My reply to Eric went over the 10k posting limit, so I'm breaking it up
into smaller chunks. Part II will be posted tomorrow.
In a message dated Sat, 13 Jul 2002 10:14:01 AM Eastern Standard Time, Eric Oines
writes:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > As opposed to the present policy of leaving the waste in place near the
> >Mississippi River, in one case cheek-by-jowl with the Prairie Island Ojibwe
> >community? Why, are they moving the site to the Metrodome?
>
> ~~~ The present policy re: Prairie Island will not change. Xcel admits that only
>about half
> the waste from Paririe Island and Monticello will be going to Utah. Is Xcel going
>to stop
> producing waste at these plants once Yucca Mtn. fills up? No. And what exactly,
>happens to
> plants when they are de-commissioned. Do we get to build resorts there?
>
Far be it from me to restrain your commercial ambitions, sir. As far as Yucca
Mountain
filling up, that's not going to happen for quite a while, and I fully expect science
to
come up with a good way to deal with the waste by then. A century ago, nobody even
considered
the idea of using uranium to generate electricity, and now it's a source of power
for just about every developed nation. Decommissioned nuclear plants are nothing
special -
there's one right in the middle of Minneapolis at the U, where they closed the
research
reactor a decade or two ago.
> > I'd like to see some documentation on this. The rail network in Minnesota is
>hardly
> >so sparse that all trains must pass through Minneapolis, and to run truck convoys
>north
>
> ~~~ The DoE proposed train routes come north from Prairie Island and south from
>Monticello.
> Here is a DoE map of proposed routes: http://www.mapscience.org/pdf/eis_j_MN-WI.pdf
> Take a look. Go ahead. Note the train and truck routes around the metro.
Yup. Most of them lead *south* of the cities, *away* from Minneapolis and St.
Paul.
Not only that, the note at the bottom of the map is very significant: "These...might
not
be the routes actually used for shipments...to Yucca Mountain. Truck routes comply
with
DoT routing regulations. Rail routes are based on maximizing the distance on mainline
track and minimizing the overall distance and number of interchanges between
railroads."
Given the necessity of securing the routes and keeping the actual routes secret, using
this map as a predictor is a poor bet.
> And it's not just stuff from Minnesota. The metro will be a central routing point
>for
> other states. That's part of what is disturbing, is that shipments from other
>states,
> lots of them will be coming through here.
Well, this is what *you* say. Minnesota's a bit out of the way for most of the
nation's
reactors, though; why would anyone ship waste from the Chicago area (for example)
through
here when it's more direct to just send it straight west through the Quad Cities?
> >from Prairie Island to the metro area when Nevada is well south of here is
>counterintuitive.
> >Can we have a link? Preferably from the DoE? I'm a big fan of primary documents.
> >
> >> By contrast, Wisconsin, which has no plants, will have a total of 3 shipments.
> >>
> > No, but you don't have to have a nuclear generating plant to produce high-level
> >radwaste. Any hospital with a radiology department does that. Or should we close all
> >those down, too?
>
> ~~~ Hospital waste is not near as poisonous as power plant waste (by orders of
>magnitude)
> and you most likely know that. So that is a non-starter argument.
>
Nope, sorry, some of the stuff used for radiation therapy has nice long half-lives
just like the fuel rods. True, it doesn't spit neutrons like spent uranium, but you
don't want to be just throwing it in the trash with the disposable needles, either.
> > You forgot the part where we all grow an extra eye and become glowing mutants.
> >Environmental groups have a really crappy record on estimating these things, and I
> >find this estimate no more persuasive than the rest of the scaremongering they
> >indulge in on a regular basis...first the "global cooling" crisis, then the Club of
> >Rome's wildly inaccurate prognostications, then Paul Ehrlich's dud "Population
>Bomb"...
> >do I really need to go on?
> >
> ~~~ Actually, environmental groups have excellant records as far as scientific
> research goes. Especially when it comes to health effects of pollution, which
> is what we are talking about here.
>
Or the mutant frogs, which turned out to be suffering from parasites (according
to a recent SCIENCE article) instead of being poisoned by chemicals. No, I'm sorry,
the environmental movement has been plagued with sloppy science and fearmongering
since the days of Amory ("The only physics I ever took was Ex-Lax") Lovins and the
anti-nuclear initiative in California, to say nothing of the original bad science
classic, Rachel Carson's SILENT SPRING.
> > To say nothing of all those poor cuddly animals at the Minnesota Zoo.
> >Come on, Eric, we're talking about radioactive waste here, not nuclear weapons.
> >People manage to get along in those hospitals and schools and homes just fine
> >despite all the shipments of corrosive, acidic, explosive, and flammable substances
> >that move through the metro area on a daily basis, so what's the fuss over a bunch
> >of spent fuel rods wrapped in tons of steel and concrete? It's not like we're asking
> >people to take in the fuel rods and keep them in their living rooms, or even in
>their
> >garages.
>
> ~~~ Spent fuel rods are the most poisonous substance on earth, bar none. And they
> remain poisonous for centuries.
Yeah. So don't swallow one or get it into an open wound. Fortunately, most
people have enough sense not to walk up to one and try and chip off souvenirs.
>Here's a question for you: if one of these trucks or trains did have an accident,
>even in the middle of nowhere-land Nebraska or something, how do you respond to it?
>How do you clean it up? Who do you send in? How do you deal with a substance that
>will remain deadly for 10,000 or more years which has been released outside it's
>tidy containment?
Well, since it's not going to possess the bodies of the local farmers and stalk
off to the Big City looking for new victims, the obvious thing would be to send in
the teams the Air Force keeps on tap for the occasions when nukes fall over and break.
The stuff isn't going anywhere on its own, and in less than 24 hours you can get
a cleanup team in there to police up the mess. We're not talking Chernobyl here,
or even Three Mile Island. [Quick quiz for the audience: how many people died at
TMI? Answer at the end of Part II.]
Kevin Trainor
RPM Candidate HD 61A
East Phillips
www.taxpayersfortrainor.org
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