Political cartoon by Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News. Buffalo, NY, as well as Thousand Island, NY, are the two most likely border crossings for these shipments, although others could also be used. DOE has invoked security-related secrecy on the routing and timing of the shipments.Attorneys Terry Lodge of Toledo, OH, and Diane Curran of Washington, D.C., legal counsel for an environmental coalition that includes Beyond Nuclear, have filed a Reply Memorandum to the D.C. Circuit Court in defense of a lawsuit against unprecedented truck shipments of highly radioactive liquid waste (also referred to by the U.S. Department of Energy, obscurely, as irradiated target material, or, even more obscurely, as HEUNL, short for highly enriched uranyl nitrate liquid).
See the PLAINTIFFS' REPLY MEMORANDUM, here.
And see the related PLAINTIFFS' MOTION TO SUPPLEMENT THE RECORD, here.
Oral arguments are set for January 18, 2017 in Washington, D.C.
Additional Background
The 100 to 150 high-risk truck shipments would travel more than a thousand miles, from Chalk River Nuclear Lab, Ontario, Canada, to Savannah River Site (SRS), South Carolina, U.S.A. The most likely border crossings are at Buffalo, NY (see political cartoon, left) and Thousand Islands, NY, although other border crossings are possible. The shipments would pass through multiple states. (See map, below left. A full size, legible route map is linked here. Another potential route, this one through the Buffalo, NY border crossing, is shown in a 2013 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission document.)
Ottawa Citizen map showing one of the more likely shipping routes from Chalk River, ON to SRS, SC for highly radioactive liquid waste truck shipments. (See larger sized map linked in entry, right.)The coalition (which includes Beyond Nuclear, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, SRS Watch, Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, Lone Tree Council, Sierra Club, and Environmentalists, Inc.) has been watch-dogging this issue since the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) unprecedented, high-risk scheme first came to light in 2013. It initiated a legal challenge in August 2016.
The U.S. environmental groups are joined by Canadian colleagues in resisting the shipments, including Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, Sierra Club Canada Foundation, Durham Nuclear Awareness, Concerned Citizens of Renfrew County, and National Council of Women of Canada.
The coalition's expert witnesses, Dr. Gordon Edwards of Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility and Dr. Marvin Resnikoff of Radioactive Waste Management Associates, have calculated that the highly radioactive liquid waste is four times more concentrated in hazardous radioactive Cesium than even the infamous high-level radioactive waste liquids at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State. Thus, even an exceedingly small amount of the highly radioactive liquid waste bound from Chalk River to SRS, if spilled into surface water, could ruin even an exceedingly large volume of drinking water, by violating the EPA's Safe Drinking Water Act radioactivity concentration limits. (See Drs. Edwards' and Resnikoff's expert declarations filed in the previous submission by the coalition's legal counsel.)
To make matters worse, the NAC LWT shipping containers to be used have exhibited major quality assurance violations. Besides that, as Dr. Resnikoff has testified, the NAC LWT containers could breach and release their contents, even in a relatively low temperature, short duration fire in a real world transport accident (or attack).
There have also been multiple alarming associated incidents, including accidental drops of irradiated nuclear fuel, at both Chalk River and SRS.
For more information on these particular shipping risks, and additional ones, see Beyond Nuclear's Waste Transporation website section.