El transporte del combustible irradiado a Yucca Mountain incluiría envíos en camión y tren a lo largo de 43 estados, a menos de una milla de los hogares de decenas de millones de personas y a lo largo de 100 de las mayores ciudades del país. Los envíos en barcazas se desplazarían a lo largo de 17 ciudades portuarias en la costa atlántica y sobre el agua potable de los Grandes Lagos vía el Lago Michigan.

¡El Lugar de Almacenamiento de Yucca Mountain No Es Seguro!

Llevar los desechos allá es la parte más peligrosa.

Este plan incluye la descarga en Nevada de más de 100,000 envíos de desechos radioactivos procedentes de todo el país. Sólo un descarrilamiento accidental o debido al sabotaje, o a un ataque terrorista contra uno de esos trenes, podría dejar una gran ciudad inhabitable. Todos estos desechos vendrían a Nevada, y algunos incluso pasarían por Las Vegas, a lo largo del “Strip”. Este es un riesgo que los nevadenses no pueden permitirse.

Una Vez Que los Desechos Lleguen a Yucca, Hay Numerosos Peligros.

Por ejemplo, hay riesgo de filtraciones nucleares en el agua subterránea, o que un terremoto destruya la instalación de almacenaje y cause el escape de material radioactivo. Los desechos en Yucca seguirán siendo peligrosos durante más años que la historia escrita de la humanidad - mucho más tiempo del que podemos controlar para que el lugar sea seguro.

Contacte a la Junta Federal de Transporte de Superficie.

Es la agencia responsable de aprobar la construcción de las rutas de ferrocarril y ahora se encuentra considerando una nueva ruta que se usaría para transportar desechos nucleares a Yucca. Tenemos que asegurarnos que sepan que este plan no es seguro ni para los nevadenses ni para el resto del país y que no aprueben esta nueva ruta, la llamada “Caliente Line”.

By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON — Federal lawmakers are calling for public hearings and a broader review of the government application to build a rail line across rural Nevada for nuclear waste shipments to Yucca Mountain.

DOE plans for the 330-mile route “will have impacts far beyond Nevada’s borders,” the state’s five members of Congress said in a letter to the chairman of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, which is weighing the application.

The board “has both a statutory and moral duty to comprehensively examine the full effects of the proposed nuclear waste line on the entire national rail transportation system before making any decision,” they said.

The Department of Energy has proposed to build track running west from Caliente and then around the Nevada Test Site south to Yucca Mountain. There, plans call for a nuclear waste handling complex and an underground repository.

DOE has estimated a shipping campaign could take place over a period of 46 years, with an average of 17 trains a week chugging across the state.

Completion of the Nevada segment would give the green light to commence shipments of radioactive material from operating reactors and decommissioned reactor sites in 39 states, the lawmakers said.

The letter was sent to Charles Nottingham, chairman of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board. It was sent on Sept. 29 but made public on Tuesday.

It was signed by Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign, and Reps. Jon Porter, Shelley Berkley and Dean Heller.

An agency spokesman on Tuesday evening had not seen the letter and could not immediately arrange for comment.

“The impacts of the proposed rail line will affect about 25,000 miles of rail lines in 44 states” through which nuclear waste would travel, the lawmakers told Nottingham.

“It would be prudent for the STB to provide Nevadans and the American public ample opportunity to comment, including by scheduling a public hearing,” the members of Congress urged.

WASHINGTON (AP) — No one knows what the earth will be like in a million years. But a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada must be designed to ensure that people living near it a million years from now are exposed to no more than 100 millirems of radiation annually.

And over the next 10,000 years, radiation exposure to the waste dump’s neighbors may be no more than 15 millirems a year, or about what people get from an X-ray. People receive about 350 millirems a year of radiation on average from all background sources.

After three years of deliberations, the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday announced its radiation health standard for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, a proposed system of underground caverns 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas where the government hopes to keep highly radioactive commercial and military nuclear waste.

It is scheduled to open in 2020 if a license application is approved by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The EPA has struggled to comply with a 2004 court directive that said it must establish a radiation health standard for a million years into the future because some of the isotopes in the buried waste will remain extremely dangerous for that long. An earlier standard of only 10,000 years was ruled inadequate by the court.

