Is this the right one?

Ah, I’m pleased to be here today among this august body—this august body of speakers and august audience. Ah, since this colloquium or conference has honored Carl Morgan and Alice Stewart, I thought I’d star with ah, my own story about them. Ah, it’ll be quick, though.

Ah, I’ve worked with many—many of you, but the first time I met and worked with Alice Stewart and Carl Morgan was in [Gorlaben?], Germany in 1979. They wanted to put a high level waste storage facility, ah, and disposal facility in [Gorlaben?]. Ah, and I was the coach of the team ah, that was going to talk about health effects, and of course there was the opposite—opposing team, and the night before, we did a negotiation to see who was going to come on first, how much time we were going to have, and ah, we decided that our team would go first, you know, in the negotiations and we would have a half hour to—to present our case. And Alice, ah, leans over and she says, "a half hour—that’s not enough time!" So, I said, it’s OK, Alice, we get on, they’re not going to bump us off. You just talk as long as you want to. And that’s what happened the next day. Ah, Alice got on and then Carl Morgan got on afterwards. They went on for—I don’t know how long you went on for, Carl, but it was over an hour and ah, the governor of [Gorlaben?] was at the edge of his seat and obviously they weren’t going to throw you off, ah, bec—you know, if the governor was interested. Ah, I just remember that experience. Ah, you had a lot to teach us.

Um, yesterday you talked about—we talked about the effects of radiation, and today we’re going to talk, and I’m going to talk a little more about how radioactivity gets to you. Ah, I—I’ve worked on transportation issues since 1975, ah, when I first worked for ah, Attorney General Lefkowitz here in New York State. Ah, the issue was shipping plutonium by air. This was liquid plutonium, by air, ah, that came from the West Valley Plant in Upstate New York out of Kennedy Airport. Ah, this was shipping it in containers that were designed to withstand a 30 foot drop. Ah, and as most people know, planes fl—usually fly higher than 30 feet, so I thought it was, you know, quite obvious, yeah, this is as we say, a slam dunk, ah, the courts are going to say, you know, ah, ban the shipments, ah, but no, the NRC staff disagreed. Ah, they though that the—the casks could withstand a 30 foot drop ah, ah, or an air crash. Ah, the courts, ah, never resolved the issue because the judge was always out playing golf. Ah, and what finally happened is that congress passed a, ah, in their appropriations bill, ah--ordered that ah, no casks ship—could sh---could ship plutonium unless they were designed to be crash-worthy.

But also what came out of that, ah, court case and the con—congressional, ah, ah, work was an environmental impact statement that the nuclear regulatory commission passed, ah, which was, ah, 1976, and that has remained to this day. Ah, this 1976 s—report is sort of the bible for ah, transportation issues despite, ah, vastly changing transportation conditions which I want to talk about.

Ah, transportation is an important issue for the American public. It’s not limited geographically to around reactors or around the Yucca Mountain facility or around the [Scull?] valley ah, projected, ah….around the S—around the[Scull?] Valley projected facility. Ah, it—it goes by many, many millions of peoples’ doors. This is an ah, example of what ah, th--this is a—a cartoon which appeared in ah, Texas, ah—I don’t know if you can read that. It says, "the public is worried about our plan to haul nuclear waste to faraway dumps along routes running down major highways and passing through hundreds and hundreds of cities and towns—how can we calm them down?" And then on these truck you see "Peace Toy Company," "Moon Milk," "Solar Industries," and another speaker says, "Well, we’re working on it—Good Earth, Gandhian Soy Company, Soy Burgers."

Ah, (have to get myself together here)

Not many shipments have actually been moved in this country—not many nuclear shipments, compared to what’s going to happen. The average number of shipments has been on the order of ah, 80 per year since 1979. Ah, but if a nuclear repository opens, or if a temporary storage facility opens and if all material goes by truck, there could be as many as 3,000 shipments per year. Ah, less, of course, if it goes by train.

Ah, as you’re probably aware—well, you can’t see that, I’m sure, but ah, by the dots you can see that most nuclear reactors are located on the East Coast and the st—and the trans—the, ah, disposal facility is in that red circle in Nevada, um, ah, all the way across the country. So, nuclear shipments would go from the East Coast all the way over to Yucca Mountain if that were to open. So what? Ah, is a question you can ask.

