Terror by Rail: Senate Approves Yucca Mt Dump

by Alexander Cockburn

When Bush came to power, the nuke lobby thought they had it made. The days of competition between the oil industry and the nuclear lobby are long gone. Now they all belong to the same conglomerate. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, perhaps the only member of the cabinet who requires a more simplified briefing book than Bush, was an old industry pal, long since bought and paid for.

Bush himself called for more subsidies to nuclear power and reversed his election-eve opposition to the nuke industry's most fervent dream: the Yucca Mountain dump for nuclear waste from around the country, hauled in by rail. September 11 changed all that. Not immediately, mind you. But as the patriotic hysteria, in which it was deemed un-American to question any Bush proposal, began to subside, people began to conclude that the scheme to truck 77,000 tons of radioactive waste through their communities wasn't the brightest idea.

Maps of the possible transport routes show that more than 50 million Americans live within one mile of these nuclear corridors. Even the rosiest scenario painted by the Department of Energy (DOE) concedes deaths from cancers associated with the passage of these radioactive boxcars. Naturally, that prediction doesn't take into account the toll that might result from an act of sabotage or, more likely, a simple train derailment or jackknifed tractor-trailer truck that sends highly radioactive waste spilling into rivers, lakes and neighborhoods. The DOE has estimated that close to 300 crashes could occur in the foreseeable future, once shipments commence.

So, the nuclear industry had to act fast. It threw $5 million in PAC money to senators and senatorial candidates. It deployed a legion of K Street lobbyists, many with ties to both the Bush administration and big-time Democrats, and high-powered PR firms to clear the way.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce beamed a wave of wildly misleading radio ads across the country aimed at securing senate passage of the Yucca Mountain bill. The Chamber's ads were little more than focus group-tested scare tactics claiming that the Yucca Mountain plan, which enviros have shrewdly dubbed "Mobile Chernobyl," is actually a "way to get nuclear waste out of your communities." This is in reference to the nuclear waste now being stored at commercial reactors. Of course, the waste will continue to pile up at those sites as long as the plants operate and for years after they are mothballed. In fact, all nuclear waste must "cool" for at least five years before they can even consider shipping off somewhere.

Under the Yucca Mountain bailout plan, with an estimated cost of $58 billion, the lethal waste will go transcontinental, rolling through 44 states, plus the District of Columbia, passing through communities now far removed from nuclear plants and through states that have decided to reject nuclear power. The ads also tried to calm the public's nerves by suggesting that once entombed in Yucca Mountain, the nuclear waste will be safely contained for all time, or at least 10,000 years. As one might expect, the Chamber delicately sidestepped the question as to whether or not Yucca Mountain isn't in fact a kind of geological sieve.

The disposal site sits on top of an aquifer that is becoming more and more important as a source of drinking water for the ever-expanding Las Vegas metro area. Even the DOE's own geological investigations reveal that the earthquake-prone nature of the Yucca Mountain site may create fissures in the earth that will allow the waste to seep into the underground reservoir.

The July 9 U.S. Senate vote on Yucca Mountain offered a chance for progressives and environmentalists to strike back at the nuclear power industry. The omens seemed auspicious with public concern and Senate leader Tom Daschle's pledge that the Democrats would stop the Yucca Mountain plan. He was wrong.

In the crunch, Daschle could muster only 36 Democrats against the Yucca Mountain plan, with Patty Murray of Washington, Dick Durbin of Illinois, John Edwards of North Carolina, Ernest Hollings of South Carolina and Pat Leahy of Vermont all siding with the nuclear industry.

Now comes a long battle in the courts, appropriation fights over the billions the plan will cost and then, almost certainly, civil disobedience. Perhaps we will live to see the congressional delegation of Nevada and its governor sitting on the railtracks, being denounced by the Office of Homeland Security as terrorists.