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Re: Yucca Mtn transport issues



In response to my email,

--- "Frohne, Vickie" <VFrohne@BEN.EDU> wrote:
Seems to me that the nuclear waste is far more
accessible for terrorists
where it's sitting now. (snip)

Agreed, the present situation is NG. But that doesn't
necessarily mean we should truck spent fuel all over
the country.

Note that
the waste in the casks will probably be processed
on-site before shipment
into a "glassified" form, not a liquid or a powder
that is spread
easily.. (snip)

PROBABLY?? Not very reassuring.


you'd have an extremely localized contaminated area
and an event with a lot
more propaganda value than actual
physical/environmental damage. (snip)

Do not underestimate the damage that "propaganda"
value/psychological impact would inflict.

As for
the 1000th shipment being protected, as has been
pointed out, reactor fuel
is already being transported routinely, without
incident. (snip)

But reactor fuel is benign compared to spent fuel
rods.

If we
leave the stuff in the on-site storage where it is,
the government will have
to fund the (considerable) storage maintainence &
security eventually.
Companies & power plants don't live forever.(snip)

It's definitely true that in the present system,
consumers/taxpayers will foot the bill.



The
whole point of Yucca
Mountain is to phase Congress out of the equation
(snip)

This will NOT get Congress out of the situation b/c
they will have to fund the facility on an ongoing
basis. The only way to get Congress out of the picture
is to require consumers of nuclear-derived electricity
to pay the true cost which includes future storage and
equipment cleanup costs as plants are retired. Of
course, were this to happen, nuclear energy would be
highly uncompetitive. But if it were to happen, then
the system would be similar to Social Security in that
"taxes" on current waste producers & consumers would,
on a continuing basis, pay for the care of
previously-generated wastes. (No, I'm NOT calling SS
recipients "wastes".)


by
putting the stuff in a
place that has a chance of being maintainence-free
for thousands of years. (snip)

Maintenance-free? I know of NO real system that is
maintenance-free.


For example, it is well
known by epidemiologists that normally operating
coal-fired power plants
cause lots of illness, deaths, and even
radiation-induced cancers. (Coal
contains naturally occurring radioactive elements,
which are released to the
air upon burning the coal.) Furthermore, there's a
considerable amount of
disease/death/environmental damage associated with
mining the coal.
However, when it comes to liability/insurance &
etc., there may be a whole
boatload of "grandfather" clauses protecting the
coal industry. (snip)

All true, but you're comparing indirect,
hard-to-quantify costs (which are nonetheless all too
real) with the DIRECT costs of spent fuel storage.
Very different kettles of fish I think.

The fact is
that for the past thirty years, nuclear plants in
North America have had
excellent safety records. Even the Three Mile
Island incident wasn't bad,
compared to other industrial incidents (think
Bhopal, for example). (snip)

It's interesting to view the similarities between TMI
and Bhopal. Both situations got out of control when
operators either didn't believe or didn't understand
the significance of instrument readings. People
problems. In addition, the Bhopal plant had become an
economic albatross due to collapse of the local
pesticide market. To save money, plant maintenance was
reduced, safety systems disabled, etc. This
"inattention" risk will exist wherever the spent fuel
is stored. Maybe one local repository is better in
that regard. But maybe having government-run storage
at each and every generating plant is better.
Obviously "store it where it's made" removes transport
hazards from the equation. It might also provide
better overall management (people issues!) as
different groups learn from each other since the
problems of spent fuel storage will be both managerial
and technical.


"Market
judgement" is a poor argument for/against actual
safety, as opposed to
public perception of safety, especially when most of
the people running the
market (snip)

I disagree. It is the BUSINESS of insurance companies
to assess risk and write policies with appropriate
premiums. These companies have concluded that the
risks of nuclear power are incalculable and therefore
they don't want to play in that sandbox. As Hugh H.
has pointed out, government needs to be the
insurer-of-last-resort. In fact, it already is since
remediation of any major accident would be a Federal
effort and therefore paid for by you and me, just like
we're still paying for the S&L "accident".

It would be nice if all generating methods were
compared on a "true cost/total cost" basis, but I
don't think you'll EVER get agreement on the indirect
health and environmental costs of coal and oil plants.
In fact, IMO just getting the Bushies to admit that
there really ARE such costs would be a feat in itself.
John Barrere



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