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CNN Live At Daybreak

Energy Department Wants To Store Nuclear Waste in Nevada

Aired January 11, 2002 - 06:46   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. Energy Department now says it knows where it wants to store this country's huge amount of nuclear waste: at a remote site in Nevada.

As CNN's Natalie Pawelski explains, power plants are eager to get the radioactive waste off their hands and rid themselves of one more security worry.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NATALIE PAWELSKI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Outside the massive reinforced walls of the containment buildings that protect nuclear reactors across the country, pools of spent nuclear fuel.

PAUL LEVENTHAL, NUCLEAR CONTROL INSTITUTE: If you lost the cooling of the fuel, that could melt down, and you have a much larger amount of fuel and much greater total radioactivity in the spent fuel pool than you do in the core of the reactor at any given time.

PAWELSKI: Spent fuel is stored at dozens of sites across the country. The nuclear power industry says it's all in sturdy, well- protected buildings.

SCOTT PETERSON, NUCLEAR ENERGY INSTITUTE: Used fuel is absolutely secure at plant sites today. Their location within themselves makes them very difficult to even approach if you are a terrorist or if you were trying to hit these with any object coming in from outside the plant site.

PAWELSKI (on camera): The spent fuel issue was supposed to be a moot point by now. Back in 1982 Congress promised to open a single, ultra secure underground storage facility by 1998, four years ago. What's the holdup? While current plans call for burning the waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, locals, environmentalists and Nevada's senior senator say it's not safe.

SENATOR HARRY REID (D), NEVADA: The Department of Energy is stumbling all over themselves trying to come up with something to make that hole they've dug safe. They can't do it.

PAWELSKI (voice-over): And how do you get tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel to wherever it's going to be buried without risking accidents or attacks? REID: Ninety thousand trucks or 20,000 trains through tens of millions of people's backyards and businesses, it won't work. It is dangerous; it is the most poisonous substance known to man.

PAWELSKI: Again, the industry says it will be safe.

PETERSON: We know how to transport this material safely. We've done it through 3,000 shipments since the mid 1960's here in the United States, without any consequence whatsoever to public health or the environment.

PAWELSKI: The nuclear energy industry says 14 plants are so close to running out of spent fuel storage space that they risk having to shut down.

PETERSON: It's a world class science project, and we believe all the data right now points to Yucca Mountain as being a suitable underground site for a repository.

PAWELSKI: Wherever the spent fuel ends up, it's supposed to be kept guarded for 10,000 years. Power plants are eager to get it off their hands and to get rid of one more security worry in a newly insecure nation.

Natalie Pawelski, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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