The Honorable Jeb Bush
Executive Office of the Governor
The Capitol
Tallahassee, FL 32399


Dear Governor Bush:

On behalf of the Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice (comprised of fifty statewide affiliate groups), Florida Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), Florida Sierra Club, Florida League of Conservation Voters, Florida Council of Churches and the multi-state Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, we write to ask you to reconsider your support for a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The massive number of waste shipments needed to move irradiated fuel from nuclear power plants in Florida would put millions of people at risk from accidents, sabotage, and routine exposures.

According to a recent report issued by Florida PIRG, we can expect an unprecedented 5,223 truck shipments or 348 train shipments of high level nuclear waste over 38 years. 2,176,380 people live within 1 mile of the Department of Energy’s proposed route for these shipments, as are 1,035 schools and 57 hospitals.

The radioactivity in nuclear waste fuel rods is so great that no transport method can prevent radiation from escaping. According to the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, "Shipping containers with enough shielding to completely contain all emissions are too heavy to transport economically." A fully loaded nuclear waste truck transport may contain 850,000 Curies and a railroad cask could hold over 5 million Curies. The result is that permitted exposure to radiation from nuclear waste shipments, 1000 millirem/hour at the transport cask surface, will cause a predictable amount of death and disease.

The record of highway and railway sabotage incidents reveals a troubling pattern: Terrorist attacks on nuclear waste shipments would be designed to inflict maximum human injury; electronic warning systems can be defeated by technical countermeasures; effective attacks using home made explosives to breach nuclear transport casks are possible; and Nuclear Regulatory Commission standards for transport cask safety can be overcome by saboteurs.

Accidents on our roads and rails occur daily. In Florida, we had 1,690 fatal semi-truck wrecks, from 1994 through 2001, and 1,888 train wrecks from 1990 through 2001. The US Department of Energy predicts as many as 310 accidents for railroad and truck transports. A fully loaded nuclear waste truck cask can weigh 26 tons, an overweight truck under normal standards, and a fully loaded rail cask can weigh 150 tons. The result: hundreds of nuclear transport accidents will occur if waste shipments to Nevada are permitted. In addition, DOE experience with nuclear waste transport to date is a tiny fraction of the 96,000 shipments that would be needed to transport thousands of tons of high-level nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain. Moreover, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposes to weaken the already inadequate requirements for Type B transport containers, the kind used for irradiated fuel.

The Yucca Mountain dump would be the costliest construction project in history at $58 billion. The DOE estimates that the Nuclear Waste Fund, monies collected from electric utility customers, will provide only $28 billion. Taxpayers would pay the remainder.

If and when the Yucca dump reaches the legal limit of its capacity - 77,000 tons - there will still be tens of thousands of tons of high level nuclear waste stored on-sight at existing commercial nuclear power reactors. The five reactors in Florida will still have 1,330 metric tons of high level nuclear waste on-site when the Yucca Mountain Project is completed. We are putting millions of Floridians at risk by transporting this deadly waste through our major population centers, not to solve the nuclear waste problem, but simply to create a new repository in Nevada!

Furthermore, the people of Nevada are steadfastly opposed to being the dumping ground for America’s nuclear waste. What will be the next federal project forced on a state over and above the objections of its Governor and its entire Congressional delegation? Imagine if the federal government had actually approved off-shore drilling off the Florida coast in the face of the same unanimous state-level opposition.

Governor Bush, we make the following recommendations for the State of Florida. These are minimum, prudent and constructive measures which will protect the people of our state and others:

We ask that you take the bold step of reversing your stated position in favor of the Yucca Mountain Project. Further, we ask that you implement the recommendations outlined above as soon as possible.

Respectfully,

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David Pred

Florida Coalition for Peace & Justice

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Susie Caplowe

Florida Sierra Club

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Dan Hendrickson

Florida Consumer Action Network


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Mark Ferrulo

Florida Public Interest Research Group


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Susie Caplowe

Florida League of Conservation Voters


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Fred Morris

Florida Council of Churches


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Claude Ward

Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League