Nuclear Waste Shipments Headed for New Jersey Say Opponents
Thursday, October 29, 2015
For Immediate Release: October 27, 2015............click image to enlarge
Brick, NJ – Hundreds of nuclear waste shipments would cross through New Jersey if Congress moves forward with pending legislation to revive a plan for the country’s first nuclear waste repository in Nevada moves forward through Congress. On Tuesday, GRAMMES and Clean Water Action released maps of the likely routes radioactive shipments would use, joining dozens of environmental and clean energy groups across the country simultaneously releasing maps of their local areas. The groups urge citizens to weigh in with Congress about the dangers.
According to the map, highly radioactive waste fuel from the Oyster Creek and Salem/Hope Creek atomic power plants would pass through 11 New Jersey Counties on highways and railways. Each shipment would contain several times more radioactive material than the Hiroshima bomb blast released, with 20 to 50 tons of irradiated fuel assemblies in each canister. Department of Energy studies completed in the 1990s
confirmed that accidents in transporting the waste to Yucca Mountain would be a certainty, due to the large number of shipments that would be required. The shipments would also be vulnerable to attack or sabotage along the hundreds or thousands of miles that each cask would travel.
“New Jersey is not ready for mass transportation of nuclear waste” said Janet Tauro, Board Chair of New Jersey Clean Water Action and a founder of GRAMMES. “First responders are not even trained to handle a rad waste accident. We have all witnessed horrible oil train derailments and explosions in recent months. An accident involving tons of nuclear waste in Newark, Lakewood, Camden, Red Bank, Westfield, Phillipsburg or Elizabeth could force thousands of people to evacuate their homes, schools, and businesses and radioactively-contaminate dozens of square miles.”
There is movement in Congress to resurrect plans for the Yucca Mountain repository, which was deemed geologically inadequate by the Department of Energy and defunded by President Obama. It is strongly opposed by the state of Nevada, as well as the Western Shoshone Nation. To overcome these obstacles, Congress would have to enact a law to override the state's rights, opening the door for nuclear waste shipments to begin.
"It is unconscionable for Congress to even consider putting millions of citizens in harms way," said Paula Gotsch, co-founder of GRAMMES. "We need real solutions to nuclear waste, and we won't get there until Congress abandons Yucca Mountain and makes constructive moves forward. It is simply madness to even think about transporting thousands of pounds of highly radioactive nuclear waste on our railways and roads."
GRAMMES is calling on NJ’s elected officials to oppose Yucca Mountain and ensure transportation of nuclear waste only occurs when there is a scientifically proven, environmentally sound, and socially responsible long-term management plan. The nuclear waste problem can never truly be resolved until nuclear power plants are permanently shut down and stop generating radioactive material. New reactors would only exacerbate the problem: more dump sites would need to be created, and the transportation of lethal atomic waste would have to continue indefinitely.
Large-scale nuclear waste transport would also occur if, as some in Congress advocate, a "centralized interim storage" site for high-level radioactive waste were created. In that case, the waste would either have to move twice (once to the interim site, and then to a permanent site), thus doubling the risks or the "interim" site would become a de facto permanent waste dump--without going through the necessary scientific characterization.