International Nuclear Waste Transportation: Flashpoints, Controversies, and Lessons

International Nuclear Waste Transportation: Flashpoints, Controversies, and Lessons

By Kate O'Neill

Controversies surrounding the transportation of radioactive wastes and other nuclear materials have left their mark on the political landscape, and not only within the United States. In the past 18 months, high-level radioactive waste and fuel shipments between France and Japan, within Germany to storage sites at Gorleben and Ahaus, from Asia through the state of California, and from the Republic of Georgia to Scotland have all led to vocal opposition at a number of levels and much publicity, most of it adverse.

This article considers the lessons that can be drawn from these recent experiences in the context of the future of nuclear transportation, both within and across national borders.1 While environmental and human health concerns and issues of fuel ownership and liability suggest that carefully regulated transportation of nuclear materials should continue, opposition to such transport remains extremely high. Recent revelations of official cover-ups concerning radioactive leaks from transportation casks have only heightened such opposition. Focus on four cases illuminates many of the questions and controversies facing the national and international agencies who have had to deal with high-level radioactive wastes and spent nuclear reactor fuel in the late 1990s, as well as the extent to which fears over transportation crystallize common con-cerns over the environmental impacts of civilian nuclear power programs.2

The short- to medium-term outcomes of these shipments display some depressing similarities. They also illustrate the tangle of domestic, international, political, and economic issues involved, the degree and scope of opposition to the international transportation of highly radioactive materials, and the policy success and failure rate of governing, bodies. Although more such shipments are planned, it is becoming harder to carry them out in the face of escalating international and domestic opposition. Government agencies responsible for shipping nuclear materials are facing a prevalent lack of trust in their ability to carry out such shipments safely. Their credibility has been further undermined by recent revelations of radioactive leaks from transportation casks and by ill-timed shutdowns of reprocessing facilities. At the same time, there are limited success stories. Two of the following cases -- the shipment from the Georgian Republic to Scotland and the shipment of research reactor fuel through California -- show how consensus can be forced under particular circumstances. In both of these cases, shipments were small and justified with clear antiweapons proliferation rationales. In the latter case, the U.S. Department of Energy undertook lengthy public consultation prior to shipment and was responsive to public demands.

The key issues can be raised by a set of questions: How did different sides in each dispute define the practical and safety concerns in each case? Who were the key opponents? What were their strategies and were they effective? How did the transporters, governments and other authorities, and international agencies respond? And finally, what was learned? These issues are present in each of the four cases and will be discussed after outlining the course of each shipment or set of shipments.

The Cases
The Voyage of the Pacific Swan

On 23 January 1998, a shipment of high-level radioactive waste destined for Japan left France on the British-flagged ship Pacific Swan. It was the third shipment in a long-standing reprocessing agreement between Japan, France, and the United Kingdom.3 This ship was operated by Pacific Nuclear Fuels, a company run by British Nuclear Fuel Ltd. (BNFL), Cogema (France's nuclear power company), and 10 Japanese nuclear utilities; the ship specialized in marine transportation of radioactive substances. It was carrying 60 canisters of vitrified nuclear waste, each of which weighed about half a ton, destined for storage at a facility in Rokkasho, a village in Aomori prefecture in northeastern Japan. Its route was kept secret prior to departure, having been openly opposed by governments in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Approval for the safety of the cargo and its transportation had been obtained from the French and Japanese governments, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the International Maritime Organization, and extensive security precautions were in place, including clearing the Panama Canal and keeping expert teams on call. However, in addition to government opposition, the shipment was actively opposed by the Washington, D.C.- based Nuclear Control Institute (NCI) and Greenpeace International, both of which were concerned with the physical safety of the ship and the containers in the event of accident or the possibility of a terrorist attack. Shadowing the shipment throughout its journey, Greenpeace activists managed to board the ship on 6 February on its entry to the Panama Canal, generating a large amount of adverse international publicity for the transporting authorities and leading BNFL to thoroughly reexamine its security procedures. Finally, on its arrival in Japanese waters in early March, a coalition of local farmers, activists, and the governor of the local prefecture blocked the ship from docking and off-loading its cargo for four days, although ultimately unloading was allowed to take place.

