Gary Sandquist, Ph.D.
University Professor

Continued...

Verdoia: It seems to me that the nation has made at least stabs at some aspects of national energy policies, especially when it comes to accepting the responsibility for high level radioactive waste, spent nuclear fuel rods. They made the promises in the 1980s. They set their own deadlines for the Department of Energy in 1998, and we blew right past those. What's the consequence of not being able to effectively manage the waste?

Dr. Sanquist: If we do not, we will lose a nuclear option. I think that would be greatly unfortunate. Now, I don't think we should provide any special support for nuclear, it has to compete in the arena of economics with all of the other energy sources but if we forego nuclear, then we have really no accredible let's say energy source for providing electrical power that does not impact greatly on the environment, the greenhouse gases. We have signed the Kyoto Treaty. We implied that the United States would make some commitments and reduce our consumption, or production of carbon dioxide back to 1990 levels. We have not done that and if we were to close down nuclear power, which some people have talked about it, we would exceed it by a factor of 25 percent to 30 percent. So if we really feel strongly about greenhouse effects and alternation in weather, nuclear is about the only source that we have available to do that.

Now, admittedly, it's got to compete in the economic sector but interesting enough, nuclear power is part of, is probably the cheapest electrical power generated in the United States right now. We're generating electrical power from the nuclear, from nuclear plants at about two cents per kilowatt hour. I understand Californian's, some areas their reaching ten cents, twelve cents per kilowatt hour. This may not seem like much of a difference but when you're talking about the billions of kilowatt hours that are consumed, that's saying that their bill in California can be factored, or most, you know, factors of four or five times what we might pay. So nuclear has to be available, I think, in order to make electrical power reasonable. Can most families cope with a power bill, electrical power bill of $400 or $500 dollars a month? Would they tolerate it? Or would they start demanding some political response or action? And I think they will.

Verdoia: If we were talking about any other form of industrial waste, being located in Skull Valley, you and I probably would not be seated for this conversation. What is it about that sheer word, radioactive or the word nuclear that inflames the dialogue?

Dr. Sanquist: You know, that's a good point and there have been some early scientists. For example, I think Edward Teller commented that nuclear was born with a severe birth defect. What was it for older people, such as yourself and me here, we remember that nuclear was introduced as a bomb. It ended the war. Now in my own view, I think that was good because it probably saved a couple of million American lives and an invasion of Japan and many millions of Japanese. But for many people, they view a nuclear plant as really a contained atom bomb, which it can not be. It is not. But it has bad press associated with it.

The movies, Hollywood, the media. If a person is killed in a nuclear power plant, even over an accident that has nothing to do with radiation, it's big news. Whereas a similar accident, occurring at the same time, in other areas, is not news worthy. I don't know what there is about nuclear in a sense. I work with it. We have a research reactor here at the University of Utah. Students, we were estimating here a while ago, 200 of our engineering students have gone through and actually operated that reactor and done it safely. They learn how to handle it. It's like many things in society here. They have the potential of having some harm if you don't know what you're doing but if your equipped, if your careful, you'll handle yourself, you can work with electrical power, you can work with chemicals, you can work with other materials and that's part of modern technology in society.

Verdoia: There are questions of safety in transportation that have not been resolved. There's great, gray uncertainty about the ability to transport this amount of radioactive material safely to a storage site. Even greater safety concerns in transport than in the storage.

Dr. Sanquist: Storage. That is an item of concern and you can, you can recognize this is a radioactive shipment. But in truth we have been shipping radioactive materials across this country for years. Nuclear power is not new on the scene of America. Plants start coming into vogue in the 60s or 70s. Fuel is being shipped. Materials are transferring across the country. Nuclear weapons move across the country. Now we don't know about them in a sense but they have to move from different facilities and such. Medical shipments, our University of Utah has a radio-pharmacy group that ships out radioactive materials that actually have some potential harm if they're not carefully handled, to all of the local hospitals. They provide treatment. I just recently completed some radiation treatment involving to cure some health problems that I have. I'm so grateful that that material was available and could be used.

Verdoia: So you, as a scientist, are not concerned about the ability, the expertise, the scientific knowledge that presently exists to transport?

Dr. Sanquist: I think the material can be transported. Now no question about it, you have to have a rigorous, regulatory control. You have to have oversight and involvement so that you realize that people have to be trained to respond but the best estimates that I've seen associated with it is that there might be possibly one or two accidents involved over the 40 year lifetime, if this is licensed and again re-licensed for another additional 20 years. But those accidents would not involve any release or even removal of the concrete cannister or the cannister. I should say, shipping the spent fuel, but would simply be some other driver running into the truck or another problem, or the truck sliding off the road. These casks have been tested and are so secure in a sense, there has never been an accident nor a release of radioactive materials for any of these casks and probably several thousand shipments have occurred over the 30 year lifetime of the nuclear fuel cycle.

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