Dear U.S. Citizen,
Hello my name is ____________; I am a student at __________________. I am writing this letter in hope that I will cast some light on a very important decision that will affect you and your family.
There is a bill in Congress right now that, if passed, will allow for nuclear waste to be transported through forty-three states, endangering most of the U.S. population, on its way to a general holding facility in Yucca Mountain located in Nevada.
The government needed to find a place to store the nation’s nuclear waste. They chose the Yucca Mountain because it is not too close to human population. This site would be safer then what is being done with the waste now. Currently the waste is kept stuffed in small “garage style” buildings, which are quickly becoming overrun.
With one hundred ten nuclear power reactors in seventy communities in the U.S., it’s no wonder that nuclear waste is building up at such and extreme rate. In order to deal with the build up, the government decided to dump the nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain. This site was chosen, not because the government thought that it was the best site in America to store it’s deadly waste, but because Nevada was so politically weak in the late eighties (when they decided to start the program) that it was easy for the federal government to force this decision on Nevada. If Congress passes this bill they will start shipping out huge quantities of nuclear waste. The shipments will be carried on trucks, trains, and barges.
The Essay on Yucca Mountain Waste Nuclear People
... keep Yucca Mountain free of nuclear waste, the Shoshone hit a setback on February 15 th when President Bush designated the Yucca Mountain site for ... EPA). The Government tried picking a remote location for this storage facility, so they choose the area where Nuclear Bombs were ... According to the Shoshone this is not true. "The government's own contractor, the State of Nevada and the American people ...
According to a spokesperson from the Department of Transportation, the shipments have to take the most direct Interstate routes, even if they have to go through large cities. Meaning if there were to be an accident it could wipe out the population of a huge city.
According to a study that the American Petroleum Institute performed, heavy truck accidents occur about six times for every million miles traveled, which means about fifteen accidents a year will be expected. With this many accidents you would think the waste would be transported in very safe containers, they’re not.
The containers that will be used for transportation are unsafe. First of all they are old, they were built between 1960 and 1970. Second, they have never been physically tested. And third, the containers are only designed to withstand a crash with an immovable object at thirty miles per hour. If these containers were to break, it would mean certain death to anyone who was around the spill. According to N.I.R.S. (Nuclear Information and Resource Service) a person standing three feet from a spill would receive enough radiation to be killed within ten seconds.
Along with the transportation being dangerous, so is the storage. The Yucca Mountain site is not a good dumping site for four reasons. The first reason is that the radioactive gas, carbon-14, is likely to leak out, causing 25,000 additional cancers over a short period of time. The second reason is that there has been more then 600 earthquakes within a fifty-mile radius within the last twenty years. There are thirty-five fault lines including two that run under Yucca Mountain. The third reason is that scientists have found evidence that there is a magma pocket that is slowly rising deep inside the mountain, meaning that a volcano is possible in the future. The fourth and final reason that the Yucca Mountain would not make a good site to dump nuclear waste is because water moves so fast through the rocks of the mountain. If a container were to break, then it would cause the ground water to become contaminated very quickly.
You now know a little bit more about the bill in Congress. I urge you to put a stop to this decision. You need to call, write, and email your Congressmen and let them know that you do not want nuclear waste traveling through your backyards, endangering your family’s health.
The Essay on Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste The controversy, surrounding the issue of proposed nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada has been around since the time when in 1978 U.S. Department of Energy (DEO) started to look for the suitable location to have such depository at. At present time, the deadly waste is stored at 131 different sites throughout the USA, making it ever harder to insure that ...
Sincerely yours,
