House Subcommittee Bill Would Launch Tens of Thousands of Mobile Chernobyls Over Decades
As reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Not only would the bill, H.R. 2699 (sponsored by U.S. Representative John Shimkus, a Republican from Illinois who is not seeking re-election) speed the opening of the Yucca Mountain dump, targeted at Western Shoshone Indian land in Nevada. It would also authorize the U.S. Department of Energy taking ownership to commercial irradiated nuclear fuel at consolidated interim storage sites -- as currently targeted at Hispanic areas of New Mexico (Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance) and Texas (Interim Storage Partners, including Waste Control Specialists, Orano of France, and Nuclear Assurance Corporation) in the Permian Basin. This would be a major reversal in decades-long U.S. high-level radioactive waste policy and law. It would create the very high risk of CISFs becoming de facto permanent, surface storage, "parking lot dumps." DOE has itself warned, in its Yucca Environmental Impact Statement, that surface storage, combined with loss of institutional control over a long enough period of time, would result in container failure, and consequent catastrophic releases of hazardous radioactivity into the environment.
If any one of these dumps open, whether in Nevada, New Mexico, and/or Texas, it would launch thousands, to tens of thousands, of high-level radioactive waste shipments. They would travel by truck, train, and/or barge. They would last not years, but decades. See, for example, the road and rail routes bound for Yucca Mountain (see 2017 documents).
The CISF applicants have provided little to no information about the transportation aspects of their schemes, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has allowed them to get away with this, despite opponents' protests that this violates the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Rail route maps in both CISF applications account for only four atomic reactors, out of the around 125 in the country.
However, a WCS essentially admits in another application document figure, that any and all mainline rail routes in the U.S. could be used to ship high-level radioactive wastes to west Texas.
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E&E/Greenwire also reported on this story (behind pay wall, but free subscriptions are available).
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As reported, U.S. Reps. Shimkus (R-IL) and Walden (R-OR), the Ranking Republicans on the Environment and Climate Change Subcommittee, and the Energy & Commerce Committee, respectively, in the U.S. House, are gleeful about the prospect of opening high-level radioactive waste dumps in Nevada, New Mexico, and/or Texas, if Shimkus's H.R. 2699, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, becomes law.