Um, OK, here’s a overhead which will make no sense to you, but I’m going to put this in realistic terms. One of the ship—one of the containers would be the "High Star 100." This is one of the new generation of shipping containers. It contains over a million curies of cesium 137, over a million curies of Strontium 90. I want to put this in other terms for you, in understandable terms. Each fuel assembly, each fuel assembly contains about ten times the amount of Cesium 137, Strontium90, that was released by the Hiroshima bomb, and each nuclear cask—each one of these rail casks holds 24 fuel assemblies. So the amount of cesium and strontium is approximately 240 times what was released by the Hiroshima bomb. Now, just before the industry, ah, jumps out of their seats, I’m not saying the cask is going to explode like a Hiroshima bomb. I’m only saying that this is—in terms of the quantity of material we’re talking about, there’s a huge inventory of radioactive material in each cask—that—that’s the point that I want to make.

Ah, and it doesn’t take a great percentage of material to get out to have a major contamination accident. Ah, stu—DOE studies have shown ah, if a very small amount of this material gets out, ah, in a rural area, damage could—ah, this is a 1987 study—ah, damage could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars and could take over a year to decontaminate an area. And obviously an accident in an urban area would be well, unthinkable.

Um, now, for those of you who are new to, ah, nuclear transportation and nuclear power—I don’t know how many of you are—um, I’m going to just step back a second and say what I’m talking about with nuclear transportation. This is what a fuel assembly looks like. Ah, the fuel assembly is composed of ah, many tubes—many tubes of ah, nuclear material. It’s essentially the—if I could use the Nevada analogy—the fuel is stacked like poker chips inside the cladding. Ah, and you have o—on the order of ah, two hundred and—to two hundred and twenty five of these tubes in a fuel assembly. The fuel is solid. Ah, and then this fuel, before it’s shipped, it’s sitting in a fuel pool at a reactor—it’s sitting under water where it’s—where it’s being cooled and also being shielded. And then before it’s shipped, they put a cask—a shipping container into the pool and then they transfer these fuel assemblies into a lattice. So they—put it into a lattice similar to this.

Ah, this is a storage cask by Transnuclear that holds 40 of these I—in case you want to count the little squares there. Ah, now these casks have a similar general construction, ah, this is the rudiments—essentially the fuel is in the inside, and then it’s surrounded by steel and lead, ah, and the steel and led ah, absorb some of the radiation and gives the cask structural ability and then on the outside, neutron absorbers. Essentially most of them are—now being constructed are—have plastic on the outside, ah, neutron absorbing material within it.

Ah, radiation still streams through the container, so there’s a risk when these casks go down the highway. Essentially they’re like moving X-ray machines, ah, down the highway. Ah, radiation streams through the container, and even if there’s no accident, there’s a risk associated with these—ah, if I were to follow the logic of ah, one of the speakers yesterday, probably this low level radiation is good for you, ah, that streams through the container, because if there’s an accident, you’ll be immunized ah, before the accident happens.

Um, these casks are quite sturdy, but they’re designed to withstand a 30 mile per hour crash, ah, into an unyielding surface and that’ll---and unyielding surfaces are not, ah, easy to find in nature. Your ha—you’re talking about bridge abutments, ah, you know, concrete, ah,--you’re talking about, ah, rock walls. Um, and no accidents, I—I should say right off, no accidents that have taken place on the highway or rail have actually released radioactive material to date—in these kinds of containers. I mean there are many low level waste accidents that have taken place, where material has been released, and there are accidents involving high level waste that have taken place at the ah, ah, final destination, but not--on the highway and on the rail there have been no accidents that have taken place that have released radioactivity. Ah, so, I don’t know, as my mother would say, "what could be bad?" Um, well, the issue is, you know, is this due to careful planning or dumb luck on the part of the industry. Um, and I would maintain that the casks are not designed to s—ah, sufficiently rigorous standards. Ah, for instance, they’re not even physically tested. Ah, no cask that is presently used has been physically tested. Ah, and there’s a whole new generation of casks ah, that—and the—at least one representative model should be physically tested so they could bench mark computer programs is—is my opinion. And I want to give you an example ah, of that ah, from the WIP case, if I could just ah, border on what Don Hancock may be talking about.

