Yucca Mountain News Clips
Thursday, October 9, 2003
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Las Vegas SUN
October 09, 2003
Yucca critics cite foul-up with reactor shipment
By Suzanne Struglinski
<suzanne@lasvegassun.com>
Las Vegas SUN
WASHINGTON -- The lack of communication involved in a radioactive waste shipment this week illustrates safety concerns for the proposed Yucca Mountain federal nuclear waste storage site, project critics said Wednesday.
Consumers Energy started shipping a 565,000-pound package filled with concrete and a nuclear reactor vessel on Tuesday from the closed Big Rock Point nuclear power plant in Charlevoix, Mich., to a low-level radioactive waste storage facility in Barnhill, S.C., company spokesman Tim Petrosky said.
The nuclear reaction that boils water to generate steam for electricity took place in the vessel before the plant closed in 1997. Although still hazardous, it is not as radioactive as the spent fuel rods set to go to the Yucca site, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The truck carrying the vessel broke an axle en route between Charlevoix and Gaylord, Mich., and it pulled over to the side of a road, where it was fixed.
The company then parked the truck Tuesday night near a gas station -- that also serves as a bus stop for 13 elementary and high school students -- until the waste can be transferred to a train that stops in Gaylord. The truck was still there this morning. Company officials expected the transfer to take two to four days.
Yucca critics say the lack of communication surrounding the incident does not speak well for the future when thousands of shipment of even more dangerous material could move to Nevada. Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste specialist for the Nuclear Information Resource Service in Washington, said many local officials were left out of the notification process, especially on the exact nature of the shipment and its whereabouts.
Doug Francis, associate transportation supervisor for the school bus system, knew from watching the local news that the shipment was coming through but did not know it would be located at the bus stop until the local newspaper called him.
He called the state police, who also knew of the shipment but could not give any information out and referred him to the company. It was too late on Tuesday to change the bus route, but Wednesday's route moved to another location "to ease public concern," he said.
Jon Deming, Otsego County chief of Emergency Services and Rescue, said he was not officially notified by the company but learned of the shipment through Otsego County Sheriff James McBride at a Local Emergency Planning Committee meeting last month.
Deming said he recognized the need to keep the shipment information secure, but he is also in charge of 25 full-time trained first responders who would not have known what was in the container if anything had happened.
Kamps said low-level waste is still radioactive and that the general public should have been notified that this was moving through their town.
"How much sense does it make in a post (Sept. 11, 2001) world to park this thing near a gas station?" Kamps said, saying a flame or spark could have started a fire that would have led to bigger problems.
"It's much less radioactive (than waste set for Yucca) but it does beg the questions and make you wonder what's ahead."
Petrosky said the shipment meets all of the appropriate standards and all of the necessary permits had been obtained before the shipment started. He said an emergency plan was in place and people had been notified.
"Mr. Kamps found a couple of people who didn't get a phone call and got upset," Petrosky said. "He's just trying to make things sound bad."
Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokeswoman Sue Gagner said the shipping container was approved and a commission inspector has monitored the movement.
During the early leg of the shipment on Tuesday, the one of the heavy hauler's eight axles broke, leaving four wheels useless. Petrosky said the problem was fixed and the shipment continued with 140 as opposed to 144 tires. Ganger said an NRC inspector also checked to make sure it could move forward.
"I say with confidence that no member of the public will pick up any dose with this," Petrosky said.
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Public Citizen
Oct. 8, 2003
Highly Radioactive Nuclear Reactor Shipment Heading From Michigan to South Carolina
WASHINGTON, D.C. – With little public notice and short notification to emergency responders, nuclear energy officials early Tuesday began moving a highly radioactive reactor vessel from northern Michigan to South Carolina. The shipment has already run into trouble, indicating the folly of the government´s plan to ship thousands of containers of nuclear waste throughout the country to a storage facility in Nevada.
The vessel is being moved from the Big Rock Point nuclear power plant near Charlevoix in northern Michigan. It will likely be shipped via rail through parts of western Ohio, central and eastern Kentucky, western West Virginia, eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina and western South Carolina to a radioactive waste dump in Barnwell, S.C. It began its journey at 3 a.m. Tuesday.
Although it has been dismantled, the vessel is highly radioactive due to 35 years of nuclear chain reactions (which made the metal of the reactor vessel itself radioactive) and radioactive contamination from experimental plutonium fuel rods that ruptured within it. Now, it is emitting 10 millirems per hour of radiation (equivalent to one chest X-ray), according to a spokesman for Consumer´s Energy, the reactor´s owner. U.S. Department of Transportation regulations allow radiation to be released at a rate of up to 5 rems in 30 minutes in accident conditions; that is equivalent to 500 chest X-rays. The 282-ton reactor vessel will travel by truck and train before reaching its burial site.
The reactor is on a heavy haul truck, which has 18 axles and will travel a maximum of 5 miles per hour. It went from Charlevoix through Petoskey on US 31, then south down the 131 Expressway to State Route 32, and will go east to Gaylord. Already, half an axle broke and four tires have been removed, according to the Consumer´s Energy spokesman.
"Officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation´s hazardous materials office had not even heard about the shipment as recently as yesterday. The public and emergency responders deserve to know about radioactive waste shipments for their own safety," said Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste specialist with Nuclear Information Resource Service (NIRS).
The reactor will be parked overnight tonight at a truck stop 75-100 yards from a gas station that also serves as a children´s school bus stop, according to Consumer´s Energy.
"If customers or those children get close enough to the shipping container, they would receive a greater than zero dose of radiation," Kamps said. "This shipment is like a mobile X-ray machine that cannot be turned off rolling down the road. Parking this radioactive cargo near flammable and explosive gasoline, as well as near a children´s bus stop, is a remarkable oversight."
