projected to cost $58 billion. The
remainder would have to be paid by taxpayers. Not a penny would be paid for
by the nuclear utilities that created the waste in the first place.
The nuclear industry's second goal, shared by the Energy Department, is the
expansion of nuclear power and the construction of new reactors. But the
industry doesn't believe it can build new commercial reactors unless there
is the semblance of progress on radioactive waste. This is what lies behind
its push for the Yucca Mountain site, which can't even handle the waste for
existing reactors, much less new ones.
If addressing the radioactive waste problem were their real priority, the
nuclear industry and the feds would begin phasing out nuclear reactors to
lessen the waste burden. Instead, by promoting the construction of new
reactors, they are effectively admitting that ridding the states of nuclear
waste is not their priority.
The U.S. Senate is expected to vote this week on whether to approve the
Yucca Mountain site as a permanent nuclear waste repository. The Senate
should vote no on this technically flawed site, which is virtually
guaranteed to leak - a catastrophe that would expose millions of people to
additional risk while providing little more than windowdressing for the
nation's nuclear waste dilemma.
* Roger Voelker is a retired educator and community organizer.
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.
Rhino's Weblog is the responsibility of The Rhino.
Gary Rhine
rhino@kifaru.com
http://www.kifaru.com
http://www.dreamcatchers.org
http://radio.weblogs.com/0103207/
9:31:30 AM 
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