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October 30, 2001
Maud Hurd
We Need a Real
Stimulus Package
Dr. Susan
Block
We're
All Afghans Now
Tariq Ali
Busted in Munich
Francis
Beer
Toward
the Terrorist
Anti-World
October 29, 2001
Alexander Cockburn
The Left
and the Just War
John Pilger
Hidden
Agenda
of the War on Terror
David Krieger
Nukes on
the Loose
Jack McCarthy
Neo-Nazis
and 9/11
Marina Kalashnikova
The Brzezinski
Interview
Richard
Manning
Terrorism:
a definitive history
October 27, 2001
Edward
Said
A
Vision to Lift the Spririt
October 26, 2001
CounterPunch
Wire
Genocide
Scholar Gagged
Over Comments on the
Bombing of Afghanistan
Rahul
Mahajan
Poisoning
the Well
Sen. Russ Feingold
Why I Opposed
the
Anti-Terrorism Bill
John Troyer
Put
the War to a Vote
Norman Madarasz
What It
Means to be
Against the War
Patrick
Cockburn
Northern
Alliance Attacks
US Bombing Strategy
Richard Lloyd Parry
Terrible Images
of a "Just" War
October 25, 2001
Ghassan
Andoni
Raid
on Bethlehem
N.D. Jayaprakash
From
Hiroshima to NYC
Evan Schultz
Memo
to Ashcroft:
Read Marbury
The Sunshine
Project
Assault
on the BioWeapons
Convention
Sarah
Turner
Cashing
In on Patriotism
Latin American Colloquium
on Systemology
The Meridia Manifesto
Noam Chomsky
The
New War on Terror
Resources:
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Ashcroft's Onslaught
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Ridge Long Groomed
for Cheney's Job
Those CIA Killing
Bids Never Stopped
The Not-So-Great
Mayor Giuliani
Crop Duster
Ban
Will Save Lives
Madeleine Albright's
Deadly Legacy
How the Bin
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Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
Responses to 9/11:
Chomsky, Russell Banks,
Zinn, and Alice Walker
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October
30, 2001
Atomic Trains Grounded
By Jeffrey St. Clair and
Alexander Cockburn
For years environmentalists have warned that shipping
high-level nuclear waste across the country on rails or highways
was a program fraught with peril. They pointed to the near certainty
that eventually a train would derail or a truck would crash,
spilling radioactive material into streams, fields or cities.
They warned that the US was embarking on a path that would inevitably
led to "a kind of mobile Chernobyl." They even pointed
to the possibility that the nuke trains made an inviting target
for terrorists, who could turn the locomotives into a high-speed
radioactive weapon that could be derailed in the heart of several
of the nation's largest cities, putting the lives of millions
at risk.
These concerns were dismissed as the
ravings of anti-nuke Cassandras by the Department of Energy and,
to a large extent, the national press corps. Indeed, the atomic
boosters had become so confident of their scheme that they were
poised to greenlight the largest rail shipment of nuclear waste
in US history for a 2,000 mile journey from New York to Idaho.
Then came 9/11 and suddenly the anti-nuke organizers didn't seem
so hysterical after all.
The Department of Energy's nuke train
plan came to grinding to a halt, marking yet another salutory
reappraisal of US environmental policy following the terrrorist
attacks of September 11. The atomic waste train was scheduled
to carry 125 highly radioactive nuclear fuel assemblies from
West Valley, New York through ten states to Idaho. The move has
now been postponed until at least April 1, 2002
"Actions speak louder than words,
so although DOE will not admit it publicly, it's clear the West
Valley shipment was suspended due to terrorism and security concerns,"
said Kevin Kamps of Nuclear Information
& Resource Service (NIRS). "We're relieved DOE has
recognized the extreme danger this proposed shipment would have
created and chose instead to suspend the shipment. But the threat
such shipments pose is not going to go away in a few months.
Proposals for shipping tens of thousands of high-level radioactive
waste containers by train and truck through 43 States past the
homes of 50 million Americans to national dumpsites in Utah and
Nevada must be re-examined in light of the potential for terrorist
attacks."
The twin 20 foot-long, dumbbell-shaped
metallic atomic waste containers were scheduled to leave DOE's
West Valley Demonstration Project near Buffalo as early as mid-September.
But due to concerns about additional potential terrorist attacks,
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham suspended DOE nuclear waste
and materials shipments the day after 9/11, capitulating to concerns
that environmentalists and anti-nuke groups had been raising
for years.
Even so the DOE's suspensions were only
temporary. By the end of September, the Department began raising
the possibility that the West Valley shipment might still roll
by Halloween. Because metal gaskets on the two containers have
not been certified for cold weather conditions, DOE had agreed
to deliver the shipment to its Idaho National Engineering and
Environmental Laboratory no later than Oct. 31 in order to avoid
encountering freezing temperatures.