The shipment highlights the dangers of the government´s plan to move nuclear waste from sites throughout the country to a proposed storage dump in Nevada at Yucca Mountain, said Brendan Hoffman, an organizer with Public Citizen.
"For the sake of the public and police and firefighters everywhere, the government should abandon its plans to make thousands of shipments of nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain," Hoffman said.
"The big question is, have local emergency responders along all the routes been notified of this shipment, and are they trained and equipped to deal with an accidental radiation release?" said Terry Lodge, a longtime Toledo activist against nuclear power.
Before today, only three irradiated commercial nuclear power reactor pressure vessels have been shipped for burial in the United States. A fourth, long-delayed California reactor vessel shipment shows how irradiated reactor vessels are political hot potatoes; due to local resistance and deteriorated railroad tracks near the San Onofre nuclear power plant in southern California, the nuclear utility decided to ship the reactor vessel by boat through the Panama Canal to get it to the Barnwell, South Carolina dump.
But Panama rejected the proposal. The current proposal is to ship the vessel around the world, across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, to the Port of Charleston, South Carolina. But resistance to the shipment is brewing there as well.
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Toledo Blade
October 09, 2003
Officials zip lips if nuclear reactor will pass this way
A whopper of a radioactive steel can - an old nuclear reactor that´s 25 feet long and weighs 580,000 pounds - could be passing through the region via rail in the coming days.
At the moment, mum´s the word on when - and even if - it´ll be coming through the Toledo area.
That´s because Consumers Energy, the Michigan utility that owns the decommissioned Big Rock Point nuclear plant that had the reactor for 35 years, claims that it´s leery about divulging too much in advance.
Tim Petrosky, utility spokesman, said the company is afraid that anti-nuclear activists could make it even more cumbersome for Consumers to get the big piece to Barnwell, S.C., for disposal in one of the nation´s only dumps licensed to take low-level radioactive waste. The shipment is so big it´ll top out at a speed of only 25 mph, he said.
Although the canister held highly radioactive nuclear fuel for 35 years, it is being sent to Barnwell because it is considered low-level radioactive waste. Spent fuel that was in it is the only type of nonmilitary material that has been classified by the government as high-level radioactive waste.
President Bush last year signed a bill that opens the way for Nevada´s Yucca Mountain to become eventually the dump site for old fuel from reactors across the country.
But reactors and other components of a nuclear plant should not be confused with the fuel, because they are considered low-level radioactive waste, Mr. Petrosky said.
Big Rock Point is four miles northwest of Charlevoix, Mich. It was shut down in 1997. Consumers is in the process of dismantling the plant and restoring the site, an effort which it hopes to complete in 2006, Mr. Petrosky said.
The hunk of steel, painted white, began its trek on Tuesday. Last night, it was expected to arrive in Gaylord, Mich., where it was to be transferred from truck to rail, he said.
Several anti-nuclear activists have issued a joint statement, saying they believe the public, including emergency responders and highway officials, deserved more advance notice.
They said they believe the radiation risk has been downplayed, and that they expect utilities to be more forthcoming when spent fuel is eventually transported.
Yucca Mountain is not expected to begin accepting waste before 2010, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates.
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Las Vegas SUN
October 08, 2003
DOE, Congress still locked in fight on naming nuke waste
Suzanne Struglinski
Las Vegas SUN
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department will continue to push Congress for authority to reclassify radioactive waste despite a move made by lawmakers last week to prevent that.
Department spokesman Joe Davis said the agency is still speaking to members of Congress about the issue but could offer no details on which member might take up the cause or to which bill the proposal could be attached.
DOE wants the authority to determine if high-level nuclear waste in storage tanks at three former nuclear weapons sites is really low-level waste. If so, the plan would be to leave it on site instead of moving it to Yucca Mountain, the potential federal nuclear waste storage site about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Davis said the department had this authority for years as it worked with the state to negotiate clean-up plans, but a July court ruling that said it did not have such power under federal nuclear waste law has put a "massive roadblock" in the clean up plans. Last week a motion was made to prevent the proposal from being added to the pending energy bill. The bill is in a conference committee, which will determine the final version.
Nevadans object to the proposal, saying DOE should not be allowed to change its rules again, and state officials are fearful of the precedent the law could set for future nuclear waste issues.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev, said on the House floor last week that should DOE's proposal go through it would not stop more waste from coming to Yucca Mountain since enough waste will exist to fill the mountain if it opens.
But Davis disagrees, saying it most definitely is "a more or less argument" on waste going to Yucca Mountain. If the court ruling stands, more waste would need to come out of the tanks than DOE originally intended to be sent to the storage facility.
He acknowledged the 77,000 ton legal limit for the site, but said Congress also has to decided to build another facility or expand that limit if needed.
Berkley spokesman David Cherry said the department is "splitting hairs" and that DOE is trying to use the Yucca argument as a scare tactic. He said Nevada objects to any waste coming to the site and talking about limiting additional waste would mean the battle has already been lost.
"There is already the threat of Yucca Mountain, you can't really make it any worse." Cherry said.
Even Gov. Kenny Guinn said in a letter sent to Berkley last week that the change would not affect Yucca.
Last week the House accepted a motion instructing energy bill negotiators to not accept the department's request for the authority, based on the impact it could have on Idaho, Washington and South Carolina, where those plants are located, and possibly other states. However, the motion is not binding, so DOE can still push for the change.
Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, an energy bill conferee, said he "had no intention" of putting the department's language into the final bill and it was "unlikely" to be included, unless there was discussion with the affected states
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State of Nevada
Agency for Nuclear Projects
www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/
nwpo@nuc.state.nv.us
775-687-3744
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