Waste

by folkbum

From the tree-huggers (the "today" references are actually to yesterday):

As John McCain is paying a visit today to the Enrico Fermi nuclear generating station in Monroe, Michigan he can be expected to tout his costly plan to build 45 new nuclear plants by 2030 and 55 more after that. This plan would effectively double the number of nuclear reactors and the amount of dangerous high-level nuclear waste that would need to be transported across the country.

The Sierra Club is today calling attention to the YouTube video that surfaced earlier this year which shows John McCain clearly saying—while shaking his head ‘no’—that he would not be comfortable with nuclear waste traveling through his own home state of Arizona on its way to the unsafe and unproven Yucca Mountain site—something for which John McCain has been one of the Senate’s biggest proponents.

The video can be viewed at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPlaHQCKc34

Transcript (beginning at 1:14): Interviewer: What about the transportation? Would you be comfortable with nuclear waste coming through Arizona on its way, you know going through Phoenix, on its way to uh Yucca Mountain? McCain (Shaking Head): “No, I would not. No, I would not.”

“Why does John McCain think it’s ok for hundreds of tons of dangerous nuclear waste to go through Wisconsin but yet too dangerous to go through his own state?” said Rosemary Wehnes, Midwest Associate Rep. “John McCain simply can’t have it both ways when it comes to the nuclear waste issue. Right now he supports running shipments of dangerous nuclear waste through Wisconsin and sticking Nevadans with 77,000 tons of it forever, while at the same time saying he’s uncomfortable with it going through his own backyard for even a day.”

The bulk of Wisconsin nuclear waste (185 casks) would be transported through Milwaukee, including waste shipped via Lake Michigan into the Port of Milwaukee.

The Sierra Club also pointed out that the very nuclear plant that Senator McCain is visiting today once suffered a partial meltdown. Indeed, a book about the incident is entitled “We Almost Lost Detroit.”

Now, you may not live near the Port of Milwaukee. I do. I feel roughly the same about the transport of nuclear waste through my neighborhood as McCain does about waste going through his.

The idea of nuclear energy is so tempting. There's no spew of particulates into the air. The supply of fuel is considerably closer to infinite than coal or natural gas or pagan babies or whatever it is We Energies is using now that's so expensive they keep jacking up our rates. But there is that whole thing about how the waste sticks around for, you know, centuries. That and the meltdowns. I just don't think the risks are worth saving the pagan babies, or diverting development funds from stuff that won't kill us or mutate our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren into Chuds. (Not that T. Boone's wind-farm windfall is anything but total BS.)

That McCain's a bit of a hypocrite about the matter is just an unsurprising kicker.