Blue Ribbon Commission would play radioactive waste shell game on the roads, rails, and waterways

While the court ruling on July 1st against the Yucca dump is a major environmental justice victory for the Western Shoshone Indian Nation, President Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission for America's Nuclear Future is advocating "centralized interim storage" for commercial high-level radioactive waste, which could easily lead to a revival of reprocessing in the U.S. The Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in Utah, DOE's Savannah River Site in South Carolina, and the Dresden nuclear power plant and adjacent General Electric reprocessing facility in Morris, Illinois, are at the top of the list for consolidation of high-level radioactive wastes for "interim storage" and/or plutonium extraction. But any "away-from-reactor" scheme would launch an unprecedented number of high-level radioactive waste trucks, trains, and barges onto our nation's roads, rails, and waterways. In terms of accident potential, these would be "Mobile Chernobyls." In terms of attack potential, they would be "dirty bombs on wheels," or "floating radiological dispersal devices." In any event, it would represent a radioactive waste shell game through major metro centers and other sensitive areas, for the wastes would have to be moved all over again, to a permanent dumpsite someday, supposedly.