Toledo, OH—At the Reynolds Corners branch library, 4833 Dorr Street, an Atomic Age version of Paul Revere's ride will take place on Tuesday, October 30, 2018 beginning at 6:30pm.  The event is free and open to the public. 

2,314 rail-sized casks on trains, and another 657 Legal Weight Truck-sized casks on the interstates, would travel through Ohio, bound for Nevada, if the Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) dump opens. The shipments would take place over the course of not years, but decades (25-50 years). Northern OH would be particularly hard hit. The 2,971 high-level radioactive waste shipments by road and/or rail would directly cross through 13 of OH’s 16 U.S. congressional districts, including, in northern OH, many surface waters that then flow into Lake Erie. 

So-called “centralized interim storage facilities” in New Mexico and/or Texas could well mean even larger shipment numbers through OH. (Barge shipments upstream on the Great Lakes are also proposed.) Health, safety, security, and environmental risks include severe accidents, or even terrorist attacks, releasing catastrophic amounts of hazardous radioactivity, impacting an entire region; even routine, incident-free shipments would be like “mobile X-ray machines that can’t be turned off,” delivering a harmful dose at close range as they pass by. 

Come learn more about the risks, and how you can help prevent them. See the road and rail routes map for Ohio, a close up map of Cleveland region routes, as well as shipment numbers for OH (p.4/20), and the U.S. congressional districts crossed (pgs. 15-16/20). The opening of so-called centralized interim storage sites for HLRW, in New Mexico and/or Texas, as early as June 2022, would mean even larger numbers of shipments (as would a proposed expansion of the Yucca dump), beginning sooner, for northern OH. 

Toledo-based attorney Terry Lodge serves as legal counsel for a national environmental coalition opposing both CISFs, and the high-risk shipments they would launch.

 

 

A presentation by Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist, Beyond Nuclear, addressing the safety and security risks of transporting highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel on the roads and rails, as proposed in legislation currently before the U.S. Congress. He will also discuss the risks of irradiated nuclear fuel indoor wet storage pool fires for the entire region, and the interim alternative of Hardened On-Site Storage (HOSS), as well as the need to stop generating high-level radioactive waste.

 

 

When and Where:  Toledo Lucas County Public Library Reynolds Corners branch (4833 Dorr Street, Toledo, Ohio 43615). Complimentary food and beverages will be provided.  

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