August 1st, 2007

Dear Readers,

Here we go again:  Twisted girders and crushed vehicles.  Lessons to be learned.

Exposed rows of steel "rebar," pulled away from the concrete they were strengthening.

A massive, supposedly-sturdy structure in ruins after unexpectedly collapsing.

The Mississippi River impassible:  Clogged with structural debris, vehicles, and bodies.

Few suspect terrorists this time.  It may have all started with simple harmonic vibrations from a minor construction project on the 40-year old I-35W bridge.  It could take years to know what really happened, and thousands of hours of careful study.  How soon will the steel be sold overseas as scrap?

In a sudden cascade of events, vital rail, water, AND road links were ALL severed.

A freight train passing underneath had some of its cars flattened by the massive weight of the fallen eight-lane bridge.

What if a nuclear reactor core was being transported to Yucca Mountain in one of the crushed freight cars?

500,000 dead, that's what!  Ten or a hundred times that many, sickened for life.  And the realization that every prior estimate of the possible damage from a transportation accident that the Department of Energy (DOE) or the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) EVER gave to ANYONE when discussing Yucca Mountain transportation dangers was a LIE.

"Official" estimates of potential damage from a nuke waste transport accident are INVARIABLY biased, because they are based on a tiny fractional release of the full contents.  They are NOT based on anything like what we saw today, which would have left the entire reactor core transport module breached, burning, unreachable, and spewing radioactive poisonous gas.

There would be no news helicopters flying overhead, because of the deadly vapors.  Everywhere for hundreds of miles downwind would become an unlivable hell.  Every hospital in the country would be filled up with victims.  That's what would have been created TODAY if the crushed rail cars had been carrying "spent nuclear fuel" instead of whatever they actually WERE carrying.  A roll of the dice determined the fate, not just of hundreds on the bridge and under it, but of millions, downwind and around the world.

NO "spent fuel" transportation system ever proposed (or used) is strong enough to hold up to a bridge collapsing on it.  But as YOU can see, it CAN happen.

Yet some people STILL want a nuclear "Renaissance"!

Some people never learn.

Sincerely,

Ace Hoffman

The author has studied and written extensively about nuclear power and nuclear weapons for more than 35 years.  Hoffman is a computer programmer and  resides way too close to San Onofre, in Carlsbad, California.