S.C. Governor Sends Troopers to Borders to Stop Government Shipments of Plutonium

Atlanta Journal Constitution ^ | 6/15/02 | Associated Press

[NormsRevenge]

Norm MeNooDle .. They named the airport in San Jose after him .. what a crock this guy's legacy will end up being the main reason old ladies got strip searched and arab males didn't :-| ..

Profile Now ... Please

[Ben Bolt]

Looks to me like a business deal that went bad , but then again the FedGov sometimes does this sort of thing .

It is to bad this Govenor seems to want his puss on the television more than anything else , if some of the replies here are correct .

This could have been a terrific opportunity to possibly remind some folks about this 'lil thing called states rights .

[l8pilot]

The governor is a certified moron who is happy to put his election ahead of the country's best interests.

The governor IS a certified moron, I'll give you that. However, let's dump the stuff a few miles from your house in "the country's best interests."

[stylin_geek]

Thanks for the post, I was about to say the same thing, but your documentation is much better. If I remember correctly, "spent" nuclear fuel rods have merely fallen below the parameters necessary to sustain a fission reaction because fuel density has dropped below the necessary concentration. So, by reprocessing, the nuclear material brought back to a density that will sustain a fission reaction. Someone somewhere probably has a better take on this, though.

[Ben Bolt]

We can only hope for the best sometimes !

[Rebelbase]

" Alexandria, Virginia, where the FBI staffers have their $400,000 houses."

LOL! My aunt has one of those houses. Its a 40 year old split level that has'nt been updated in 25 years.

[backhoe]

Appreciate it, neighbor. My understanding is that the French, Germans, and many others using reactors recycle the stuff, and we don't due mostly to Carter's fear of "proliferation."
( Yes, we really kept that genie in the bottle.... )

[TiaS]

I'm quite familiar with Hanford and have discovered recently that I spent some time there as a small child.

If you live there, and are skeptical of what I wrote -- you are either in denial or you can't read.

[stylin_geek]

I had no idea Carter was the genius that signed the law banning recycling nuclear material. So much for his nuclear submarine commander credentials. I do find it somewhat interesting, though, that the French use more nuclear power, per capita, than any other nation, and yet they are one of the most rabidly "green" nations of Western Civilization.

[stylin_geek]

I have read information that completely contradicts your statement about birth defects, and an increase in cancers. However, I cannot back up my claim, by posting relevant links..which should be done, if one is going to make such claims. Although, a pretty good resource is "Trashing the Planet" by Dr. Dixie Lee Ray when it comes to debunking nuclear myths.

[rmvh]

Oh no..no..no..no..

You are just a newbie!!.

This isn't "dumping"!!!

Lets pretend that every state doesn't want munitions, gasoline trucks, poisons, etc transported through it....Wouldn't that be wondeful? It sounds so nice and simplistic and might even get the governor, in this pathetic case, re-eected.......

Of course our standard of living would be like it is in Zare if everone followed this reasoning..

Things like the Governmenor proposes sound wonderful to the wombats who have no idea about nuclear waste treatment or what it takes to sustain a moden society. They just follow some political cheerleader because it sounds good.

No. The Governmeor is bottom line a self serving politician...plain and simple.

[TiaS]

I have not read Dr. Dixie Lee Ray, although I have heard of her. Was she a former Director of Los Alamos, and possibly a Governor of Washington State? I have no idea of what her position is. My opinions are based mostly on personal experience and reading books written by former Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall, and Dr. John Gofman, the later a nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and was the co-discoverer of Uranium 233. One of the interesting chapter in Dr. Gofman's book, "Radiation and Human Health", contains a chapter entitled "Hanford Death Studies". You might find that one interesting.

I just checked the Columbia, South Carolina "Star" website and read the article where Federal Judge Cameron McGowan Currie dismissed Governor Jim Hodge's law suit. One can't help but wonder how much the judge knows about radiation/health issues.

