Posted on 06/28/2002 6:38:56 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
A scare raises serious concerns about safety
By Larry Lange, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter
A Navy truck carrying an empty tank used to haul radioactive liquid briefly closed one lane of a state highway in Bremerton yesterday when a rear brake overheated. The incident raised new questions about the movement of hazardous material across the state.The brakes overheated about 200 yards from the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard gate, sending smoke into the air from a rear wheel. The driver of the Navy truck cooled the brakes with an extinguisher.
"There was no radioactive release, there were no injuries and there was no public hazard," State Patrol Trooper Glen Tyrrell said.
But the incident was another reminder that radioactive material crisscrosses Puget Sound and the country every day, and some watchdog groups believe the risk of accidents releasing radiation could increase in coming years.
There have been auto accidents in Eastern Washington caused by dust storms in the arid region, said Hyun Lee, an attorney with Heart of America Northwest, a group monitoring the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
"If that happened with a truck full of low level radioactive waste on a dusty, windy day, this stuff could get dispersed in the air," he said. Lee said the situation would worsen if hazardous materials, which can be flammable or corrosive, were added to the mix.
In yesterday's incident, the truck was hauling the tank to the Naval shipyard from the Bangor submarine station shortly before 11:30 a.m. when the brakes overheated.
A shipyard spokeswoman, Mary Anne Mascianica, said the tank was being taken to the shipyard for disposal. She could not say what radioactive liquids had been in it but said the tank had been recently cleaned.
Radioactive material and other forms of hazardous waste are hauled around the Sound and the country in "vast numbers," said Jerry Amato, an administrator for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
The material ranges from common household items such as drain cleaner to automotive fuel, up to high-radiation nuclear waste and explosives.
Most of the materials are well-packaged and carried in small amounts that don't require a permit, Amato said, so there's no easy way to estimate the amount moved.
"The numbers are staggering," he said. "I don't know that anybody has that kind of (tracking) system."
In response to the terrorist attacks in September, there was some talk about improving the tracking for the shipment of radioactive material, said Sheryl Hutchison, spokeswoman for the state Department of Ecology.
"I think that's probably still under discussion," she said. "No proposal has come out of it."
In the meantime, the amount of radioactive material being transported is expected to increase.
The Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeastern Washington is developing plans to increase the amount of radioactive waste it will receive from bomb-making facilities. There are also plans to accept radioactive waste mixed with hazardous chemicals, as well as material that is radioactive for thousands of years.
Under the new plan, a minimum of 70,000 trucks over 40 years will rumble into Washington carrying the deadly material, according to Heart of America Northwest.
And there are concerns about the shipment of waste from Hanford and the state's commercial reactor to a national waste repository. The U.S. Senate plans to decide soon whether to remove the last political hurdle to burying the waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain, and opponents are using the transportation issue in an uphill effort to sway lawmakers to vote against the project.
Waste could be packed in massive casks and transported on highways.
Watchdog organizations are concerned about high levels of exposure, even if there are no accidents.
In Washington, the waste would travel within a mile of 87 schools and five hospitals, according to an analysis of shipping routes by the Environmental Working Group, a D.C.-based national research group. They also found that there were 366 fatal tractor-trailer wrecks from 1994 to 2000.
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