Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

guest column:

Fire could be disaster for train carrying nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain

You turn on the evening news in Las Vegas and the lead story is “Fire raging in the Cajon Pass.” First you wonder whether there are cars and trucks trapped or burning on that heavily traveled section of Interstate 15 that drops steeply from Victorville into San Bernardino. Are people in danger? Then you wonder whether a train was snaking through the pass and also involved in the fire. If so, will the people who live nearby and are threatened by the fire face additional hazards due to the train’s cargo?

Probably most of us have traveled I-15 from the high desert into the L.A. basin. Some of us are old enough to have taken the train that used to stop in Las Vegas, and we could ride north to Salt Lake City and beyond, or go south to L.A. So as we watch news video of a brush fire in that mountainous transportation corridor that within 12 hours had exploded into a 15,000-acre conflagration, we recognize the scenery and think about what we would do.

But what if another horrible hazard was added to the fire and smoke? Just imagine if Yucca Mountain became the nation’s high-level nuclear waste repository site, bringing with it a 30-year schedule for shipping highly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. And that plan would call for more than 900 shipments along the Union Pacific Railroad line through Cajon Pass and then through Las Vegas en route to Yucca Mountain. Yes, that’s what would be expected if the nuclear power industry — which we have no part of — got its way and the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump were shoved down our throats.

A national high-level plan for transportation of waste to Yucca Mountain would move the waste through 43 states on rail, highway and barge. As much of the waste as possible would use rail transport to get to Yucca Mountain, or as close as possible. (There is no rail access there now.) All of the transportation cask designs would have to be licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It is important to understand that just because a cask is licensed does not mean it is harmless. Under the NRC rules, casks must be designed to withstand a fire for 30 minutes, at temperatures up to 1,475 degrees. According to news reports, the Blue Cut Fire, which shut down I-15, was burning at 1,472 degrees on the ground and 2,192 degrees at a height of 150 feet.

If a train carrying nuclear waste wasn’t caught in a fire (or a landslide or some other calamity) and had to be diverted to a train yard until the rail line was secured and reopened, another problem would be posed: The casks are allowed to emit up to 10 millirems per hour, six feet away, or about the equivalent dose to a chest X-ray. So while the train waits it out, its train crews, truck drivers and facility workers could be subjected to the radiation doses emitting from the casks.

The legacy of the Blue Cut Fire will be the scalded mountainsides barren of trees and brush, the loss of wildlife habitats, and concrete foundations where full-time residences and vacation homes once sat. We should be grateful that there were no hazardous materials released from trains traveling through the Cajon Pass during the fire.

And we should recommit ourselves to never allowing nuclear waste to be shipped across the country because of the major risks those shipments could encounter en route to Yucca Mountain, which itself is geologically deficient in containing the most dangerous material known to man.

Judy Treichel is executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force.