Gorleben: Nuclear Transportation in Germany

Germany relies on nuclear power for about 30 percent of its electricity needs.4 After ultimately futile attempts to develop reprocessing facilities and with strong opposition to the export of nuclear wastes abroad, the government turned to plans to develop a temporary storage site and more permanent underground facilities in Gorleben, Lower Saxony. These plans, however, roused serious opposition, and in March 1997, 30,000 police in full riot gear were needed to protect the first shipment of nuclear waste from Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg north to Gorleben at a cost of more than $57 million, as well as halt public disruption and sabotage of the railway lines by protesters.5 Following these events, Lower Saxony officials— in the face of statewide and national elections -- declared a moratorium on further shipments of wastes or spent fuel to Gorleben. Instead, German waste management policy has shifted to a new site near Ahaus on the Dutch-North Rhine -Westphalian border.6 The first shipment to Ahaus reached the site in late March 1998, causing the same level of protests and indeed violence along the way. Then in May 1998, shipments were halted following the discovery of contamination from casks used to ship wastes from France back to Germany.

The results of the October 1998 German federal election and the subsequent introduction of members of the Green Party in the governing coalition has rapidly and radically altered the politics of nuclear power in Germany. The government is now committed to shutting down the nation's 19 nuclear plants over the next 10 to 20 years. This move is opposed by the country's nuclear lobby, who point out both the costs involved and the problems this will cause in meeting Germany's commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is also opposed by the governments of Britain and France, who stand to lose billions in revenue and hundreds of, jobs if Germany breaks its reprocessing contracts with them. Even in the absence of compensation, there remains the problem of a few thousand tons of German spent fuel currently in storage in both countries. BNFL has already announced its intention of shipping the fuels straight back should Germany break its contracts, and it seems likely France will do the same. Thus, Germany's decision will dramatically increase its waste burden over the short to medium term, and as of late January 1999, it appears that plans to phase out nuclear power have hit a snag over exactly this issue.7

Nuclear waste arriving by truck to a plant in Gorleben, Germany, is unloaded and tested for radiation levels.

Shipments of Spent Fuel from the Republic of Georgia to Britain

In April 1998, a shipment of highly enriched uranium and spent fuel was flown from Tblisi, Georgia, to Great Britain for reprocessing at the Dounreay plant in Scotland. It contained five kilograms of radioactive materials in total, including less than one kilo of spent fuel. The operation was a joint United States-British-Georgian venture designed to prevent the materials falling into the hands of terrorists or other "rogue" powers. Opposition groups, including the Scottish Nationalist Party and antinuclear groups protested the use of Scotland as a nuclear "dumping ground," the length of time the materials would be in storage, and the secrecy under which the operation was planned; however, these voices turned out to be in the minority. Officials planned to announce the shipment only after it had arrived at Dounreay; yet when the story appeared in advance in the New York Times, the British government was forced to scramble to announce the shipment before its arrival.8 Most media reports and some prominent groups, including Scotland Against Nuclear Dumping, publicly acknowledged that transporting these materials out of Georgia was indeed the best alternative, although they remained critical of the way in which the deal had been hidden from the public, favoring open discussion in advance. On the other hand, had the shipment been considerably larger, it is doubtful there would have been the same level of support for the scheme.

The Dounreay plant is troubled, to put it mildly. At the time of shipment, all reprocessing had ceased, pending full regulatory and safety assessment, and no additional spent fuel was supposed to be added to the stockpiles already there. The plant has always been a focal point for anti-English sentiment. In February, only months before the Georgian shipment, The Guardian revealed that more than a thousand tons of nuclear waste had been dumped in nearby pits, raising grave safety concerns.9 In June 1998, Prime Minister Tony Blair finally announced that after existing stock-piles had been reprocessed, the plant would be permanently closed.

Reactivating U.S. Take-Back of Research Reactor Fuel from Abroad

The United States has many of its own problems concerning internal transportation of nuclear waste, as the accompanying box on page 34 discusses. However, issues in the United States also took on a clear international dimension when, in 1998, the U.S. government decided to restart the Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors Program (RERTR), first begun in 1978 but discontinued 10 years later. An antiproliferation program, it sought to replace U.S.-owned highly enriched uranium (HEU) in foreign research reactors (where it had been used for medical purposes and scientific research) with low enriched uranium, thereby also converting reactors and repatriating the HEU. Fuel is due to be returned from 42 countries, coming into the United States through the Concord Naval Weapons Station near San Francisco on the West Coast and Charleston Naval Weapons Station in the East, whence it is to be shipped to the Idaho National Engineering, Laboratory and the Savannah River reprocessing site in South Carolina, respectively. The first of five shipments through Concord to Idaho was successfully completed in July 1998. On first announcement, the scheme raised much opposition: In California, residents and activist groups were concerned that pail of the rail route took the fuel through a potentially dangerous canyon area. Ultimately, however, the shipments gained the support, or at least not the active Opposition, of a wide range of groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council which issued a statement in July 1997 in favor of the shipments. Others also cited the relatively inert nature of the shipment, U.S. treaty responsibilities, and the relative (and rarely seen) openness shown by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in this case as reasons not to oppose RERTR.10 DOE began issuing consultative documents for public comment in 1995 and responded to the many comments and questions it received in its final Environ-mental Impact Statement for the project.11 These actions were followed up with meetings in the Bay Area closer to the time of the first shipment, and the state of California undertook emergency training for local fire and police forces.