Then on October 7, the DOE reinstituted
its suspension of nuclear waste shipments, citing concerns of
potential reprisal attacks in response to the initiation of U.S.
military action in Afghanistan that day. Despite this, DOE's
West Valley site director Alice Williams told the Buffalo News
on Oct. 16 that the nuclear train might still roll by the end
of the month despite on-going national terrorist threats. However,
the very next day, orders were sent to Williams from DOE headquarters
in Washington explicitly suspending the shipment until next spring,
according to an Oct. 19 Buffalo News article. The two containers
will now be off-loaded from the on-site railcars, where they
sat outdoors since May, and will spend the winter inside the
West Valley facility.
"Energy Secretary Abraham's decision
to halt this high-level nuclear waste shipment, not once, not
twice, but three times clearly shows that the Energy Department
itself acknowledges atomic waste trains like this one are potential
terrorist targets," said Tim Rinne, State Coordinator of
Nebraskans for Peace.
"Attorney General John Ashcroft
and the FBI have warned about additional terrorist attacks. Trucking
firms and railroads have been put on highest alert against attacks
upon hazardous and radiological shipments. Recently, airports
around the Three Mile Island nuclear plant were shut down due
to a terrorist threat. The DOE shipment ban should be extended
indefinitely, and expanded to cover commercial high-level nuclear
waste shipments as well," said Kay Drey of the Missouri
Coalition for the Environment.
Despite the current shipment ban, Energy
Secretary Abraham appears ready to approve the national high-level
atomic waste dumpsite targeted at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. DOE
closed its public comment period on the Yucca proposal Oct. 19,
and has announced Abraham will make his recommendation to President
Bush by the end of the year or early next year.
In recent days, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission publicly announced its "concurrence" with
DOE's Yucca Mountain siting guidelines, and in recent weeks finalized
its own Yucca licensing regulations. At the same time, the NRC
is reviewing a nuclear power industry license application to
"temporarily store" all currently-existing irradiated
fuel at the Skull Valley Goshute Indian reservation in Utah,
which would launch 200 high-level atomic waste trains per year
throughout the country as early as 2004.
"It is hypocritical for DOE to put
the brakes on the West Valley shipment while rushing ahead to
give its thumbs up to Yucca Mountain," said Dave Ritter,
policy analyst at Public
Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program. "Approval
of the Yucca Mountain repository proposal would launch tens of
thousands of high-level atomic waste trucks and trains onto our
roads and rails. Inadequately addressing potential terrorist
threats to such shipments is rash, irresponsible, and reckless."
DOE studies show that 50 million Americans
in 45 States live within a half mile of projected highway and
train routes to Yucca Mountain.
Critics also point to an Aug. 27, 1998
letter written by Abraham, then a U.S. Senator from Michigan,
to then-Energy Secretary Bill Richardson regarding plutonium
shipments. In the letter, Abraham wrote "I am sure you will
agree that the ramifications of an accident are too serious to
consider anything less than the very best emergency response
preparedness.".
"Just as police and firefighters
were on the front line of the 9/11 attacks, so would emergency
responders be called upon to protect our communities in the event
of an atomic waste transport accident or terrorist attack upon
a shipment," said Chris Williams, executive director of
Citizens Action Coalition of
Indiana. "They need to be thoroughly trained and well
equipped to deal with radiation emergencies, and not caught off-guard
as our government agencies have been by the bio-terrorism attacks."
Greens want the NRC to address terrorist
threats to atomic waste transport containers. Commercial high-level
atomic waste shipments, such as those to Carolina Power and Light's
Shearon Harris reactor storage pools in North Carolina, have
continued to roll despite the DOE ban.
In a Sept. 21 response to the Sept. 11
terrorist attacks, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission admitted
that "the capacity of shipping casks to withstand such a
[large aircraft] crash has not been analyzed."
In June 1999 the State of Nevada filed
a "Petition for Rulemaking" to the NRC, charging that
safeguards against terrorist attacks on high-level radioactive
waste shipments were woefully inadequate or non-existent. Nine
state governments and the Western Governors Association endorsed
the petition. Despite officially agreeing to act on the petition
in Sept. 1999, the NRC has yet to do so.
"Large scale movement of radioactive
waste on the roads and rails would create tens of thousands of
potential targets, in virtually any scenario a terrorist might
choose, whether major metropolitan areas, suburbs, or the agricultural
heartland, near schools, hospitals, or water supplies,"
said Corey Conn of Illinois-based Nuclear
Energy Information Service. CP
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