As I pointed out, at one time it seemed highly unlikely that anyone would hijack a jetplane and fly it into the World Trade Center. But it happened anyway.
Well, because what you are saying is simply untrue. It is the Yucca proponents who want to magnify the dangers and risks, by increasing the number of storage facilities and by introducing the risks associated with transportation. If Yucca is used for storage, it will not eliminate the on-site storage of nuclear waste. All it will do is add one more place that nuclear waste is stored. And most of it will be in an area that is geologically unsuitable for such a task. Earthquakes happen, and happen at Yucca, as I cited previously. Yucca is also a dormant, but not dead volcano.
Nice picture. No facts. How fast was it going? What type of cask is that? Was it empty? What did it impact? What year was this picture taken? Were there independent observers? When come back, bring facts.
Define your term, please. What would be too dangerous? And why does storing it where it is have to be less risky? If it’s the same risk, as your arguments seem to indicate, then why not leave it where it is and eliminate the dangers of transportation?
And, you’re wrong too about the site location. It is not “in the middle of nowhere”, nor is it “a hundred miles from anything”. You obviously are ignorant in regards to Nevada, or you would know that the town of Armagosa (population 1600+) is less than 10 miles from Yucca Mountain, Beatty (population 1200+) is less than 20 miles from Yucca Mountain, Tonopah (population 2600+) is less than 70 miles from Yucca Mountain and that there are dozens of other towns and countless ranches, all less than 100 miles from Yucca. As a charter member of this site, you should know better than to mislead people like that.
As I showed previously, even the DOE concedes that there will be accidents during transport; they are inevitable. But if there is no transport, there cannot be an accident during transport. I’ll take my elimination of accident risk over your crossed fingers any day, in this situation.
You are wrong about the suitability of the casks to store nuclear waste for many tens of thousands of years, too. There are no such casks. They don’t exist. The casks you are talking about are for the transport of nuclear waste, not for storage.
But, if the containers are as safe as you think they are, why does it need to be transported and stored at Yucca at all? If they are so safe, why can’t they stay where they are now? If any container failure will be monitored and detected, why not do that where they are and eliminate the risk of accident from transport?
I’ll tell you why: because people don’t want this stuff in their own backyard. They (rightly) fear it and want to put it out of sight, out of mind.
Lying to oneself to justify unreasonable responses to fear is easy; just look at Iraq. The nuclear waste scenario is not very different. On-site nuclear waste storage will not end if Yucca is licensed. We will simply have one more waste storage site. And we will incur risks that otherwise could be avoided, by just not moving the damn stuff.
I ask again: If the containers are as safe as you think they are, why does it need to be transported and stored at Yucca at all? If they are so safe, why can’t they stay where they are now? If any container failure will be monitored and detected, why not do that where they are and eliminate the risk of accident from transport?