The Fort Worth controversy

[delosharriman]

The combined print edition of the Fort Worth Star–Telegram for Friday and Saturday, 16 & 17 October, 2020, carried a headline article, above the fold on the front page, entitled Activists protest plan to transport nuclear waste through DFW. The quality of reporting evidenced in this article was shockingly poor. It consisted almost entirely of quotes from various people, the most prominent being former State Senator Lon Burnam, mouthing the tired old antinuclear positions. No attempt was made to challenge any of these statements. But don’t take my word for it (as LeVar Burton would say), read for yourself.

I was moved to write a letter to the editor, quoted in its entirety herewith. The Star–Telegram limits letters to 150 words each, one per writer per month. It is, in other words, not the kind of letters page where a meaningful debate can be carried on. In the envelope with my letter, I included two articles extracted from the UKAEA magazine ATOM, one on the Windscale inquiry from 1978, and one on the transportation of radioactive material from 1979, along with my letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission addressing the Holtec Consolidated Interim Storage Facility Draft Environmental Impact Statement. So far, I have not seen it printed, nor received any notification as to when or whether it will be. Whether anybody in the newsroom or on the editorial board will pay attention to them for a moment, I do not know, but if the press will not fact–check itself, someone must make the attempt.

To the Editor :

In 1978, the exceptionally thorough Windscale Inquiry in Great Britain found that the transportation of spent fuel from nuclear power stations was far safer than that of, for instance, chlorine — something which routinely moves through Fort Worth without endangering public safety. That was on the basis of less than 20 years of experience. The more than 40 years that have elapsed since that conclusion was drawn have only served to reinforce it, never to contradict.

Lon Burnam wants me to be afraid that spent–fuel flasks will sit in the railyard here and “leak radiation”. The claim is total nonsense. It does not deserve a headline article, especially not one which leaves out the pertinent facts.

Sincerely,

About the same time, the League of Women Voters chapter in Tarrant County — which prominently shows The Hon. Lon Burnam on its list of 2020 Community Sponsors — issued a statement which appears to have been copy–pasted directly from some Standard List of Anti–Nuclear Talking Points for Persons with Morbid Imaginations. Samples include :

The rods are very radioactive and each train car load would contain more Cesium than was released with the Chernobyl disaster and more plutonium than was in the Atom bomb that hit Nagasaki, Japan.
The nuclear waste rail cars are readily identifiable, given their huge dumbbell-like shape, size, and weight, making them a potential terrorist target.
The NRC defines the exposed population as a band approximately 0.5 miles on either side of the transportation route. We assume this is because the containers continuously emit a small amount of radioactivity, and even minor accidents, slow-moving rail cars, or stopped rail cars, would increase emissions.

They assume? No surprise that their assumption is preposterous!

This statement was also incredibly poorly written and edited. After making assertions such as those quoted above, it concludes by saying Transporting large amounts of HLW through highly populated areas is an acceptable risk. Almost certainly unacceptable was meant here.

I am still working on letters to Mr Burnham and to the LWV chapter. So far I have come up with some choice phrases, such as As well say that bald eagles’ nests will leak baldness!, but it remains to arrange them effectively. My letter to the NRC may, however, be of interest.

Esteemed Commissioners :

The proceedings regarding the proposed Holtec Consolidated Interim Storage Facility have been criticized on the basis that people who might be affected by the transportation of spent fuel to the facility ought to be consulted. It is in that capacity that I come forward. Fort Worth is a major rail center, and I would expect at least a third of shipments headed to the vicinity of El Paso to go by way of my home town.

Hundreds of carloads of explosive, corrosive, toxic, and otherwise hazardous materials pass through Fort Worth in a typical day. Many of them, such as liquefied petroleum gas, anhydrous ammonia, or chlorine, are volatile fluids under pressure, separated from the outside world only by a skin of steel perhaps a centimeter or two thick. It is a testimony to the American railroading profession that, for all the thumping and banging in the classification and switching yards here as trains are broken up and rebuilt, years may elapse between incidents which result in injury to members of the public.

It is safe to say that those who have spoken in opposition to the CISF project do not generally accept the judgment of Commission staff that the anticipated environmental impacts of transporting spent fuel to the facility are minimal. Rather they speak in highly–colored terms of people and places along the transport routes being irradiated and contaminated, employing language clearly calculated rather to alarm than to illuminate — “Mobile Chernobyls” being perhaps the most luridly obnoxious example.

And what, pray tell, do they wish me to be alarmed about? In the three generations during which spent fuel packages of various designs have been transported on land and water in (and between) a number of countries, never once has a transport flask cracked open. Flasks have been subjected to all manner of ludicrous tests, including being dropped from a helicopter onto a spike, and slammed into by a rocket–propelled railway locomotive, without losing their integrity. Even if one did, the material within is a tough, refractory ceramic, inert to air and water, and sealed up in metal ; nor is there any force within the package that would work to disperse the contents. In short, a path to the kind of destruction seen at Lac–Mégantic, which we continually invite by our reliance on fossil fuels, is not to be found.

At the time of the Windscale inquiry, some 40 years ago, one of the most respected jurists in Britain found that, on the basis of the evidence before him, the transport of spent fuel was far from burdening the public with undue risks. Nothing in the experience of the intervening time tends to contradict that. Suppose that operation of the CISF resulted in a carload of spent fuel passing through Fort Worth every day, which is more than I anticipate. This would cause me far less concern than I already feel about the unit coal trains which in fact do move on a daily basis. I decline to be afraid, merely because someone who clearly does not know what he is talking about tells me I should. In fact the suggestion is offensive to the citizen who is conscious of his duties.

Since very few of those who speak in opposition seem to confine themselves to a single point, I feel justified in leaving the question which most nearly concerns me, in order to observe that none of the other objections they continually advance appears to be any better–founded.

The site represents an environmental injustice against marginalized and Indigenous communities? Only if some widespread harm arises from the facility, an assumption which they justify, if at all, by appealing to a comic–book understanding of science.

The project itself cannot be considered, because the Nuclear Waste Policy Act does not permit away–from–reactor storage? The use of the inoperable GE–Midwest reprocessing plant for the purpose would seem to indicate otherwise.

The scope of the environmental impact study is too narrow, because it does not comprehend the entire enterprise of nuclear energy in all its aspects? In framing the Atomic Energy Act, Congress has explicitly declared that the employment of this force of nature for civil purposes is in the national interest. Since the powers of the Commission derive from this Act, the question is utterly beyond its competence.

Realistically, when the nature and scope of the project at hand are considered, so long as the separate nuclear safety review finds the Holtec proposal sound, it is difficult to see how the findings of the draft Environmental Impact Statement can be challenged. The character of these objections, and the manner in which they are brought forward, leaves me with no confidence that they are offered in good faith. In our American political system, the drastically misinformed and even the disingenuous have the right to air their opinions in public debate, and so we must be on our guard lest such views come to shape our national policy. As such, although I find myself indifferent to the CISF proposal on its merits, I feel obligated to rise in support of it.

Respectfully