Thursday, June 4, 1998 | 9:53 a.m.
When Robert Halstead hears about a rush-hour traffic jam anywhere in Las Vegas, he heads right for it.
"I bet I'm the only person you know who can't wait for gridlock," Halstead, Nevada's consultant on transportation of nuclear waste, said.
Halstead keeps track of the time he's idling in bumper-to-bumper Spaghetti Bowl traffic or on Interstate 15 because he wants to know how long motorists will sit next to trucks loaded with high-level nuclear waste on the way to Yucca Mountain.
While stuck in traffic, Halstead worries about how much radiation will beam from those canisters and what might happen to the casks in an accident or during a terrorist attack.
If the Department of Energy finds that Yucca Mountain is suitable for burying this high-level radioactive waste, shipments will come to Nevada by road and rail.
Trouble is, no rail line reaches Yucca Mountain, and the roads leading there from Las Vegas or Reno are only two lanes, one in each direction.
As for radiation exposure, no one in nearby cars or trucks will receive more than background levels, according to J.C. de la Garza, in charge of DOE's transportation program in Nevada. The shipments will have escorts to prevent the public from driving immediately next to the casks.
Each truckload of waste in urban areas such as Las Vegas and Reno is required by law to have a car with armed guards aboard at the front and the back of the rigs, de la Garza said. That will keep the escorted waste shipments moving and the traveling public at bay.
"These vehicles are very large, articulated trucks that, under ideal conditions, would travel 45 miles per hour to 55 miles per hour," de la Garza said.
Earlier DOE technical studies have identified three possible ways the public, truck drivers or emergency crews could receive excessive radiation exposure while nuclear waste is shipped:
* During routine shipping, gamma and neutron radiation streams constantly through the cask walls.
* A serious transportation accident could damage the shielding around the cask, possibly releasing its radioactive contents.
* A terrorist attack using high-energy explosives could crack open the cask, dispersing radiation.
The casks under design are expected to emit 10 millirem per hour, equal to the radiation from one chest X-ray, when they are intact. Radiation exposure drops quickly with distance. At about 3 feet, radiation doses should be at background levels.
In gridlock, however, a person sitting in a car next to a cask containing nuclear waste could get a radiation dose equal to that of four chest X-rays if the traffic jam lasted long enough.
If an accident breaches a shipping container, radiation from cesium, strontium, cobalt-60, iodine-131 and plutonium would have to be removed from the site before people could return to the scene.
Cleaning up contamination in a rural area could cost as much as $620 million (in 1985 dollars) over 1 FRACTION 1/2 years. In an urban setting, the costs could jump to more than $2 billion.
The DOE hasn't finalized the transportation mode or routes. "It's preferable to do it by rail. We don't know how many shipments or the frequency," Benson said.
The DOE prefers to build a rail line from a remote transfer station, such as Caliente, northeast of Las Vegas, then transfer the nuclear casks to heavy-haul rigs, de la Garza said. From there, truckloads of waste would roll through such towns as Beatty and Tonopah, and perhaps Pahrump for shipments coming from California reactors.
"Shipping nuclear waste in rail cars is even scarier," Halstead said of the potential for accidents. Since no federal agency requires armed guards to ride on trains carrying nuclear waste, the rail cars could travel normal freight and passenger routes.
The Union Pacific Railroad was criticized recently when it had trouble tracking normal shipments of goods. Steep mountains and deep valleys in several Western states, such as Nevada, create communications gaps that make rail routes particularly susceptible to terrorist attacks, Halstead said.
With criminal justice Professor David Ballard, Halstead wrote an 82-page report on terrorism last year and discovered it posed a much higher threat to nuclear cargo than expected.
De la Garza said 70 sites nationwide could be targeted by terrorists for an attack on a nuclear waste shipment. That's a minimum number, according to Halstead, who has consulted on nuclear transportation issues for other states.
Halstead's study is one reason the DOE is re-examining its data on potential terrorist threats, de la Garza said.
But talk of terrorism and severe accidents fails to encompass all of the risks -- even such common occurrences as a minor truck accident on the Spaghetti Bowl or a train derailment west of Las Vegas Strip hotels could bring the city to a standstill.
The image of a radioactive symbol on an overturned truck or derailed train car with the Strip hotels in the background has put the Nevada Resort Association, which represents major casinos, on record as opposing a nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain.
Transporting the waste through the Spaghetti Bowl at the intersection of Interstate 15 and U.S. 95 is of particular concern to Dennis Bechtel, planning manager for Clark County's Nuclear Waste Division. Although the Spaghetti Bowl is undergoing major reconstruction to handle more traffic, Bechtel fears the improvements won't decrease the dangers of trucking nuclear waste through the downtown corridor.
Bill Vasconi, a former Nevada Test Site employee, believes the transportation concerns are overblown. He is vice chairman of The Study Committee, which supports seeking benefits in exchange for the repository.
"You realize that Nellis Air Force Base has 1,450 nuclear devices that were transported there somehow?" he said. "There have been 904 nuclear weapons detonated at the Nevada Test Site that were transported there."
The DOE's Allen Benson doesn't consider the transporting of nuclear waste an issue in approving Yucca Mountain as a repository.
There have been more than 3,000 shipments of nuclear matter around the country in the past 50 years. Benson said there have been a "handful" of accidents but no release of radiation.
If Yucca Mountain is approved as a repository, the number of truck shipments would increase dramatically, possibly reaching 112,000 cumulatively in 30 years.
That worries Halstead.
Since 1949, 72 incidents involving irradiated nuclear fuel in transit have been reported. The incidents, reported by the DOE's Sandia National Laboratories, include anything from minor accidents to four incidents of radioactive contamination beyond the vehicle.
Eight incidents of contamination involved radioactive leaks of water or liquid from casks discovered during shipping. Some examples from risk reports include:
* In June 1960, a container with a pinhole leak allowed small amounts of radioactive liquid to contaminate three rail yards, one of them in a major city that was not named. A specially designated train had to carry the cask to its destination.
* In August 1962, a truck shipping irradiated fuel containing plutonium leaked along its route. Contamination was discovered at one location and the affected street was replaced.
* In July 1976, a Tri-State Motor Transit Co. truck stopped in Rock Springs, Wyo., en route from the San Onofre Southern California Edison plant. The driver noticed a leak during a routine inspection. Nuclear inspectors allowed the radioactive shipment to continue to Idaho National Energy and Environmental Laboratory.
Most of the reported spent-fuel incidents were triggered by leaking shipments.
In the most recent incident last year, four white boxes containing low-level nuclear waste on a truck headed for the Nevada Test Site were discovered to be leaking water when they reached their destination. One box found in a truck that had stopped in Kingman, Ariz., had leaked almost two gallons of liquid. Although the liquid proved not to be radioactive, the box was returned to Fernald, Ohio, in a secure truck.
Environmental activist Richard Nielsen believes Yucca Mountain won't be approved because of mounting opposition from residents of other states who don't want the waste shipped through their towns. About 200 cities and towns, including Reno; Flagstaff, Ariz.; and Oakland, Calif., already have declared themselves nuclear-free zones.
"We're seeing evidence that people are becoming concerned about this issue all over the country," Nielsen said.
The California Legislature is taking action on its own to protect residents statewide. California Assembly Speaker Pro Tempore Sheila Kuehl introduced the Radioactive Materials Transportation Safety Act of 1998, which was approved by the Transportation Committee on March 30.
Kuehl said it will take about a year for AB 2192 to proceed through the Legislature. The bill would require full-scale testing of shipping casks, inspections at the state's border, a $25 million indemnity on each truck of nuclear waste and training for emergency crews statewide.
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