Ten years ago today...

...Counterpunch quoted Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps (then working at Nuclear Information and Resource Service) concerning a train tunnel fire beneath downtown Baltimore -- on a route targeted for high-level radioactive waste shipments. The risks of "Mobile Chernobyls" caused by severe accidents, or "dirty bombs on wheels" caused by terrorist attacks, are rearing their ugly heads again in 2011, as President Obama's and Energy Secretary Chu's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future moves to advocate "centralized interim storage" (parking lot dumps) for high-level radioactive wastes. If carried out, this would lead to unprecedented thousands of shipments of high-level radioactive waste on the roads, rails, and waterways. It would represent a very risky radioactive waste shell game for no good reason, as the containers would have to be moved someday all over again -- this time to a permanent disposal site, perhaps back in the same direction from which they came.