In addition, many issues related to the large scale transportation of high-level waste through our state have not been addressed. Transporting high-level nuclear waste is inherently dangerous because it elevates the risk of radiological release and disperses this risk along transportation routes where our emergency response personnel may lack the training and equipment necessary to respond effectively to a radiological accident. Yet the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Yucca Mountain Project deals inadequately with the transportation scenario. For example, the DOE has not specified which routes would be used for Yucca Mountain shipments or whether the waste would travel by train or by truck, and has not identified a clear process for making these decisions. The canisters that would be used to transport nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain have not been subjected to physical testing, and computer models rely on outdated testing parameters.
Unanswered questions remain about the risk of sabotage and liability in the case of an accident.
Even without an accident, nuclear waste transportation canisters routinely emit the equivalent of one chest x-ray per hour of harmful radiation. Also, property values have been shown to decline along nuclear waste shipment routes. Please ask the DOE to address these transportation issues before finalizing a site recommendation. I urge you to withhold support for the Yucca Mountain repository proposal until these concerns have been addressed and the feasibility of transporting nuclear waste to Nevada has been adequately assessed.