Contacts: Kevin Kamps, 240-462-3216, Kevin@BeyondNuclear.org, and Henry Stoever, 913-375-0045, HenryStoever@sbcglobal.net
Cosponsored by the Rime Buddhist Center and PeaceWorks, KC, Kamps will warn that if the high-level radioactive waste dump site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, were to open, 3,574 rail-sized casks on trains and/or heavy-haul trucks would travel through Missouri toward the Nevada site. Seventy-five percent of the country’s commercial atomic reactors are east of the Mississippi, and Missouri would be among states harder hit than others in terms of radioactive shipment numbers.
Missouri also has the distinction, says information from Beyond Nuclear, of being downstream from potential large shipments of high-level radioactive waste from Cooper Nuclear Power Plant (in Nebraska, on the Missouri state line) up the Missouri River into the port of Omaha.
Pending legislation, such as the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act (H.R. 3053 in the past congressional session), could expedite the opening of the Yucca Mountain dump, according to Beyond Nuclear. That would significantly increase the quantity of waste that could be buried in Nevada, correspondingly increasing shipments across Missouri. The Yucca Mountain site would be limited to 70,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste burial.
But, according to Beyond Nuclear, so-called centralized interim storage facilities (CISFs) in New Mexico and/or Texas could mean even larger shipment numbers through Missouri. New Mexico’s CISF has applied for 173,600 metric tons of irradiated nuclear fuel storage capacity. Texas’s CISF has applied for another 40,000 metric tons. The CISFs have proposed opening and commencing shipments by the early 2020s.
Kamps plans to display an inflatable, full-scale replica of a highly radioactive waste Legal Weight Truck-sized shipping cask. He will show several short videos, including some prepared for the 40th annual commemoration of the Three Mile Island reactor meltdown March 28.
http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news2017/ymroutes17.png The map shows KC as the hub for six rail routes to Yucca Mountain under consideration in 2008 by the US Department of Energy.