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CNN Saturday Morning News

Interview With Charli Coon, Ken Cook

Aired June 22, 2002 - 07:37   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: The controversial shipments of the bomb-grade plutonium may already be on its way across the country.

The highly radioactive material is to be shipped from the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Colorado to South Carolina. Officials are keeping quiet about the exact times of the shipments. We think those reasons for that should be obvious to you. Classified stuff, after all. Security is important in the matter.

South Carolina's governor did everything he could to stop the shipments. He even threatened to put state troopers there at the state line to stop them, but he doesn't just want the plutonium in his state, he's concerned the Palmetto State could become a storage site for nuclear waste.

Joining me to talk about the dangers, potentially, of transporting nuclear material are Charli Coon, senior policy analyst for energy and environment at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, and Ken Cook, sitting across the room from her, president of the Environmental Working Group, also in Washington, as we pointed out.

All right, let's talk -- just broad-brush, first of all -- the plan for people who are the uninitiated is to clean up Rocky Flats, send the stuff all the way across country, reprocess it, turn it into fuel for nuclear reactors.

I guess, my first question is: Charli, I'm going to put this one to you. Why not do the reprocessing right there in Rocky Flats and eliminate the dangers of this transport?

CHARLI COON, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Well, first of all, the issue of the South Carolina and the plutonium being shipped to South Carolina was an agreement that was reached between the Clinton administration and Russia. This is weapons-grade materials, which for national security reasons will be taken apart so that nuclear weapons cannot be made from this material any more. And it's part of an agreement...

(CROSSTALK)

O'BRIEN: No, no, my question, my specific question was: Why not do it right there in Colorado?

COON: Well, some of the material actually will be done in Rocky Flats, but they're going to close Rocky Flats in 2006, and the materials can safely be transported from the Rocky Flats to Savannah, Georgia, where, as I said -- that's -- the purpose of it is to break it down so that it can be used as nuclear fuel and not as nuclear weapons.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's talk about this issue of safe transport. Ken Cook, you obviously beg to differ on the issue of safe transport. Track record is good in the nuclear industry. There's been an awful lot of hot stuff moving around this country ever since the nuclear age began, right from the days of the Manhattan Project. And I don't know of any incident where anybody was hurt by any of these shipments.

KEN COOK, ENVIRONMENTAL WORKING GROUP: Well, there have been a number of accidents, and the Department of Energy predicts that if we go ahead with the storage facility at Yucca Flats in Nevada, we're looking at thousands and thousands of shipments, far more than we've ever shipped before.

The situation in South Carolina; why would the governor be so upset with a program to turn swords into plowshares, as it were? Taking nuclear weapons and turning them into something that produces energy. He doesn't trust the federal government. That's what that fight was all about. He thinks that the federal government can't be taken at their word that they're going to remove that from his state. And I think he's probably right.

O'BRIEN: Well, let's...

COON: What other reason did he think...

O'BRIEN: ...Yeah, let's go -- go ahead, Charli...

COON: Excuse me, but the reason that he's saying that is the track record of Congress. We've been looking, we've been investigating, and testing Yucca Mountain in Nevada for 24 years. We've spent $7 billion; it's time to move forward with the licensing process. That's the reason that the governor is upset is because it's taken 24 years to get Congress finally to a point to make a decision on Yucca Mountain.

(CROSSTALK)

O'BRIEN: One question, real quickly here. Because the idea is to turn this, what was -- swords into plowshares and all that -- is to turn this stuff into, you know, reactor fuel to power nuclear reactors. Tons of plutonium. Is there really a market for this, Charli? Will this stuff be used, or is this just a concept to sort of mollify folks in South Carolina?

COON: Oh, no, I mean, it's going to be used. A lot of it -- the plutonium that's being sent to South Carolina will then go to Duke Energy where it will be used.

O'BRIEN: Tons of plutonium. OK. They need tons of it. OK. COON: Absolutely. And also, I might add -- hopefully, in the future, the United States will be like Japan and France and actually reprocess the fuel so that it can be -- reprocessed plutonium -- so that it can be used again for nuclear fuel.

