Transportation risk, Skin Cancer, and Politics
Posted by Timothy Wheeler on May 24, 1999 at 23:24:14:In Reply to: How safe is Santa Fe? posted by Donna Roberts on May 24, 1999 at 10:44:00:
Donna,
Welcome to New Mexico! The Land of Enchantment, not to mention the land of the flea (as in the plague bearing variety. Yes, THE plague), land of the Hanta virus, land of inebriated uninsured motorists, and last but not least, land of skin cancer! If you are concerned about public health risks in New Mexico, you would be better served to focus on these issues than to worry about the potential danger to your family from WIPP.
First off, New Mexico has the highest rate of skin cancer in the United States. The danger is real, don’t let anybody tell you “its just skin cancer.” People in New Mexico actually die from it. I have lived in New Mexico for 19 years and have had two malignancies and two precancerous growths removed from my skin. No telling if those moles were caused by the New Mexico sun or from my days of playing on the beaches of New Hampshire as a child, but he who flaunts his skin to the sun a 5000 plus feet does so at considerable risk.
So far this year, it’s a bumper crop for the Hanta virus, and doctors expect the incidence of this illness to worsen as the year continues. And the plague is also a problem not to be lightly dismissed. Just last week residents of Albuquerque were told to be careful when walking their pets in the foothills and in the mountains of the Sandia range. These potentially fatal illnesses are not just restricted to the remote corners of the Navajo nation.
And approximately 50% of all New Mexico drivers do not carry automobile liability insurance, despite a law that requires such coverage. Then there is New Mexico’s status as one of the worst for drunken driving.
In light of this last dubious distinction for New Mexico, it is interesting that you focused on the transportation safety issue with regard to WIPP. I am an engineer with 19 years of experience in the area of risk and safety analysis in areas such as nuclear power plant safety and the transportation of radioactive materials. Transportation always entails a level of risk, whether dangerous or hazardous cargoes are involved or not. It is meaningless to discuss transportation risk without doing so in the context of comparative risks. Many hazardous materials are shipped daily all over the highways of Canada and the United States. Gasoline, acids, poisons, caustics, chlorine, arsine, phosgene, dynamite, to name a few. But nothing (unless, perhaps, its spent nuclear fuel) is more securely packaged than the wastes bound for WIPP.
Extensive risk analyses have been conducted to assess the public health risk associated with the WIPP shipments. Both the health impacts associated with incident-free transportation (i.e., the health risks associated with the radiation normally emitted from the packages) and the accident risks have been estimated. The shipment of the WIPP wastes is among the safest of all commercial and governmental shipments on the road. You are much safer driving next to a WIPP shipment than a gasoline truck or a shipment of chlorine headed to the Santa Fe water works.
The WIPP transportation risk analyses have been published in the WIPP Environmental Impact Statement. Anti-WIPP groups continuously attack these analyses, but they have failed to present substantive engineering and scientific analyses to refute these risk estimates, nor do they chose to discuss the WIPP transportation risks in any type of meaningful comparative context. Why is this? Because the anti-WIPP organizations are not really against WIPP. They are really against the continuing U.S. policy of nuclear armament (just check out the CCNS web page). So why oppose WIPP per se? Because if one can successfully attack any single aspect of the whole nuclear weapons production process (e.g., transportation of radioactive materials) then one can maintain political leverage and public support against the central issue at hand (nuclear weapons).
Should organizations opposed to nuclear weapons ever achieve their goals regarding nuclear weapons they while aggressively seek a program of radioactive waste disposal. And why is this? Because they understand two things very well; 1) the current status of radioactive wastes is unstable and environmentally unacceptable, and 2) the risks associated with the transportation and disposal of such wastes are acceptable and well worth the benefits derived from addressing the environmental threats from the current waste situation.
So opposition to WIPP is political, not technical. It is ironic that CCNS speaks out about the alleged hazards of the WIPP shipments. Yet other national environmental organizations (such as the National Resources Defense Council) are on public record as endorsing certain DOE activities such as the shipment of highly radioactive weapons grade spent nuclear fuel across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, through highly populated American ports. Interesting how one environmental organization can find transportation of transuranic wastes through Santa Fe as unacceptable yet another determines (based on a DOE analysis, no less!) that the risks associated with the shipment of spent nuclear fuel through highly populated ports are acceptable.
I believe that this is a strong argument for expanding your source of information before determining, in your own mind, how safe is Santa Fe. I can tell you that I fear not for the safety of my mother, father, brother, his wife, and my niece, all of whom live in Santa Fe, with regard to the WIPP shipments.
With regard to the likelihood that WIPP will be stopped, it is my opinion that WIPP will become a fully operational geologic repository. As I have stated, the opposition to WIPP is political, not technical. The opposition to WIPP is really playing a legal and political game to stop WIPP. And I do not believe that the prevailing political climate in this country will support their agenda.
Again, welcome, and pass the sunscreen!
Timothy Wheeler
- Sorting things out Ricardo Peres 6/02/99 (0)
- UV radiation vs. WIPP???? Joan Seeman 5/28/99 (0)