In the next five years, the federal government plans to begin the first of 30,000 nuclear waste shipments across 22 states to the Waste Isolation Plant in New Mexico. Congress also plans to decide whether to make thousands of shipments of irradiated or spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants across 43 states and dozens of Indian reservations to Yucca mountain in Nevada.

Anti-nuclear activists and environmentalists say these shipments will not solve the nation’s real problem — the absence of a scientifically sound, democratically adopted policy to deal with nuclear waste. They say that instead, the shipments could endanger millions of people along transportation routes through exposure to radioactive materials while creating newly contaminated sites in New Mexico and Nevada.

On Tuesday, Congress will vote on a nuclear waste bill that would begin moving nuclear waste on our highways and railroads in the next three years.

Guest:

• Anna Aurilio, spokesperson for the US PIRGs.
• Steve Kerekes, spokesperson for the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Related Link:

• State PIRGs
• Nuclear Energy Institute