Tag Archives: Congress and Yucca Mountain

Forget Nevada! How America Buries its Nuclear Waste 1999-2019

Just before midnight on June 27, 2019, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), Carlsbad, New Mexico received its 12,500th transuranic (TRU) waste shipment since operations began there in 1999.

Nuclear Waste heading to WIPP from Idaho

The shipment originated from the EM program at Idaho National Laboratory, which has sent WIPP the most TRU waste shipments — 6,500 and counting — of all Departement of Energy (DOE) generator sites over the past 20 years…

Idaoho National Laboratory Nuclear Waste Management

WIPP drivers have safely traveled over 14.9 million loaded miles, transporting more than 178,500 waste containers for permanent disposal 2,150 feet underground.

Excerpts from WIPP Reaches 12,500-Shipment Milestone, Press Release US Department of Energy, July 2, 2019

Stop Fukushima Freeways

 

Over 250 intensely radioactive nuclear waste shipments would cross through
the Washington DC metropolitan area and thousands more would travel across the roads, rails  and waterways of the nation, if [the Yucca Mountain permanent repository in Nevada is approved]….The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), an NGO, released maps of the likely routes radioactive shipments would use…

According to the map, highly radioactive waste fuel from nuclear power reactors in Virginia and Maryland would pass through the DC area on railroad tracks next to Metro Rail trains, including passing though Union Station. Each shipment contains several times more radioactive material than the Hioshima bomb blast released, with 20 to 50 tons of irradiated fuel assemblies in each  canister….  [Accident may happen during the shipments]…The shipments would also be vulnerable to attack or sabotage….Large-scale nuclear waste transport would also occur if, as some in Congress advocate, a“centralized interim storage” site for high-level radioactive waste were created.

Excerpts from Stop Fukushima Freeways Campaign Kicks Off, Nuclear Information and Resource Service Oct. 27, 2015