The agency said Tuesday it believes its latest standard is ”consistent” with the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences and is expected to satisfy the court decision.

The Energy Department last June submitted its license request for the Yucca Mountain dump to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has three years to consider the request. Despite strong opposition from Nevada officials, the Bush administration hopes the site can be opened by 2020.

It is designed to hold 77,700 tons of used reactor fuel from commercial nuclear power plants in 31 states. The Energy Department recently estimated a cost of $96.2 billion of building and operating it for 150 years, until it is closed in 2113.

The EPA said that in submitting its design for a license, the Energy Department must consider the effects of climate change, earthquakes and volcanic activities as well as the corrosion of the waste packages to assure it can meet the radiation exposure requirements over a million years.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman has said he is confident that the license application submitted to the NRC will ‘’stand up to any challenges anywhere” including questions about whether the design will be adequate to meet the EPA’s radiation exposure standard to nearby residents.

The NRC’s primary job will be to determine whether the proposed design will protect public health and meet the EPA radiation standard. The NRC has proposed a less stringent radiation standard. And the EPA itself had a maximum exposure of 350 millirems per year for the 10,000-to-1-million-year time frame, more than three times the exposure level it announced Tuesday.

By Dave Maxwell, Staff Writer

Dr. Mike Baughman, of Intertech Services in Carson City, reported at the July meeting of the Joint City/County Impact Alleviation Committee in Pioche. He stated that the Surface Transportation Board is “probably the most likely entity to get some of the mitigation measures parties may be concerned about imposed as conditions to granting the certificate,” issued to the Department of Energy (DOE) to build a railroad to the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

On June 3, 2008, the DOE filed an 8,647 page license application with the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) to build the disposal site.

On July 11, both the DOE final Environmental Impact Statements for the Yucca Mountain site and the preferred Rail Corridor and Alignment will be entered into the Federal Registry detailing the plans. This starts a 30-day public comment period required by the National Environmental Policy Act before the DOE can issue a Record of Decision, which they expect to do as early as August 12, 2008. That decision will state exactly where the DOE wants to build the railroad through the state of Nevada, which includes the Caliente Corridor. DOE then hopes to start the licensing process in September 2008.

The DOE must also apply for a right-of-way permit for the rail alignment with the Bureau of Land Management as well as file for a Certificate of Public Conveyance and Necessity from the Surface Transportation Board (STB), to build its proposed 336-mile railroad across Lincoln County. The certificate from the STB would also allow the railroad to be a shared-use line involving commercial traffic.

It is through the Surface Transportation Board that Dr. Baughman feels is the best way for Lincoln County and the other interested parties to have many issues of concern addressed up front.

He said in May 2008, 25-30 parties, including Lincoln County, the N4 Grazing Board, City of Caliente, a number of environmental groups, the state of California, and several private ranchers filed notice with the STB to participate in the process. Parties have until July 15 to submit comments on the DOE’s application for Certificate of Public Conveyance and Necessity. Lincoln County Commissioners made their comments in a letter approved at their regular July 7 meeting and submitted it to STB Secretary Ann Quinlan in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Baughman said the letter basically identifies eight or nine topical land areas and explains how this project might impact land use and offers a number of prospected mitigation measures as conditions to granting the certificate. Some 30 allotments in Lincoln County and 12 in Nye and Esmeralda Counties stand to be impacted by the DOE railroad to Yucca Mountain. Dr. Baughman noted the STB historically has been very good about imposing conditions as a stipulation for granting the certificate.

He said the letter “draws heavily on comments made to the draft EIS and also draws on, and references the variety of impact studies the County has done over the past number years. But it is focused almost entirely on mitigation measures.” Baughman said the letter was written in such a way that the STB could lift out the recommended mitigation measures “almost verbatim and put as a condition to granting the Certificate of Public Conveyance to the DOE.”

Baughman said the STB also has the authority to require the DOE to negotiate agreements with affected parties on mitigation measures and review them for approval.