Yucca Mtn. tour underscores Flag challenge

[seemslikeadream]

Larry Hendrics/Arizona Daily Sun The south entrance to Yucca Mountain, Nevada. which is the proposed site for storage of all high level nuclear waste in the U.S.

By LARRY HENDRICKS
Sun Staff Reporter
10/21/2004


YUCCA MOUNTAIN, Nev. -- At the top, cold wind cuts to the bone. Creosote bush grabs defiantly to parched soils of a dozen different shades of brown. Desolation abounds in spartan splendor.
The nearly three dozen visitors from Coconino County stare in one direction Tuesday morning at the Nevada Test Site, where hundreds of atomic bombs have been detonated over the years. In another direction, they see a mountain range that shrouds Groom Lake, also known as Area 51, in mystery. Death Valley is beyond another mountain range to the southwest.



Three Flagstaff elected officials are among the crowd atop Yucca Mountain. Based on what they've heard by staff under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy, they said the repository appears to be a done deal. What concerns them is not the safety of the repository itself, which has more than a decade of scientific study to its credit, but the fact that tons of the radioactive waste to be stored here -- tentatively scheduled to begin in 2010 -- will have to come through Coconino County and Flagstaff to get here.

...

According to information from DOE, nearly 50,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste sit in 131 locations in 39 states. All of that material is above ground and within 75 miles of more than 160 million citizens, posing vast environmental hazard and making the material potentially vulnerable to sabotage or theft. Yucca Mountain is an effort to put all of that radioactive waste in one spot, deep under ground.

...

The Flagstaff Fire Department has radiation response capability, Driscoll said. The county also has hazardous materials emergency response plans in place, to include radioactive waste. And radioactive waste of a much lower level than the waste proposed to be stored at Yucca Mountain already gets transported through the city on a regular basis to a low-level nuclear waste site near Carlsbad, N.M.

...

Transportation safety is what concerns Donaldson and city councilmembers Karen Cooper and Kara Kelty, who also took the trip to Yucca Mountain. During the trip, Donaldson began planning with Driscoll on setting up a demonstration in the near future for city residents to see how high-level radioactive waste will be transported through the city.
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http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=96487

[Supersedeas]

1. more incompetence on display -- campaign promises anyone?

[zzapatista]

2. If we dig a really deep hole and throw our nuclear waste down it...

it will just go away...in a billion years

[seemslikeadream]

3. Yucca Mtn. Workers Say DOE Knew About Dangers

March 15th, 2004

Dying to build a national nuclear repository. That's what workers at Yucca Mountain say the Department of Energy has forced them to do. A dust created while drilling tunnels into the mountain carried a cancer causing material, and they say the DOE knew about it. As News 3's Jeff Jaeger tells us, it took three years for the DOE to boost safety in the tunnels, but for some, three years was too late.

Tom Stoneburner: "Knowing that these employees were in danger and a failure to act on that knowledge, in my opinion, is a crime. Employees, activists and even members of congress feel it's a crime that the Department of Energy knew it was putting people in danger by exposing employees to silica dust." Crews broke through silica while digging the tunnels into Yucca. That dust can cause tuberculosis, and even cancer.

"This stuff stays in your lungs and just keeps working and scaring them up and eventually you suffocate to death." Gene Griego, a former employee at Yucca, was exposed and now has serious lung problems. He feels the DOE betrayed him. "They violated that trust by exposing us, deliberately exposing us to those carcinogenic substances without providing respiratory protection. Doctors tell me the effects of silica dust on the lungs is irreversible, and workers' rights groups say the DOE's lack of safety standards is a national tragedy."

"We have to be able to trust those agencies that are handling the deadliest materials known to man." Senator Reid says if the DOE can't keep its employees safe, what about nuclear waste traveling across the country? "If they have no regard for the people that work in that tunnel, what regard are they going to have for the millions of people who are going to be exposed to this product on the highways and railways of this country? None."

more
http://www.kvbc.com/Global/story.asp?S=1713049

[seemslikeadream]

4. The Route to Yucca Mountain

LAS VEGAS, February 18, 2002
Dana Wagner reporting

Opponents of transporting nuclear waste across our country have a new tool to convince others that it's a bad idea.

It's a giant map and it shows where the nuclear waste is being generated and how it will possibly get to Yucca Mountain.

Nevada Senator Harry Reid and others will use the map to graphically show people in other areas of the country, that nuclear waste will be transported right through their backyard.

"Transporting 70,000 tons of the most dangerous substance known to man is hard to do," says Senator Reid.

Reid and others want to show exactly where that waste will be transported, so they unveiled their new map on the steps of Capitol Hill last week. In Kentucky, for example, there are no nuclear power plants, yet nuclear waste will probably be transported right through the state.

more
http://www.kvbc.com/Global/story.asp?S=669575