Plans to truck nuclear waste on the interstate sounding alarms, Tribune Democrat, By John Finnerty, jfinnerty@cnhi.com 19 Sep 16 HARRISBURG – Government plans to truck nuclear waste along the interstate in western Pennsylvania and five other states is akin to allowing a series of potential “mobile Chernobyls on steroids,” said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste watchdog for the group Beyond Nuclear.
Environmentalists are sounding alarms about the possible consequences, especially if a truck crashes, catches fire and causes the waste to escape its container.
Kamps likened the possibility to the 1986 disaster in the Ukraine that killed 30 people, injured hundreds more and contaminated huge swaths of land.
In 2013, the department said a study isn’t needed because earlier reports have already been done. But those studies focused on solid waste – not liquid – and environmentalists say this would be the first time liquid nuclear waste has been moved in North America.
“Transporting even solid, high-level radioactive waste – such as irradiated nuclear fuel from commercial atomic reactors – is already, itself, very high risk,” Kamps said………
environmental groups say the Energy Department doesn’t need to move the waste in the first place.
In at least one similar situation, nuclear waste in Indonesia was diluted so that it no longer contained weapons-grade uranium, said Mary Olson, director of the southeast office of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, another group involved in the lawsuit.
That waste was solidified and placed in storage, rather than moved back to the United States, she said.“The same plan could be applied to the Chalk River waste,” she said.
An Energy Department public affairs office didn’t respond to a request for comment……
The Nuclear Energy Institute estimates that Pennsylvania’s nuclear power plants have 7,100 metric tons of used fuel in storage. Only Illinois has more used nuclear waste warehoused at its power plants.
“The barriers to moving waste from U.S. reactor sites are many, but when that waste moves, it will take tens of thousands of containers on trucks and rail cars to do it,” Olson said.
Some estimates suggest 50,000 truckloads will be needed to haul all of the waste now stored at power plants. “So, the 150 trucks from Canada are significant. Any time this material is moved, it is significant,” Olson said. “But the Chalk River shipments are still like Little League compared to moving the 40 years of waste accumulated at reactor sites.
“When those gates open,” she said, “it will be a flood.”
