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Group raises nuclear waste worries:
Environmentalists claim hauling radioactive materials poses
threat; Duke Energy disagrees
May 26 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Rebecca Sulock The Herald, Rock Hill, S.C. -That truck in the next lane on Interstate 77 could be carrying radioactive nuclear waste, and if a new government program gets funded, more trucks with more waste could travel local highways, local environmental groups warned this week. More trucks hauling radioactive material likely would travel I-77 if either of those sites are chosen, according to a report from Common Sense at the Nuclear Crossroads, a grass-roots group that studies the transport of nuclear materials in the Southeast. Those trucks driving under normal conditions expose people to radiation, said Louis Zeller of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League. "More transports means more exposure to more people, even without so much as a flat tire," Zeller said. Trucking nuclear waste also carries disastrous risks such as a spill or a hijacking. "Every shipment of high-level nuclear waste could be turned into a dirty bomb," Zeller said. The U.S. Congress set aside money this week for the program, called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, or GNEP. The program outlines a plan to build a reprocessing plant that would turn the nuclear waste into fuel, among other initiatives the energy department says would create more nuclear energy and reduce the use of fossil fuels. Local environmental groups, including the Sierra Club Henry's Knob Group and the York County Green Party, announced their opposition to the GNEP plan this week. Others think it's a strategy that makes sense. Duke Energy, which operates reactors at Lake Wylie and Lake Norman, said it supports the GNEP plan. "It's just good sound business to reduce nuclear waste as a whole," said Valerie Patterson, spokesperson for Duke Energy. While Duke has paid into a fund for a permanent storage location for nuclear waste, it also has space to store its own waste at its reactor sites, Patterson said. "It would be wonderful to see a permanent repository," she said. Duke supports having one site with set security and storage standards for the country's nuclear waste, Patterson said. Some groups are concerned the GNEP plan could result in South Carolina becoming a dumping ground for the nation's nuclear waste. The waste could be stored at Savannah River or Barnwell and if the proposed reprocessing plant didn't get built or didn't work, it could just sit. "Once it gets here, odds are, it will never leave," said Leslie Minerd of the Columbia-based Environmentalists. The GNEP plan will be making its way through congressional budget committees in the coming months.
ON THE WEB • The Nuclear Information and Resource Service: www.nirs.org • Common Sense at the Nuclear Crossroads: www.nuclearcrossroads.org • The U.S. Department of Energy: www.energy.gov |