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This article was first published June 29, 1007

The thought of radioactive material being hauled over public highways alongside the family sedan or by rail past neighborhoods is at the heart of the safety debate.

Fresh fuel going to the plant is no more radioactive than the family dinner table, said Henriks Zeile, an emeritus member of the American Nuclear Society.

“However, used fuel is quite dangerous because it does have quite a bit of radiation associated with it – in fact, lots of radiation associated with it,” he said.

But Craig Nesbit, a spokesman for Exelon Nuclear, said transportation of radioactive waste is not even a hot topic for now, should the company even decide to build a plant in Matagorda or Victoria counties.

“The debate hasn’t gotten into transportation yet because nobody knows where we’re going to take it,” he said, noting the federal government hasn’t established a permanent site where the radioactive material can be deposited.

“I will tell you, however, on a technological basis, the transportation piece is not really an issue at all,” he said.

The canisters used to move the material have been mounted on jet engines and crashed into concrete block walls at 600 mph and put into pools of jet fuel and burned for eight hours without any problem, he said.

“These canisters are amazing,”Nesbit said. “There’s not much you could do to them.”

Kevin Kamps with the watchdog group Nuclear Information and Resource Service said he doesn’t believe the shipments are as safe as the nuclear industry would like the public to think.

“Even rail shipments are vulnerable to severe accidents or terrorist attacks,” he said. “Everyone of those containers on a trail will contain 240 times the long-lasting radiation released at Hiroshima, just to give you an idea of how much deadly cargo is inside.”

Even if a fraction of the material was released in an accident or attack, Kamps said, it would be disastrous.

Zeile said multiple agencies are involved in planning routes and determining the best methods for safely shipping the radioactive material.

“It’s a very coordinated effort,”he said. “The U.S. Department of Transportation identifies the preferred routes. It basically identifies interstate highways and bypass routes around the cities because they don’t particularly care to move the stuff through cities.”

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is charged with approving all transportation security plans for those routes.

“There’s satellite tracking put in place for these movements to make sure they know exactly where the fuel is at any one time,” he said. “They keep the shipments secret. They don’t publicize them anyplace.”

Nesbit said spent fuel may have to be moved by truck from a plant to a nearby rail spur.

“But the vast majority of it – 80 or 90 percent of it – moves by rail,” he said. “These are unmarked rail cars, and they are heavily secured.”

Nesbit said the routes are not published. He said while people might be able to guess the routes, they would not know when the shipments were taking place.

Director Ray Miller with the Metropolitan Planning Organization, which coordinates transportation planning in Victoria County, said he thinks that group should be involved in route selection if a plant is built near Victoria.

“The Metropolitan Planning Organization would be a good sounding board,” he said. “You’ve got a good cross-section from both the county government and city government on the MPO.”

Miller said the city is preparing a hazardous materials route plan for Victoria, but it applies to non-radioactive material. He said he’d have to research how material going to and from the nuclear plant would be covered –if at all – by the plan.

“I’d just like to make sure we keep materials classified as hazardous away from the urban centers,” he said.

David Tewes is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact him at 361-580-6515 or dtewes@vicad.com, or comment on this story at .