Nuke Waste May Ship through Downtown Syracuse
Citizens Awareness Network of Central New York
Green Party of Onondaga County
Peace Action of Central New York
Peoples Environmental Network of New York
Syracuse Peace Council
Contacts: Howie Hawkins (Green Party), 425-1019
Thom Dellwo (Citizens Awareness Network), 516-732-0354
Jessica Maxwell (Syracuse Peace Council), 472-5478
Kevin Kamps (Nuclear Information and Resource Service), 301-270-6477 ex 14
John Sticpewich (author of study generating maps), 828-675-1792
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Newly released maps show that highly radioactive spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants could travel through downtown Syracuse on their way to be reprocessed at Savannah River, South Carolina.
Syracuse safe energy advocates released the maps Tuesday as they stood on Park Street between the Carousel Mall and the Regional Transportation Center. They stood under an elevated section Interstate 81, with the Conrail line's Park Street overpass just behind them. The maps show the spent fuel rods would travel over where they stood, as well as along the northern edge of Onondaga County on the barge canal.
In 2006, the Bush administration initiated the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) with other nuclear countries. GNEP would ship spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors to one of 11 possible sites for fuel reprocessing, with Savannah River, South Carolina being the most likely site, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post in January 2006. These new sites would replace the controversial proposed permanent storage site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as well as the proposed temporary storage site on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation in Utah.
The maps were generated using the Department of Energy's on-line DOE routing program, TRAGIS.
"Destructive Diversion" from Efficiency and Renewables
Howie Hawkins, a spokesperson for the Green Party, said, "Reviving the dying nuclear industry by shipping wastes for reprocessing would be a destructive diversion of hundreds of billions of dollars from the real answers to global warming and rising energy costs, which are energy efficiency and clean, renewable energy sources," Hawkins added.
Hawkins said the activists would deliver the maps and supplementary information in the afternoon to Congressman James Walsh, city officials, and county emergency responders. "We want Representative Walsh to vote against appropriations for nuclear reprocessing. We want the city of Syracuse to pass an ordinance or resolution against nuclear waste shipments through Syracuse. And we want to make sure emergency responders are prepared for a nuclear waste accident if and when the shipments proceed," Hawkins said.
Dangers of Accidents and Terrorism
Thom Dellwo, a spokesperson for the anti-nuclear Citizens Awareness Network, said "Spent fuel should be stored on site. The possibilities of accidents or sabotage by terrorists are too great to risk." Dellwo underscored the risks by noting the recent CSX rail accidents involving toxic chemicals in Central New York and the high number of accidents at the intersection of interstates 81 and 690, as well as on the elevated portion of Interstate 81 above where he spoke.
"The proposed reprocessing at Savannah River is no solution to the nuclear waste problem," Dellwo declared. "Reprocessing generates even more waste in the end."
Dellwo also noted the projected $100 billion cost of cleaning up nuclear waste spills at reprocessing facilities that have been shut down at West Valley, New York; Hanford, Idaho; and Savannah River, South Carolina.
Nuclear Proliferation Risk
Jessica Maxwell, a spokesperson for the Syracuse Peace Council, said, "Reprocessing facilities generate plutonium, which can be used for nuclear weapons or for a dirty bomb by terrorists."
"Even if none of the plutonium is diverted, there is still the enormous danger of shipping these wastes through our communities," Maxwell said. "If one stands 3 feet from one of these spent fuel rods, one gets a lethal dose of radiation in 10 seconds. Shipping this waste poses enormous risks to the workers, our communities, and everyone using these transportation routes."
In releasing the maps, the Green Party of Onondaga County, Citizens Awareness Network of Central New York, Peace Action of Central New York, Peoples Environmental Network of New York, and the Syracuse Peace Council joined 33 community-based groups nationwide. They were teamed with Nuclear Information and Resource Service based in Washington, DC and the Common Sense at the Nuclear Crossroads Campaign, based in the Carolinas where the nuclear fuel reprocessing and many of the new reactors will be built if the nuclear industry is revived with government subsidies.
Wall Street Pushing Waste Shipments
The maps are part of a study by John Sticpewich, entitled "A Study of the Problems With Transport and Reprocessing of Nuclear Waste in the Carolinas."
"Financial analysts on Wall Street have suggested that moving the accumulated high-level waste from the reactor sites would make investment in new nuclear power more likely," said Sticpewich. "This report documents the huge tonnage of radioactive waste that must be dealt with, the very high costs of transporting it, and the potential for impact that such a move would have on hundreds of communities along the way." The maps and his report are available at: http://www.nuclearcrossroads.org/secondreport.htm.
