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CNN Sunday Morning
Should Radioactive Waste Be Shipped to Nevada?
Aired July 07, 2002 - 08:10 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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Yesterday, we brought you the controversy surrounding the proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. Well, now we take a look at the problems facing the country's current waste facilities and why one Nevada town is welcoming a plan to build a nuclear dump in its backyard. Once again, here is CNN's John Vause, who begins with the trip he made earlier this year to a nuclear power plant.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Across the United States, radioactive waste has been piling up ever since the first nuclear plant went online in the mid-'50s, at places like Prairie Island in Minnesota. These two reactors fired up in 1973, and ever since they've been producing about 36 tons of spent nuclear fuel every year, all of it stored on site.
SCOTT NORTHARD, XCEL ENERGY: The spent fuel is removed from the reactor about every 18 months and stored in a spent fuel pool. It's a stainless steel lined pool that's within the plant, and it's 40 feet deep, contains highly purified water.
VAUSE: After five years, the radioactive material is taken from the pool and sealed into these dry casks. But now, they're running out of room. Scott Northard manages nuclear assets for Xcel Industries, which owns and operates this plant. It supplies electricity to about a million homes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This facility is authorized to hold up to 17 dry cask storage containers, which will allow the plant to operate through about 2007.
VAUSE: But the Department of Energy and President Bush say right now, these sites are potential targets for terrorists -- either for an outright attack or for the radioactive waste to be stolen and used later in a dirty bomb. Here at Prairie Island, though, the director of security disagrees.
MARK FINLAY, SECURITY DIRECTOR, PRAIRIE ISLAND: It's not a security risk having these things here, no, that is correct. Through engineering analysis, we have determined that, yes, in fact, you could fire a missile into them with very little damage to the outside surface of the casks. These casks are extremely robust. VAUSE (on camera): Each one of these casks contain about 18 tons of spent nuclear fuel. It's wrapped in a layer of aluminum, and then another nine inches of alloy steel around that, and then on the outside of that, 10 inches of neutron-solvent (ph) plastic, enough protection say scientists to last about 100 years. But the problem is, the nuclear waste here is radioactive and dangerous and will be that way for thousands of years.
(voice-over): But there is another more immediate problem. The nuclear industry is suing the federal government for billions because it failed to dispose of the spent nuclear fuel by 1998, as agreed under a contract signed in the early '80s.
NORTHARD: Since 1982, the government has collected about $18 billion from rate payers across the United States. And our customers in Minnesota alone have paid about $400 million to the federal government for the express purpose of disposing the spent fuel.
GOV. KENNY GUINN, NEVADA: They're rushing because they've got to do something about all of these billions of dollars they've been collecting from the rate payers over these last 20 years.
NORTHARD: You know, we think it's time to get on with it.
VAUSE: It's sentiment shared by a very small group of Nevada residents. If the repository does go ahead, Caliente, a small, sleepy town here will likely end up a transportation hub, off-loading from trains, reloading onto trucks for the final 50 miles to Yucca Mountain. About 1,000 people live here, like Linda Butler, 35, mother of three.
LINDA BUTLER, CALIENTE RESIDENT: We need the jobs. We need people to -- well, there is substantial growth potential for us, if there is an off-loading, you know, if they do the transfer station here. And we have a lot of people here on welfare and stuff like that. So I think if we could provide an opportunity just for a little shot, you know, to help us get a little bigger, that would be fantastic.
VAUSE: Pappy Patterson retired here with his wife six years ago, and like many Caliente residents, he's nonchalant, even dismissive about the potential dangers.
PAPPY PATTERSON, CALIENTE RESIDENT: You're going to die anyway, so what the hell difference does it make what you die of?
VAUSE: Caliente's mayor, Kevin Phillips, has been pushing hard for the project. It's not just for the jobs or for the local economy, but also because he knows it's all perfectly safe.
MAYOR KEVIN PHILLIPS, CALIENTE, NEVADA: In my firsthand, first- person singular observation, I'm unique in the sense that we've had the opportunity to educate ourselves from an independent point of view. Most Nevadans have only heard what they hear from their political representatives. That doesn't square with the truth. VAUSE (on camera): So why is it that so many people in this town just aren't concerned about nuclear waste? Because every day, by rail and road, there are dozens of shipments through here of dangerous materials, everything from deadly chemicals and gases, explosives, even asbestos.
(voice-over): And not far from here, the Nevada testing range, where the U.S. government exploded at least 1,000 nuclear bombs.
BUTLER: I've been here for 25 plus years, I live in the house I grew up in. As I've said, we've had people here that have been through and the mushroom clouds came flying across when they were doing above-site testing out at the test sites.
VAUSE (on camera): What happens to this community if Yucca Mountain doesn't -- doesn't go ahead?
PHILLIPS: Nothing. We will go on with the life we had for the last 100 years, you know. We'll raise our kids, we'll go to work, we'll continue. I mean, you know, we are not hanging on the linchpin of Yucca Mountain.
VAUSE (voice-over): But the nuclear industry is. Yucca is the only site under consideration. In 1987, Congress was unhappy with the high cost of choosing a location, and so Washington state and Texas were dropped. Nevada says it was chosen because it lacked political clout and couldn't stop the decision. So now, 15 years on, it's Yucca or it's nothing. There is no fallback. Finding an alternative means starting from scratch.
MARVIN FERTEL, NUCLEAR ENERGY INSTITUTE: I would think personally at that point, if I were making recommendations, that what would make sense would be you're going to start the program over to look for geological repository, because that's clearly what every scientist agrees is the right thing to do for final disposal. But you're probably entering a 20- or 30-year, 40-year new process.
VAUSE: But that just seems unlikely.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAYOR OSCAR GOODMAN, LAS VEGAS: Yucca Mountain is not a done deal, that's for damn sure. What I really resent is this Abraham coming in here and lying to us saying that he's reviewed thousands of documents when you know he spent an hour out at the test site probably picking his nose.
(MUSIC)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: As the sounds of protest sung by Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman can be heard loudly across the Nevada desert, the rest of the United States just isn't listening.
Nevada is promising a long and lengthy legal battle and is clinging to hope that somehow it can beat the odds. But 39 states are looking to Yucca Mountain as the answer. Only one sees it as a problem.
John Vause, CNN, Yucca Mountain.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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