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Fall 1997 NEBRASKA ENERGY QUARTERLY NUCLEAR WASTE ON THE MOVE
(Excerpts)Once Congress decides where highly radioactive nuclear waste - mostly spent fuel rods from more than 100 reactors - will be stored for ten thousand years, the debate will focus on the movement of the radioactive materials to one or more zstorage sites.
For Nebraska, nuclear waste shipments will occur every day for decades. Many questions surrounding spent nuclear fuel remain unanswered. Will Yucca Mountain Nevada be the permanant site? Will an interim site be opened to accept waste before the year 2010? Will trucks or trains be the primary method of transportation? Even though these questions remain unanswered, two reports predict that Nebraska will become one of the top Midwestern states through which the radioactive waste will travel.
Nationally, an estimated 92,000 shipments of spent nuclear fuel and high level radioactive waste currently stored at sites across the nation will be shipped over a period of thirty years. The radioactive waste is currently stored at civilian nuclear power plants and federal energy facilities most of which are in the eastern United States.
The only one being studied for permanant waste disposal is a mountain in Nevada desert. Nearly $2 billion has been spent analyzing the mountain's suitability. the Federal government has predicted, if Yucca Mountain is suitable for storage, a site will not be ready until 2010 or later.(note 1).Congress may try to open the nation's interim nuclear waste storage site as early as 1999. In April, the Senate passed legislation proposing to do exactly that. If and when the site opens, in Nevada, Nebraska will see a 125 fold to 250-fold increase over current levels of nuclear waste shipments..
Nebraska will be spared an additional 38,000 waste shipments from eight nuclear weapons production and storage centers headed for permanant storage at the Waste Isolation Plant - underground salt caverns near Carlsbad, New Mexico. These shipments are also expected to begin next Spring. The nearest weapons production centers are in Ohio and Colorado and the waste shipments will travel directly south to the New Mexico storage area. (note 2)(NOTE:1. Summer of 1996 the website for the state of Nevada highlighted the proposed Yucca Mountain storage facility in protest of federal action without state's approval. This site has since been removed. The proposed plans for the storage facility grant a certain number of years for shipments, a certain number of years for monitoring after the site is filled and sealed... and then FORBIDS further monitoring of this site...if I am recalling correctly the actual figures..it was 30 years for shipments, 50 for monitoring...Ish)
(NOTE:2. have been informed these shipments also include nuclear missiles and stockpiles purchased from the former Soviet Union...Ish)
MAP OF PROPOSED ROUTES