Sometime back, when I was more involved in research, I read an article that said Savannah River was already one of the most nuclear unsafe areas in the United States and in some ways compared it to that reactor at Cherynoble, waiting to happen.

[drmatt]

I agree that we should reprocess and recycle nuclear fuel, but the plutonium in question here is surplus plutonium removed from retired nuclear weapons. The plan in the U.S. is to blend this plutonium with natural or low-enriched uranium and burn the fuel as a mixed uranium/plutonium oxide (MOX) in existing light water nuclear reactors. This fuel would be manufactured at the DOE Savannah River Site (SRS) and then sent to the candidate reactors, but as usual the DOE is way behind on this project, so the plutonium would have to be stored at SRS for longer than anticipated. But it really presents no concern being stored on a highly secured government site. The Governor is just doing some political grandstanding to get his name in the news. BTW, the MOX option for plutonium disposition is a dumb idea in my opinion because it actually makes more plutonium than it destroys, because uranium breeds plutonium. All you are doing is degrading the plutonium a bit and mixing it up with some radioactive fission products. Eventually, the spent fuel, along with the spent fuel from 100 other reactors, will be sent to Yucca Mountain for permanent geological disposal. But will it be permanent? There will be roughly 7000 canisters in Yucca Mountain, with each canister containing sufficient plutonium to manufacture 5 to 10 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons. After a few hundred years, the radiation barrier will be greatly diminished, and a clandestine intruder could recover a canister with little difficulty. Are we just planting seeds for a future terrorist? Some advanced reactor designs, like the modular helium reactor, can burn the plutonium directly, destroying 90% of the plutonium in a single pass. This deep-burn option eliminates any long-term proliferation risks. Furthermore, the spent fuel is contained by multiple layers of ceramic coatings that are inert in groundwater environments for hundreds of thousands to millions of years. It's the perfect solution for both the plutonium disposition and nuclear waste disposal problem, and several major utilities (e.g. Entergy) have expressed interest in this design for producing both electricity and hydrogen. Because of the ceramic fuel and other design features, the reactor is passively safe and can withstand complete loss of cooling without damaging the reactor and releasing radioactivity to the environment. The only thing stopping its development are a bunch of hardheads at the Department of Energy that are fixated on MOX or other nutty options like liquid sodium reactors.

[El Sordo]

Or!

Maybe you are wrong.

[TiaS]

Me thinks they are all like a bunch of nutty lemmings . . . .

[CWRWinger]

A few scattered thoughts on this issue:

I'm glad Hodges signed H 3010 before this thing hits.

I heard a live debate between Peeler and Sanford tonight. They both said Hodges is grandstanding for votes. But I like Peeler's insight into this issue best.

BTW, who says the feds won't fly the plutonium in? They could be driving empty trucks.

If Hodges was sincerely for states rights on this one, I could back him.

IMO, let SC use the fuel if that's possible.

[Kobyashi1942]

Hodges, a Democrat who is up for re-election in the fall, has been threatening for weeks to use state troopers to block roads into the Savananna River Site and has vowed to lie down in the road if necessary to stop the plutonium-carrying trucks.

I dispise the Democrats with a passion, but one must admire their ability to use the full wieght and power of whatever governmental office they hold to advance their agenda. If only GWB had the political fire in the belly that Clinton had. Clinton did more to advance the Democratic agenda with the Republicans controlling both houses of congress than Bush did with in 2001 with his party in power!

[CWRWinger]

Gov. Jim Hodges ordered state troopers and other authorities.....

Other authorities?
Why not the Nat'l Guard? Isn't the Guard suppose to be the organized militia for the people?

[4CJ]

States' Rights bump!! And in SC of all places. Well imagine that. LOL

A States' Right Bump indeed! Maybe he read something on FR that reminded him of a backbone?

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Fine, drop it on the S.C. doorstep at their port of enty and let them deal with it.

We'll probably find out if they have the nuts to shoot it out with federal marshalls.