Keep Missouri Safe from Nuclear Waste

Floor Speech by Senator Jean Carnahan

Washington, DC - United States Senator Jean Carnahan today delivered the
following speech on the floor of the Senate regarding her opposition to the
designation of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the nation's nuclear waste repository:

When I speak to people throughout Missouri, security continues to be their
primary concern.  They are concerned about threats from abroad and about
security in their daily lives - job security, health care security, and
retirement security.  

In this day and age, when we are taking such extraordinary efforts to protect
ourselves, people are more fearful than ever about shipments of nuclear waste
through their neighborhoods and communities.

In Missouri, this is an especially sensitive issue because of our recent history
with nuclear waste shipments.

Two summers ago, Governor Carnahan succeeded in getting a shipment re-routed
around Missouri.  But last year, the Department of Energy scheduled another
shipment to go through Missouri.  

The route the government selected went through the most populated areas in the
state: through the heavily populated suburbs of St. Louis, straight through
Columbia, past Independence, and then on through Kansas City.  

The government's plans would ship nuclear waste along Interstate 70 and other
roads that are crowded and in disrepair.  Interstate 70 through Missouri is one
of the oldest stretches of federal interstate in the nation.  The newest stretch
is 37 years old; the oldest stretch is 46 years old.  But the original design
life was only 20 years.

I-70 is one of the most vital transportation corridors in the nation.  It is in
need of more than just basic maintenance - it needs total reconstruction. 
Everyone who travels over I-70 knows that it is in horrible condition.  The
number and severity of traffic-related accidents along I-70 between Kansas City
and St. Louis has grown steadily in recent years and will continue to grow with
projected increases in travel.

Unless the road is repaired and expanded, conditions will continue to
deteriorate, congestion will increase, and transportation costs will rise.

So there are two scenarios: either I-70 will remain in poor condition, or, as I
would prefer, it will undergo massive reconstruction over the next decade.

Either way, I-70 should not be the superhighway for nuclear waste.   
    
If Yucca Mountain is built, that is exactly what will happen.  Preliminary
estimates by the Department of Energy show that, over a 25-year period, over
19,000 truck and 4,000 rail shipments of nuclear waste will go through Missouri
on their way to Yucca Mountain.  

That is two trucks a day, everyday, passing through St. Louis County, Boone
County, Jackson County and many other counties across the state. 

Unfortunately, the manner in which last year's shipment of spent nuclear fuel
through Missouri was conducted does not inspire confidence in the way the
Department of Energy handles waste shipments.

While the State of Missouri and the Department of Energy were negotiating about
this shipment, DOE announced that it would not allow waste from a research
reactor in Columbia, Missouri to be shipped out of the state. The linkage of
these two issues was inappropriate.

While Governor Holden was negotiating safety protocols, the Department was
playing politics with nuclear waste.  
    
I intervened in order to ensure that these issues would be handled separately so
that the Governor could continue to insist on proper safety arrangements for the
shipment.   

After all this, the shipment showed up in St. Louis at rush hour and would have
passed through Kansas City during a Royals baseball game.  The shipment had to
be held at the border for a number of hours. 

In my view, we have not focused enough on transportation issues to approve the
Yucca Mountain site at this time.  The transportation casks have not been
thoroughly tested for possible terrorist attacks; the final transportation
routes have not been selected; security of the truck and train shipments has not
been studied; there are no concrete plans for training emergency responders in
local communities along transportation routes; and, as I've mentioned, the roads
have not been repaired.

All these issues need to be properly addressed before I would consider voting to
approve the Yucca Mountain site.

It is more important to make the right decision than it is to make a quick
decision.

Every nuclear reactor in the country has on-site spent fuel storage.  These
storage facilities will continue to be used even if the repository at Yucca is
built, because the spent fuel that comes out of the reactor must cool for
approximately five years.  Most of these facilities could be upgraded and
expanded if and when necessary.
    
And in Missouri, our single nuclear power plant will not experience storage
difficulties until 2024, so there is plenty of time to upgrade and further
expand its storage facility if necessary. 

So before committing to ship tons of nuclear waste through the heartland, I
believe we should spend much more time determining whether we can transport this
waste safely and keep these shipments away from our most densely populated
communities.

I am confident that is what the people of Missouri would want.