"NIRS coined the slogan 'Mobile Chernobyl' back when Congress weighed shipping this high-level nuclear waste to Nevada to a parking-lot style dump. It refers to the elevated risk of accidents or incidents that will travel with this deadly waste if put on the roads and rails," said Kevin Kamps, Nuclear Waste Specialist with Nuclear Information and Resource Service.
"The risk of terrorist attack means that these shipments are potential dirty bombs on wheels or water," said Kamps. "The big news in these maps is the water routes to Savannah River ? the Great Lakes could be hit by many hundreds to thousands of these shipments, along with rivers, canals, and coastlines in every region." Although Yucca Mountain cannot be approached directly by water, DOE proposed barge shipments for segments of transports there as well.
Nuke Waste To Roll Any Day Now
"Coincidentally, Dairyland Power's intensely radioactive Genoa atomic reactor pressure vessel shipment by train from LaCrosse, Wisconsin to Barnwell, South Carolina for dumping in a ditch, is about to roll ? perhaps as early as today -- down the tracks, most likely via IL, IN, KY, TN, and GA, the very routes identified in this new study," said Kevin Kamps of NIRS.
"This real-life shipment, happening right now, has its own radiological hazards, but these are dwarfed by the many thousands of high-level radioactive waste shipments that would follow it in years ahead if South Carolina opens a reprocessing facility," said Kamps.
More Information:
High Resolution Color Map of Potential Rail, Truck and Barge Routes to Savannah River, South Carolina
Map of Potential Truck and Rail Routes to Yucca Mountain, Nevada
Las Vegas Ordinance Making It Illegal To Ship High-Level Radioactive Waste Through The City
Great Lakes United Resolution Against Barge Shipments of High-Level Radioactive Waste on the Great Lakes
Municipal Resolutions Against High-Level Radioactive Waste Shipments Through The City (links in lower right hand corner of web page)
Public Citizen's analysis of the Nat'l Academy of Science's "Going the Distance?" report
NIRS special report "Radioactive Wreck" (see pages 5-6 on transport risks)
NIRS "Hot Cargo" Fact Sheet
Extensive reports by the State of Nevada on high-level radioactive waste transport risks
Additional NIRS "Mobile Chernobyl" information
Website location for John Sticpewich's report "More Than a TAD: A Study of the Problems of Transport and Reprocessing of Nuclear Waste in the Carolinas," providing route maps for road, rail, and/or waterway shipments of high-level radioactive wastes to SC for "interim" storage and/or reprocessing:
Additional Public Citizen information on risks of GNEP and reprocessing
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/energy_enviro_nuclear/nuclear_power_plants/nukewaste/reprocessing/
Groups taking participating in the May 22nd release:
Common Sense at the Nuclear Crossroads (Asheville, North Carolina); Nuclear Information and Resource Service (Takoma Park, MD and Asheville, North Carolina); Physicians for Social Responsibility of Western North Carolina; Citizen's Awareness Network (Massachusetts); Green Party of Onondaga County (New York); Central New York Citizens Awareness Network; Syracuse Peace Council (New York); Don't Waste Michigan; Nuclear Energy Information Service (Chicago, Illinois); Earth Day Coalition (Cleveland, Ohio); Southern Ohio Neighbors Group; Citizen Action Coalition of Indiana; Yggdrasil/Earth Island (Kentucky); Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League; The Canary Coalition (North Carolina); Nuclear Watch South (Atlanta, Georgia); Citizens For Environmental Justice (Savannah, Georgia); Atlanta WAND (Georgia); Action for A Clean Environment (Georgia); South Carolina Chapter, Sierra Club; HIPWAZEE (Columbia, South Carolina); Environmentalists Inc. (Columbia, South Carolina); Carolina Peace Resource Center (Columbia, South Carolina); Columbia Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (South Carolina); Charleston Peace (South Carolina); Thinking People (Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina); South Carolina Alliance for Sustainable Campuses + Communities; Environmental Coalition on Nuclear Power (Pennsylvania); Energy Justice Network (Pennsylvania); Don't Waste Connecticut; Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone; North American Water Office; Lake Elmo, Minnesota; Citizen Alert, Las Vegas Nevada; Southern Nevada Group of the Toiyabe Chapter of the Sierra Club; NatCap Inc. Colorado; Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes (Monroe, Michigan); Citizens Resistance at Fermi Two (Livonia, Michigan).