There were computer model tests for the WIP casks and the W IP casks transport trans-uranic materials, plutonium contaminated materials. Ah, and the computer tests showed the casks were sound, OK, and would pass. But the NRC surprisingly ah, asked ah, the Department of Energy to do physical tests on these casks and they failed, ah, because you know, as you’re obviously aware, what you put into the computer you get out, ah, and if you don’t put everything in, you might not—you don’t get everything out, and in that particular case, what happened is in the a—actual, physical test, they found that some sand actually worked itself into the seal and too much gas—gases were released or could be released in an accident and they hadn’t figured that out when they actually did the computer model test. So, from my perspective, it’s important to do--actually test ah, one of these computer—one of these casks, ah, just to benchmark the computer codes, at the least.

Now, this is what is happening that is different than what happened in 1976—different from what the NRC ah, has projected, ah, in 1976. There’s a whole new generation of containers and there’s a whole new method of proceeding ah, at nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactors are running out of space to store fuel and many utilities are storing fuel in large storage casks right at the reactor site. This is a whole different situation, ah, than has happened in the past.

These ca—these casks ah, either stand vertical, ah, as this one. This is the VSC cask, or others like it, or they—they are horizontal. The vertical ones I call the Stonehenge concept, and then, ah, there’s a horizontal one which I call the mausoleum concept. Ah, but the idea—the idea is the same here. You have air which circulates a—as it s—a chimney effect, cool air comes in the bottom and goes out the top. The fuel is in this black space in the center. Ah, but, the fuel can be quite hot. Ah, the allowable temperatures are up to 380 degrees centigrade. So this is not a benign environment. There’s tremendous pressure on that—on the nuclear tubing—the cladding. Ah, and that pressure, ah, contributes to the degradation of the fuel cladding. So then, when material has to be shipped, you’re not dealing with cladding which is—can be entirely intact. The cladding could have degraded over time. Ah, and [sounds like et alt] there’s the probability and the consequences of serious accidents.

These casks are being stored at a large number of reactors. There’s a—here’s a list of some of the reactors, ah, where this material is being stored. In case there’s an accident ah, you know, at the rea—in case—and this is likely—ah, a—at reactor sites, if some of these vents are plugged, you know, say you have an animal that—that ah, puts a nest here, ah, then the temperature can heat up ah, greater than 380 degrees centigrade. And ah, there have been studies done—ah, see, essentially this concrete is an insulator. Ah, so if you stop the circulation then the cask will continue to heat up. And there have been studies done, ah, with these casks and when you get blockage of all the—of all the vents, the temperature can heat up greatly. For all metal casks the tempe—that doesn’t happen.

This cont—contributes to, ah, cracking of the fuel cladding and also to ah, embrittlement. These are some of the issues that I consider important that have not been looked at sufficiently by the NRC since 1976. I can’t talk about all these issues this morning. Ah, I talked about degradation of fuel cladding. Ah, let me just mention a word about location of severe accidents. Ah, for the state of Utah, we looked into this issue, ah, where do severe accidents happen? The NRC h—assumes--in 1976, they assumed severe accidents happen in rural areas—not in urban areas, not in suburban areas. So, we actually looked at 40 accidents and we chose the accidents only by the fact that they were looked at by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Maybe you can’t see that, ah, but this is the location of the accidents and it shows that 8 of them—8 of them were in rural areas, 10 of them were in suburban areas, and 5 of them were in urban areas. So, it’s not the f—the fact that ah, and th--as the NRC claims that by a factor of 18, ah, accidents happen in rural over urban areas, it’s actually looks like more accidents happen in more heavily populated areas. That’s important when you do these risk calculations—that the accidents are happening where people are located.

We’ve also looked into ah, where there are all acc—all types of accidents were looked at by the NRC. Ah, and there were some severe accidents that were not looked at. Drops off bridges, for example, were not looked at. Ah, I don’t know if you remember the bridge that fell in—on I95 in Connecticut—the [Myannis?] bridge—that would be an accident—the Myannis bridge s—a—a section of the highway fell an—at night and cars, you know, went sailing off into the abyss, ah, dropped 80 feet down, and that kind of accident was not looked at by the NRC and it’s admittedly rare, but so are severe accidents and it would definitely increase the accident probability if those were included.

