Coming soon to a place near you ... Nuclear waste by the ton: nuclear waste has been piling up for years. Now there are plains to bury it all in Nevada. But it has to get past your town first. (National)(Cover Story).

National

WASHINGTON -- For more than 40 years, nuclear power reactors around the country have been accumulating thousands of tons of radioactive waste. And for almost as long, people have been arguing about where to put it. Finally, this spring, the President and Congress approved a burial site, Yucca Mountain, a volcanic ridge in the Nevada desert about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

But that opened the door to a new problem: How to get it there?

The answer: by truck, train, and barge, on routes near or through thousands of communities. Potential corridors through 44 states and the District of Columbia have already been studied (see map, page 18). The routes will bring the waste within a mile of about 38 million Americans along the way, opponents calculate. Also in that exposed area, they say, are 14,500 schools, the White House, and the U.S. Capitol.

The government says it has made about a thousand nuclear-waste shipments over the years and never had an accident that released radiation. But opponents say that many thousands of shipments will be required with the Yucca Mountain plan; exactly how many will depend on how much can go by train. They say accidents will be inevitable when so much lethal material is moved, and they fear what they call a "mobile Chernobyl"--a reference to the world's worst nuclear accident, the explosion and fire at the Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine, in April 1986.

Both sides are at least partly right. With thousands of shipments, there are likely to be accidents. But the comparison to Chernobyl takes some liberties with the facts. Hundreds of square miles of land around Chernobyl had to be abandoned, and will remain so for years to come, because of high radiation. It also appears to have caused cancer in thousands of people living downwind. But fire on that scale is not possible in the U.S. waste shipments, because they involve far less flammable material.

WEAKNESSES IN THE PLAN

Still, opponents have turned a spotlight on two legitimate flaws in the Yucca Mountain plan.

First, it will put millions of people far closer to highly radioactive material than they have ever been. How close? Opponents took a page from the government's Environmental Impact Statement showing possible transportation routes, posted the data at www.mapscience.org, and attached a search engine. Visitors enter their addresses and the page displays a map with the nearest route. It is not clear, however, whether an accident would release any radioactive material, and if it did, what radius would be affected.

The other weakness is that the shipping system has not been completely tested. The U.S. Department of Transportation has approved some specialized containers for the nuclear waste, on the basis of scale-model tests. There have been some fabulous smashups involving speeding locomotives and test containers. (Dramatic demonstrations are a nuclear industry tradition.)

But the struggle over "mobile Chernobyl" divides environmentalists. Some of them argue that if the Yucca Mountain plan is blocked, the United States may find itself with scores of minidumps, and that, as the decades pass, society will have trouble keeping track of them all.

The waste is now stored submerged in stainless steel pools of water, or dry in giant steel-and-concrete containers, at 72 power plants in 39 states. In some of those places, the wastes have already outlived the reactor where they were used. There are also four major locations where military reactors have operated, mostly to supply the material needed for nuclear bombs.

The nuclear waste is largely "spent fuel," long rods filled with uranium pellets. Each pellet is about 5/8 inch long and 3/8 inch across. The solid pellets hold uranium in a ceramic form. Spent fuel is still solid, but it shows cracks; it resembles a car windshield after a collision. One uncertain part of planning for waste disposal or transportation is how much of that ceramic could break into small, radioactive particles that could spread through the air.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, people on both sides of the argument have used the idea of terrorism to make a case for leaving the waste where it is--and for moving it. Opponents of the shipment plan say that an antitank weapon, fired at a shipping container, could break it open. Supporters say that a cask on a truck is a tough target, but that if the fuel is not isolated in Yucca Mountain, it will sit in steel-and-concrete silos at the sites, where it will be an attractive target for terrorists.

The government and others are now keeping some aspects of the risk secret. Shortly before the terrorist attacks, a group of nuclear professionals published an analysis on the Web. It concluded that if a fuel storage cask broke open, it could release more radioactivity than a small nuclear bomb. After Sept. 11, the group took the analysis off the Web and later announced that it had mathematical errors. The group did not say whether those errors overstated the risk, or understated it.

A PROBLEM FOR YOUR KIDS

Beneath the argument about the waste lies a battle over the future of nuclear power. If the government cannot bury the wastes, the industry will probably not be allowed to build new reactors. State law already makes proper waste disposal a condition of new reactor construction in California and Connecticut; in other states, the rule is informal, but a matter of political reality. So both sides see Yucca Mountain, and transportation to it, as a surrogate for the larger issue.

The nuclear-waste issue is unusual for another reason: The waste represents an intergenerational transfer--with people in the present and the past getting the benefit (of the energy that nuclear power provided), and people in the future getting the risk (that radioactivity could leak from the burial vaults into underground water supplies, and from there enter the food chain).

