NUCLEAR WASTE PASSING THROUGH THE VALLEY POSES RADIATION THREAT.

Byline: Erik N. Nelson Staff Writer

The U.S. Energy Department plans to transport high-level radioactive waste from the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant to Nevada, likely taking it through the San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley and San Bernardino County.

The department is considering taking the waste by barge from San Luis Obispo County to Port Hueneme but hasn't made any recommendations on truck or train routes to get it to the planned underground repository at Yucca Mountain.

Elected officials and anti-nuclear activists have reacted with alarm to the possibility of spent fuel passing through their communities, exposing thousands of residents to the risk of a catastrophic accident.

``There are train derailments and fires all the time. The amount of just one train would be greater than the amount of radioactivity released at Chernobyl (the 1986 nuclear plant meltdown),'' said Dan Hirsch of the anti-nuclear Committee to Bridge the Gap.

``You could have an unbelievable mess at Chatsworth, and not just for a moment, because the radioactivity is very long-lived. You could have Hiroshima-type prompt fatalities, followed by large numbers of latent cancer.''

The Yucca Mountain repository, just across the California border from Death Valley, would hold up to 77,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste, which when unshielded would be fatal to anyone standing nearby, even for a moment. The underground facility was approved by President George W. Bush in February but faces strong opposition from Nevada officials.

The possibility of barge shipments came to light with the recent release of an environmental impact statement for the repository project. It lists possible routes for shipping spent fuel by rail, which the Energy Department officials prefer, truck and barge.

Environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists said the barge shipment plan adds another level of danger to the shipments of spent nuclear fuel, which they have dubbed ``mobile Chernobyls'' because they contain so much high-level nuclear waste.

Physicist Marvin Resnikoff said he sees the radioactive exposure potential of a transport container of spent fuel as comparable to that of the first military use of nuclear weapons.

An improbable escape of radioactive strontium and cesium from the heavily armored casks of spend fuel could release devastating levels of radiation, although it would not explode like the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, said Resnikoff, whose Radioactive Waste Management Associates is analyzing waste transport risks for the states of Nevada and Utah.

``However, each cask holds the equivalent of 240 times the long-lived radioactivity that was released in the Hiroshima bomb,'' said Resnikoff, who expects to be called to testify before Congress to support Nevada's challenge to the Yucca Mountain storage facility.

Department of Energy representatives defended the safety of the possible nuclear shipments.

``We have been moving nuclear material around this country for 50 years, and the safety record is outstanding. No other industry comes close,'' said Allen Benson, spokesman for the department's repository project in Nevada.

``There's no such thing as a 100 percent guarantee. People need to know this,'' he added. Waste shipments would only be done through a ``very rigorous, controlled process ... we take every possible precaution.''

The transport casks are made to withstand damage that might come from a rail, truck or barge accident, said Mitch Singer, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, which promotes nuclear power.

The metal and concrete containers are required to withstand a 30-foot drop onto a hard surface, a 3-foot drop onto a sharp point and 30 minutes' exposure to a 1,475-degree fire.

Resnikoff said his organization studied the July chemical-train fire in a tunnel in downtown Baltimore, which burned for four days at temperatures estimated to reach 1,500 degrees, and concluded that it would have breached a spent-fuel cask.

Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Oxnard, said Friday that he had just learned about the barge train or truck transportation scenario and has serious questions.

``Every time you load and unload and handle or rehandle (nuclear waste), you're increasing the likelihood of a problem,'' said Gallegly, who as a freshman representative voted against a catch-all 1987 bill that included both the Yucca Mountain project and a tax hike.

``If they are advocating putting this repository in the San Fernando Valley or in Ventura County, you can be assured that I would be out there with my fellow residents opposing it,'' Gallegly said. But the Yucca Mountain repository, ``on the surface, it appears to be a very practical way to deal with it.''

Until he has more information on the repository and transport plans, however, Gallegly said, ``I'm not prepared to embrace it or oppose it.''

While the federal government is committed to providing long-term storage for nuclear plants nationwide, a spokesman for Diablo Canyon's owner, Pacific Gas & Electric, said such shipments would take place after 2017, at the earliest.

``We don't expect to send any fuel anywhere for probably many, many years,'' said PG&E spokesman Jeff Lewis, explaining that older facilities, such as many plants in the Eastern United States, would get their spent fuel stored before Diablo Canyon.

With that in mind, PG&E has applied for permission from the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct an above-ground, ``dry cask'' fuel storage facility at Diablo Canyon to use when its current spent-fuel pools run out of space as expected in 2006.

``We're trying to build in some flexibility, so that whatever happens with the national repository, we would have the ability to store, on site, all of the spent fuel ever produced by the plant,'' which is scheduled to close down in 2025, Lewis said.

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The U.S. Department of Energy is considering a possible route for shipping high-level radioactive waste from the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant on a barge to the Port of Hueneme, where it would then be transported by truck or train to Yucca Mountain.

Gregg Miller/Staff Artist