Nevada’s senior senator last week expressed skepticism about the safety of spent-nuclear-fuel casks, which the director of the Idaho National Laboratory touted during a hearing about nuclear energy and waste.
The Thursday hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee veered into a discussion of a Feb. 3 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which spilled hazardous materials. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) said the derailment was one of “many reasons” Nevadans were still concerned about moving spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste to the proposed Yucca Mountain repository in Nye County, Nev.
The proposed, unbuilt repository has been effectively dead after decades of political resistance from Nevada’s congressional delegation.
John Wagner, the director of the Idaho National Laboratory and one of the three witnesses at Thursday’s hearing, told Cortez Masto that “having, being directly involved with designing and licensing spent fuel transport casks, the level of rigor as required by the Nuclear Commission on those package is substantially different” that what was required for transport of the hazardous materials that spilled in East Palestine.
“There’s some really interesting videos of trains being intersected directly perpendicularly with casks and what happens,” Wagner said. “They’re very, very robust systems. I just would like to share that with you.”
Cortez Masto responded by casting doubt on the value of assurances from federal scientists.
“I appreciate your comments about the trains,” Cortez Masto told Wagner. “And just let me say this: I’m a third-generation Nevadan. We were also told by the scientists in the federal government that atomic [weapons] testing in Nevada deserts was safe for everyone and that is proven not to be the case.”
Cortez Masto has become Nevada’s watchdog in Washington for the transportation and storage of radioactive material, waste or not, in the Silver State.
In Thursday’s hearing, Cortez Masto said that “the science isn’t safe at Yucca Mountain.”
