nuclear-news

Environmentalists are sounding alarms about the possible consequences, especially if a truck crashes, catches fire and causes the waste to escape its container.

Kamps likened the possibility to the 1986 disaster in the Ukraine that killed 30 people, injured hundreds more and contaminated huge swaths of land.

In 2013, the department said a study isn’t needed because earlier reports have already been done. But those studies focused on solid waste – not liquid – and environmentalists say this would be the first time liquid nuclear waste has been moved in North America.

“Transporting even solid, high-level radioactive waste – such as irradiated nuclear fuel from commercial atomic reactors – is already, itself, very high risk,” Kamps said………

environmental groups say the Energy Department doesn’t need to move the waste in the first place.

In at least one similar situation, nuclear waste in Indonesia was diluted so that it no longer contained weapons-grade uranium, said Mary Olson, director of the southeast office of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, another group involved in the lawsuit.

That waste was solidified and placed in storage, rather than moved back to the United States, she said.“The same plan could be applied to the Chalk River waste,” she said.

An Energy Department public affairs office didn’t respond to a request for comment……