 |
|
|
 Editorials | At Issue | July 2005 
Secret Nuclear Waste Shipment Should Be Campaign Issue
 Talli Nauman - The Herald Mexico
Transporting nuclear waste is always a dangerous thing, despite Perma-Fix Environmental Services statement that no issues regarding national security or risk to public health and safety exist in a plan to ship it from Mexico´s Laguna Verde atomic power plant to the United States. The hazard is particularly high in this little-known scheme to send radioactive by-products from the southeastern state of Veracruz to the southeastern U.S. state of Tennessee and then on to Utah state in the intermountain west.
Not only will the potentially cancer-inducing scrap shipment travel furtively through hundreds of communities, but the sender is very evidently guilty of past mishandling of radioactive materials.
Mexicos only atomic power plant, Laguna Verde is run by the Federal Electricity Commission, which has known for years that its on-site handling and storage of rad-waste is woefully inadequate.
So even proponents of nuclear energy raised their eyebrows when Perma-Fix and its subsidiary Diversified Scientific Services, Inc. (DSSI) sent US$6,000 to the Rockville, Maryland-based Nuclear Regulatory Commission last year, together with an application for a permit to deliver the cargo across the border at Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas.
Meanwhile, the dyed-in-the-wool anti-nukers who got wind of the project could only lament that Mexico ever bought Laguna Verdes two reactors from General Electric in the United States and that neither of the countries has a solution to the lethal waste from them.
The anticipated payload could pass through your town anytime now on a tractor-trailer. It will probably be contained in about 251 drums of about 200 liters apiece. And you just better hope it doesnt have a highway accident.
It consists of liquids, semi-solids, solids, and combustible materials containing mixed fission product radio-nuclides and other contaminants. More specifically, this may include contaminated oil, solvents, grease, paint chips, paint sludge, resins, and other gunk, all of which is categorized officially as Class A unstable material. It all comes from the past 30 years of operations at the Gulf Coast location of Laguna Verde. The idea is to chuck it into DSSIs industrial boiler at Oak Ridge, along with other waste the company gathers, and reduce it to (radioactive) ashes, which could then be passed along to Envirocare of Utah, Inc., for what is known as final disposition.
Not surprisingly to me, Mexican authorities responsible for the power plant tried to hide this stomach-turning eventuality. After all, when I wanted to visit Laguna Verde some years back, it took just short of an act of Congress to get the permission from CFE: an order from the office of the president of the republic.
The CFE and Mexico.s National Nuclear Security and Safety Commission both denied knowledge of the waste shipment plan. But thanks to the paper trail made by DSSI in the United States and to a Mexican citizen´s freedom-of-information request abetted by Mexico.s new Federal Information Access Institute (IFAI), the truth came to light.
At a recent community right-to-know workshop of activists from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, a representative of the national Environment and Natural Resources Secretariat, whose name I will keep to myself so as not to shame him, called the subject of the information request about the Laguna Verde waste transfer an .insignificant one.
However, IFAI representative Ricardo Becerra, whose name I will mention because he can be proud of his point, stated: .Public security increases in direct proportion to the availability of information.
Mexico has refrained from its initial project of expanding atomic energy production, producing only about 3 percent of its power from uranium at present. Yet even with this scaled-down nuclear capacity, the government finds itself in the unenviable position of corruptly covering up the sore spot of nuclear waste shipments.
Many lessons can be extracted from this position. Activists should draw on them and make them into presidential campaign issues in the coming election year. Transparency and accountability measures are key to educating and protecting the public when it comes to environmental health threats such as power plant radiation.
Nuclear power producers should store their waste at their sites to prevent transportation accidents and to show that the only way to avoid a radioactive buildup is to shun the technology from the beginning. Laguna Verde is nearing the end of its active life. The next president should be the one who promises to enshrine it and all its wastes in a casing as a reminder that safer, more democratic energy alternatives must be exercised.
Talli Nauman is a founder and co-director of Journalism to Raise Environmental Awareness, a project initiated with support from the MacArthur Foundation. She is the Americas Program Associate at the International Relations Center. (talli@direcway.com) |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us