Human error was not included ah, i—in the calculations and another important omission which I want to mention ah, is sabotage. It’s not an issue that, ah, I really like to focus on because it leads into sort of a police state mentality, but it’s a reality, I believe and I think ah, it’s definitely an issue that ah, should be considered by the NRC. Ah, obviously numerous countries and organizations have grievances ah, and you know, how they work ‘em out, the NRC says, well, shipping casks aren’t great targets, you know, but I disagree, ah, you know, with that, ah, I’m working for the state of Utah and they have an Olympics coming up, you know, and ah, they’re going to ship these shipping casks right through the center of town. Ah, and ah, so I think it’s an issue that’s important.

Ah, these new generations of casks have—have walls that are nine inches thick, ah, made of metal, but, ah, the new generation of anti-tank weapons can easily go through—go through these like butter. This is one, ah, weapon—anti-tank weapon. Ah, you notice it has, ah, an effective range of 2,000 meters. Ah, and it has ah, penetration of armor greater than a thousand meters—greater than—greater than a yard of metal—not eight and a half inches of metal. Ah, these—and these are—these are--tens of thousands of these weapons have been produced, ah, and have been sold to many countries around the world. Ah, we have our own [Toe?] missile. It’s similar. They don’t weigh very much, you know, they can easily be carried, ah, or b—or be put on the back of a pick-up truck.

OK. Ah, I tried to think of a feel-good ending for this talk [chuckles], ah, where everyone can be happy. Ah, but I haven’t been able to think about it—ah, yeah, I can think of ways to impre—to increase, ah, accident safety all right. Um, and I’m going to mention some of those. Ah, for instance, the cask design standards—ah, casks should be designed to ah, higher level standards, a half hour fire, 30 mile per hour into an unyielding surface are not rigorous enough, because rail conditions can greatly exceed that—there’ve been many long duration fires on the rail. Ah, so that’s one ah, recommendation. Ah, casks should be physically tested, ah, not—at least one of this new generation of containers should be physically tested to benchmark computer codes. Um, they could store fuel cooler. They don’t have to jam so much fuel into a small space. Ah, I have to say, I—I recommended dry storage in 1983, before they even had all of these storage casks, but I never realized that they would, you know, try to save a few cents by, ah, cramming all this fuel together in a small space and then wrapping it with concrete, ah, wh—you know, when I made the suggestion, and ah, so that’s w---another suggestion—you can store cooler fuel, you can store fuel spaced out more, you can—don’t have to have, you know, operate these casks at the max.

Um, you can increase the storage safety at—at reactor sites. It’s not sufficient just to hire some pinkertons ah, you know, and to see whether someone’s going to cross through a fence. Ah, that’s way behind the curve of what’s possible, so, an obvious suggestion is to put these casks, if not in a facility, at least put an earthen berm around these casks, so that you remove the line of site into the c—ah, structure.

Ah, you can train and equip emergency personnel along transportation routes, ah, to handle emergencies. Ah, the emergency scenes that we’ve looked at in the past have been chaos. Ah, emergency personnel meet for the first time at the accident. They don’t do planning ahead of time. Ah, sometimes they’re on different wavelengths—I mean different radio wavelengths so that people can’t even talk to each other. Ah, and no one knows who’s, you know, who’s the commander in chief and everyone’s acting under their own emergency plan. Ah, an accident that we looked at at Rockingham, North Carolina had ten different emergency plans and 17 different emergency agencies respond to the scene and it was simply chaos, and so, more planning has to go into emergency, ah, preparation, ah, and that would inc—decrease the number of fatalities in case of an accident.

But when we move into the subject of human error and sabotage, um, that’s where I sort of ah, you know, run out of ideas. Ah, you can inc—increase the number of escort crews, ah, you know, and take certain precautions to see that the tracks are safe. Um, but then you sort of begin to think of surveillance, of potential saboteurs, and it begins to move you into a s—a police state mentality, which is quite antithetical to, ah, democratic principles.

Ah, and that’s, I think, the bottom line that I have—that all of this comes from nuclear power and that itself may be antithetical to democracy.