The volume of waste, about 100,000 tons by 2025, sounds large, but it is small in energy terms. For example, coal plants emit 9 million tons of sulfur dioxide each year, or 90 times more in a single year than the nuclear industry's wastes over the decades. And the sulfur dioxide is spread out over millions of square miles.

But transportation is complicated because the nuclear waste is heavily shielded with steel and concrete, so the mass to be moved is much larger.

At the moment, the state of Nevada, which lost the first round in trying to block the Yucca Mountain project, is trying to block it by cutting off access (the state controls the land on the best rail route). This is a double-or-nothing strategy. If it works, the waste will stay away; if it doesn't, the waste would arrive just the same--but perhaps packaged in numerous smaller, more vulnerable shipments.

Here's How They Package RADIOACTIVE WASTE

LAYERS OF PROTECTION: Federal regulations permit transportation of spent nuclear fuel only in strong metal casks designed to protect their radioactive contents against the forces of an earthquake, train derailment, highway accident, or fire.

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Here's the Plan to Transport RADIO ACTIVE WASTE

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

* How much did you know about the nuclear-waste problem before reading this article?

* Do you believe the federal government is dealing with the problem ha a responsible manner?

* Suppose nuclear waste were scheduled to be Shipped through your community. Would you be calmed by authorities' assurances that there was little danger?

TEACHING OBJECTIVES

To help students understand the growing concern over nuclear waste, specifically the fear that shipping waste to the new Yucca Mountain storage facility in Nevada will endanger people in the communities through which the spent radioactive material must pass.

CLASSROOM STRATEGIES

CRITICAL THINKING/RESEARCH: Direct attention to the map of the routes nuclear waste will take. Use the Web site www.mapscience.org--to obtain more precise information about the proximity of your community to nuclear-waste transport routes.

You or a trusted student might contact one or more local officials to find out what special precautions will be taken while the material is passing through. Have the class draw up four or five questions to ask the press officer of your member of Congress, local or state police spokesperson, or mayor's office about shipments and security.

If your community is one of the few that is located far away from proposed nuclear-waste shipments, you can still obtain valuable information about nuclear-waste shipments by referencing the Web site.

WARNING SIGNS: Writer Matthew Wald notes that the waste problem represents an "intergenerational transfer," in that people in the present or past reap the benefits of nuclear energy while people in the future face potential problems. Remind students that nuclear waste remains dangerous for thousands of years. One of the responsibilities of those who store such waste is to ensure that future generations understand the threat. Will today's English language be understood at some distant time in the future?

One way to communicate, experts say, is with pictographs. (The familiar no-smoking sign with a slash through a cigarette is one example of a pictograph.) Ask students to draw pictographs that would alert people in the future about the dangers within a nuclear-waste site.

Upfront QUIZ 3

MULTIPLE CHOICE

DIRECTIONS: Circle the letter next to the correct answer.

1. Chernobyl, the world's worst nuclear-reactor accident,
   occurred in

   a Russia.
   b Poland.
   c Germany.
   d Ukraine.

2. Critics say nuclear waste-shipments to Yucca Mountain
   will pass close to 38 million Americans. How close?

   a about 500 feet.
   b within a mile.
   c between 10,000 and 15,000 feet.
   d between three and five miles.

3. Which is the main argument against keeping the "mini"
   nuclear-waste dumps around the country?

   a They cost more to maintain than Yucca Mountain will.
   b They could be vulnerable to terrorist attack.
   c Some are already leaking radioactivity.
   d Some could explode.

4. What does the term "intergenerational transfer" refer to
   in terms of the Yucca Mountain project?

   a Older people favor it more than younger people.
   b Younger people favor it more than older people.
   c People in the present and past get the benefit of energy,
     while people in the future face the potential risks.
   d Older people will have to pay more taxes than younger
     people to fund the project.

5. What is the political Status of the Yucca Mountain project?

   a The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the project.
   b Congress is debating details of the project.
   c Nevada is trying to block access to Yucca Mountain.
   d A referendum on the project will be held in 2004.

6. Yucca Mountain is situated near Nevada's border with

   a Arizona.
   b California.
   c Oregon.
   d Utah.

ANSWER KEY

1. (d) Ukraine

2. (b) within a mile

3. (b) They could be vulnerable to terrorist attack.

4. (c) People in the present and past get the benefit of energy, while people in the future face the potential risks.

5. (c)Nevada is blocking access to Yucca Mountain.

6. (b) California

MATTHEW L. WALD covers energy and transportation for The New York Times.