So, how's that Yucca Mountain thing going?

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/lv-gov/2003/oct/09/515720079.html



Yucca critics cite foul-up with reactor shipment
By Suzanne Struglinski


<snip>

Consumers Energy started shipping a 565,000-pound package filled with concrete and a nuclear reactor vessel on Tuesday from the closed Big Rock Point nuclear power plant in Charlevoix, Mich., to a low-level radioactive waste storage facility in Barnhill, S.C., company spokesman Tim Petrosky said.

<snip>

The truck carrying the vessel broke an axle en route between Charlevoix and Gaylord, Mich., and it pulled over to the side of a road, where it was fixed.

The company then parked the truck Tuesday night near a gas station -- that also serves as a bus stop for 13 elementary and high school students -- until the waste can be transferred to a train that stops in Gaylord. The truck was still there this morning. Company officials expected the transfer to take two to four days.

Yucca critics say the lack of communication surrounding the incident does not speak well for the future when thousands of shipment of even more dangerous material could move to Nevada.

<snip>

""I say with confidence that no member of the public will pick up any dose with this," Petrosky said."
And even if they do, so what? Now we taxpayers and not Petrosky and pals are financially liable for the damages.

"Yucca critics say the lack of communication surrounding the incident does not speak well for the future when thousands of shipment of even more dangerous material could move to Nevada. "
And then when they get there, those shipments are going to be kept over an aquifer that serves three states, in an earthquake zone near a dormant volcano, where they'll have to be stored for 90,000 years...all at NO expense to those who profited in the short term from building those nukes.

so much. Moving all this crap is an invitation to disaster. Why is that so hard to fathom? There will be a terrible accident before we're done - people will die, and the land (like the area around Chernobyl) will be uninhabitable for centuries. Why must we persist in being so egotistical and blind?

Those of us who fought this in SC and Nevada are even more pissed. This is also an invitation to Ashcroft to FURTHER wrap his tentacles around these states for potential antiterror measures.

government. Then a funny (not) thing happened. I got cancer from radiation exposure, and so did a lot my friends. Some started dying, and whole families were wiped out. All the while, Uncle Sam would come to our towns (in Nevada) and tell us everything was OK, and nothing to worry about. Why, they even encouraged us to go outside and look at the pretty lights in the night sky from the nuclear explosions.

40+ years later, I am still struggling. My life has been filled with endless medical problems, and pain, all caused by my wonderful (not, again) government. At least I am alive. As it was mostly war-mongering Republicans who caused all of this, you ought to hear me when they try to call my house to solicit support and donations. Then, like now, they are a bunch a lying, fascist, murderers, and you can't trust or believe a thing they say.

This is why I protest at Yucca Mountain, and work hard every day to get the truth out, in an effort to rid this nation of the Republican party.

You have a real issue with waste disposal, not just some theoretical one. I'd like to know what you feel the solution is. Try to maintain hundreds of small waste dumps? Develop one or two central repositories and try to keep them secure? Stop using power sources that create waste we don't know how to store?

Seriously, I'm interested in hearing what you'd suggest.