by Benjamin Israel
staff editor

If the Department of Energy carries out its plans, in 2010, giant stainless steel trucks accompanied by armed guards carrying high-level nuclear wastes would drive past the UM-St. Louis on Interstate 70.

But not if most of the more than 100 people who showed up for a hearing Thursday afternoon at America's Center about the transportation and storage of nuclear waste have their way. The afternoon hearing was the first of two the Department of Energy held in St. Louis as part of a series of hearings in 20 sites across the country.

Department of Energy documents show that spent fuel rods from seven power plants in Alabama, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina would go by truck down Interstate 70 by the campus on their way to the Yucca Mountain in Nevada where it would be buried at least 660 feet under the ground. Other shipments would use Interstate 270 through North County or the Union Pacific Railroad tracks that go through Webster Groves and Kirkwood.

More than 20 local residents told the Energy Department representatives there that they don't want the nuclear waste coming through their or any other neighborhood.

"In the event of a worst-case-scenario accident," asked Oakland resident Debra Wilson, "how long would it be before we could return to normal life?"

Wilson asked, "Why are they allowed to keep producing nuclear waste, if they can't safely dispose of nuclear waste?"

Currently, the U.S. government requires the 72 commercial nuclear reactors and five Department of Energy sites to store their high-level nuclear wastes on site in pools of water or above-ground concrete storage until the details of shipment to Yucca Mountain are worked out, said Wendy Dixon, project director for the Department of Energy, in her presentation Thursday. The hearing was part of the process for final approval for an Environmental Impact Statement for the Yucca Mountain Project, including transportation to the site.

Congress has mandated that the Department of Energy use the Yucca Mountain site for the final disposal of high-level nuclear wastes.

The plan calls for transporting the waste by truck and train in specially designed casks to Yucca Mountain where it would be buried and guarded for at least 100 years, before being permanently sealed, Dixon said. The shipments would start in 2010 and end when the last nuclear reactor goes out of commission, which Dixon said would be in 2047.

She acknowledged that the waste would emit dangerous radiation and be potentially explosive for thousands of years and that a National Academy of Sciences report said it is impossible to predict what society will be like in 100 years.

Tracy Ikenberry, a health physicist for Dade Moeller & Associates, who is a consultant to the Department of Energy, said in an interview that the government has already determined that the nuclear waste in the 77 sites "is more vulnerable, presents more of a risk sitting at the sites than it is in a deep geological repository in Nevada."

Gavin Perry, a researcher at the Washington University School of Medicine, agreed with Ikenberry on that point.

"We fought against building these plants for over 20 years, and you built them anyway," Perry said at the hearing. "You created the most expensive electricity ever generated" as well as highly toxic wastes that pose a danger for thousands of years. He supported putting existing waste in deep mountain storage, but opposed using any highways or railroads that go through populated areas for transporting it. Instead, he proposed building secure rail lines around cities.

"Now you want to take the most dangerous elements known to man through major cities," Perry said, after noting that radioactivity will inevitably escape from the casks even if somehow they avoid accidents. "I don't think so."

Helene Frankel of St. Louis objected to shipping the waste to "Nevada, the third most active seismic area in the United States." She noted that the area just had an earthquake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale.She asked the department to keep the waste where it is until science finds a way to neutralize it rather than dumping in the ground. "We don't know everything," Frankel said. "We can't predict 10,000 years. We can't even predict next week's weather."

Margaret Hermes of St. Louis said the only reason the government wants to transport the waste so soon is "The electric utility companies want to keep making this high-level waste and are running out of room." She said a better solution would be to shut the plants down so the waste could be stored "on site at non-operating reactors."

All of those who testified in favor of the Energy Department's plan were in some way employed by the nuclear industry.

Robert Jones, a consultant from California, said the technology is safe. "In 50 years of transporting these materials, there have been a few routine incidents," Jones said."Only one was regarded as life threatening."