[1704] in peace2
Yucca Mountain Hack
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brice C Smith)
Fri Apr 26 15:28:58 2002
Message-Id: <200204261928.PAA22290@department-of-alchemy.mit.edu>
To: peace-announce@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 15:28:48 -0400
From: Brice C Smith <elrond@MIT.EDU>
There is a banner haning from the ledge under the great dome calling for a
stop to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depoistory. For those of you who
may not know, Yucca Mountain in Nevada was singled out by federal law in 82
to be the only site considered as a semi-permanent storage facility for the
high-level nulcear waste from the 125 or so nuclear power stations in this
country. If it goes through it will store 77,000 metric tons of spent fuel
(of which a milligram is potentially fatal).
Now, clearly the current storage scheme (ie. just dumping it in the cooling
pools spread out over 34 states which leaves it vulnerable to major fires) is
clearly a major and unconsionable risk to humanity, but transporting that waste
in upto 100,000 shipments through 43 states along roads and rail lines posses
to many problems to even begin to address reasonably. In just the little
transportation done in the past there have been 4 spills requireing clean-up.
In addition, any depository like this will inevitably lead to a new golden
age for nuclear power (see Bush's energy policy) and we would thus loose any
chance we may have of turning the tide on this issue. If a new generation
of reactors is built, we will magnify the waste many times over and in 50
years be right back where we started (Yucca full and waste spread all over the
country). That is, of course, assuming that in all that time there is not a
major disaster which seems very unlikely (see the accidents at Indian Point 2
in 2000 and the corrosion problem at Davis-Besse 2002). In additon, from a
purly scientific standpoint, the GAO's own report details 300 outstanding
questions on the suitability of the site that it feels must be resolved before
going ahead. But just 2 days ago the House Energy committee voted 25-2 to go
ahead with the site and the bill now moves on to the full congress which is
expected to approve it quickly. And remember, this is supposed to be a
democracy. How can we call it that when there is so little public debate on
an issue that litteraly effects every single person in the continential United
States.
On this, the 16th aniversary of the Chernobly nuclear disaster that claimed
upto 30,000 lives from cancer and contaminated 207,000 sq miles of earth, i
think that it is vitally important for us at this bastion of modern technology
to seriously begin looking at the choices being made behind closed doors about
the technology we develop and what the potential human consequences of those
choices may be. And, oh yeah, just in case you think this doesn't effect you
since this isn't Nevada, did i mention that MIT has a nuclear reactor just
across the streat and that there is a large nuclear power station just south
of us in Plymouth? A good place to start looking for detailed infomation on
Yucca Mountatin and it's consequences is the Nevada state site
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/index.htm
If anyone has any questions, please let me know. And I incourage everyone to
check out the banner before it is mysteriously hauled up again. TTFN...
----
Generally speaking things have gone about as far as they can possibly go when
things have got about as bad as they can reasonably get
- Tom Stoppard