O'BRIEN: All right. Go ahead.

COOK: Just to point out that that is not why the governor of South Carolina is concerned. He's concerned because the federal government, as is so often the case in this field, has not come through with the guarantees that they're going to remove this material.

And it has nothing to do with Yucca Flats. He's concerned that they won't even proceed with their reprocessing, and once that happens, he'll be stuck with it.

And, frankly, if you want to find out how close these nuclear routes can be to where you live, go to a Web site that we started last week called mapscience.org. Type in your address, any the address in the country. You'll see that without a very good plan at all and without any planning at all for terrorism, our government's about to move thousands and thousands of shipments, far more than they've ever moved before, of high-level radioactive waste right through our communities, including right through downtown Washington, D.C.

COON: Let me say something. Let me respond to that. First of all, the Department of Energy has bent over backwards to make guarantees to the governor. The governor has delayed on those, there's some legislation that's been proposed, there's funding that's been guaranteed. So, to say that there hasn't been any effort is just not true.

Not to mention that right now, we have about 300 million shipments a year of hazardous materials -- gasoline tankers and chemical wastes -- and those are not protected the way that the nuclear waste will be. We've been transporting nuclear waste for 30 years, and there has not been one incident in which there's been a release -- wait, that's a pretty good track record.

O'BRIEN: That's a good track record, Ken, what do you say to that?

COOK: Well, actually, it's not true that there have been no releases. There have been releases of waste during these shipments. And many of the shipments she's talking about are just 100 miles or less, from one reactor to another. I mean, the point is most of these materials...

(CROSSTALK)

O'BRIEN: Now, wait -- this thing -- when you say release, you've got tot talk about quantities here, though. I mean...

COOK: Well, it has varied. There have been a number of reports of contaminated cylinders, contaminated containers. Sometimes they've even been empty and have gone long distances...

O'BRIEN: But has anyone ever been hurt? But has anybody ever been hurt?

COON: An issue is -- exactly. Exactly. No one's ever been hurt. The public health has been taken into consideration and there has been no harm to public health.

And experts have said that, and in fact, Knight Ridder did an analysis recently, and you have independent scientists and technicians and engineers who've said it is very unlikely that there will be an accident. And look at the track record. I mean, you go in for open- heart surgery and more people die.

O'BRIEN: I mean, the one thing is, every day in this country there's all kinds of hazardous things that are shipped all over the interstates and on the rails. It's not necessarily radioactive, but there's all kinds of hazardous stuff out there.

COOK: Oh, there's no question about that. And we should be concerned about that. I think the difference here with nuclear waste is -- you're talking about on one of these rail shipments -- the radioactive equivalent of 200 bombs that we dropped on Hiroshima.

I was trained at a nuclear reactor at the University of Missouri; I'm very familiar with the technology. The concern here that has the governor of South Carolina literally going to court, promising to throw himself on the road to stop the shipments is not because he thinks the federal government's shooting straight. It takes a lot to get a governor to do that.

He doesn't trust the government, and I don't think we should trust them entirely either, for the simple reason that right now we have two major myths out there that the Department of Energy is promoting. One is that once we open up Yucca Flats -- Yucca Mountain -- we're going to have the nuclear waste removed from all over the country. They're going to make more. Almost everywhere you've got a reactor, they'll still be there. And we've got published maps that show us which cities they go through.

O'BRIEN: Charli, I'm going to get into trouble because I'm out of time but I've got to send it back to you to be fair. Just, quickly, do you trust the federal government?

COON: On this particular issue, I do...

O'BRIEN: A little caveat there.

COON: ... with 24 years of investigation and scientific studies and $7 billion, it's time to move on to licensing process, unless the NRC, the experts, make the determination.

O'BRIEN: Thank you very much for a lively discussion. We appreciate it. Charli Coon, Ken Cook, both joining us both from Washington, D.C. in the same room and yet did not engage in any fisticuffs. We appreciate that. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com