Anti-nuclear rally features mock caskRadioactive truckloads called unsafe
Critics say accidents likely as spent fuel from nuclear plants moves cross-country
By MATTHEW S. GALBRAITH
South Bend Tribune Staff Writer
July 7, 2000SOUTH BEND -- A semi-truck carrying a used nuclear fuel storage rack was struck not once, but twice, by vehicles on a recent trip from Illinois to Pennsylvania.
Neither accident resulted in a radiation release, but anti-nuclear activists who stopped in South Bend on Thursday warned that mishaps will be more frequent as nuclear waste shipments increase.
A serious accident, they say, would be disastrous for a community like South Bend in terms of the impact on public health, the environment and the economy.
"This is something that the Department of Energy said wouldn't happen, but it happened twice to the same cask," said Matt Lamb, a researcher with Radioactive Waste Management Associates, a New York consulting firm.
Lamb spoke at a brief press conference at Indiana University South Bend Thursday. The media gathering was organized by anti-nuclear groups to call attention to the dangers of transporting high-level radioactive waste across southwest Michigan and northern Indiana to a proposed federal repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The activists are hauling a mock nuclear waste transport cask cross-country as part of their Radioactive Roads and Rails national campaign. They plan to arrive at the Yucca Mountain site in early August.
Other groups represented were the Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana's South Bend office, the Washington-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service and Public Citizen, and the Nevada-based Nuclear Waste Task Force.
Yucca Mountain is the government's choice for permanent storage of spent fuel now kept at nuclear plants, including the Donald C. Cook and Palisades plants in southwestern Michigan.
In March, President Clinton vetoed legislation that would begin shipments in 2007. The Senate failed to override the veto.
The nuclear industry says a waste disposal site is needed because the plants are nearing their capacities for handling spent fuel.
That situation prompted American Electric Power and seven other utilities to propose a temporary site on an Indian reservation in Utah. AEP owns the recently restarted Cook plant near Bridgman.
"The battle is really heating up," said Kevin Kamps, nuclear waste specialist for NIRS.
At stake is the potential movement of 40,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste. That translates to some 21,000 truck and train shipments through northern Indiana in the next 25 years, opponents claim.
Shipping the waste instead of keeping it at monitored plant storage sites, they say, increases the likelihood of an accident.
That's what happened in May to the semi-truck carrying the used fuel storage rack from the Byron (Ill.) Nuclear Plant to Alaron Co. in Beaver County, Pa.
According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the first collision occurred May 11 at a truck stop just 15 miles from the nuclear plant. The truck driver had stopped there for the night. The oversize metal container holding the storage rack was dented, but was intact.
The truck returned to Byron the next day so that plant workers could re-center the container, which had shifted slightly. Workers also performed additional inspections on the truck, the NRC said, before it departed for Alaron.
On May 15, the truck was struck on a Pennsylvania highway about 10 miles from Alaron.
According to the NRC, a safety officer from Alaron responded to the scene. The officer determined the container was not damaged and that no radioactive contamination had been released from it.
In both accidents, state and local emergency personnel were contacted. After the second accident, a portion of a state highway was closed for about three hours and children from a nearby preschool were bused to a local high school.
Also, the two occupants of the car that struck the semi-truck were taken to a local hospital for observation.
Staff writer Matthew S. Galbraith: mgalbraith@sbtinfo.com (219) 235-6359