Practical and Safety Concerns

The most common fear throughout these cases is that of accident that some unforeseen event would cause transport casks to break and their deadly contents to be spilled— a low probability but high-cost scenario. The source of these fears differs from case to case: In the United States, it was fear of a landslide, in the Japanese case, of an accident at sea or in the narrow stretches of the Panama Canal; and in the Georgian case, of a plane crash. Both opponents and proponents of shipments shared these concerns but opposing groups claimed, with no small degree of credibility, that shipping authorities both understated the danger and were underprepared in the event of an emergency. NCI in particular has questioned the extent to which the casks most often used to transport nuclear materials are in fact accident proof, citing the possibility of a prolonged shipboard fire as their most serious concern.12 All involved have expressed high levels of concern over the possibility of theft, diversion of the materials, or terrorist attack. While not all the material transported in these cases could be used directly in the manufacture of nuclear weapons (the most dangerous being plutonium, HEU, and unreprocessed spent fuel), an attack on a transporting vessel could lead to high levels of localized or dispersed damage, and capture has high blackmail potential.

When nuclear materials cross national borders, the picture becomes even more complex. The often conflicting interests of shipping, receiving, and transit states have to be taken into account but without the overarching authority that exists within national boundaries to resolve disputes and assign liability. Many international bodies are involved in regulating transboundary movements of nuclear materials, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the International Maritime Organization (IMO). Several regional and international treaties, most significantly the Law of the Sea administered by the United Nations, also govern activities in this area. Respective responsibilities are not clear; it is also doubtful how well coercive or compensatory measures could be enforced in the event of theft or accident. Transit states in particular vocally oppose nuclear shipments through their waters, as with the shipment of Japanese plutonium and radioactive wastes through the waters of the Caribbean states and New Zealand.

Contrary to expectations, neither accident nor diversion turned out to be the most problematic aspect of these shipments. Instead, a longer term and more insidious problem with both technical and political aspects has emerged as probably the biggest obstacle to continued nuclear transportation. In Germany, Britain, and Japan, it has recently emerged that "abnormally high" levels of radiation had leaked from transport casks.13 In May 1998, Germany's Environment Minister Angela Merkel halted transports to Britain's Thorp reprocessing plant near Sellafleld after abnormally high levels of radiation (up to 60 times the safety limits, in some analyses) had leaked from transportation casks.14 Similar levels were found on convoys headed for La Hague reprocessing plant in France. Merkel announced at the same time that the nuclear industry had withheld information about abnormal levels of contamination from regulators since 1985, and some shipments to France showed radiation at 3,000 times normal levels. In response, one of the biggest police unions announced that their members would not guard shipments until casks met safety specifications. Worse, it appears that authorities had been aware of this problem for some time but had covered up its release to the public or that government regulators had been outwitted by the industry. In neither case were the radiation levels severe enough to cause serious damage to those exposed to the casks (handlers and guards). In the climate of mistrust that exists in this area, however, the very fact that the leaks were not revealed to the public at large has led to a backlash against future shipments and has severely undermined any political mileage the successful completion of these shipments might have generated.

Opposition Strategies and Effectiveness

Nuclear issues have not lost any of their ability to catalyze serious opposition, and transportation has become a lightning rod issue for the antinuclear movement, underscoring serious questions about the safety and viability of the nuclear sector as a whole. Opposition in each case varied according to the particularities of national politics. However, some generalizations are possible. First, opposition appeared across many levels of society. In Germany, protesters turned out in tens of thousands. In Japan, off-loading the Pacific Swan was publicly opposed by the governor of Aomori prefecture. Japan's prefecture governors have previously played important roles through unilateral action, for example in the field of environmental protection, so their political power is not to be underestimated. The opposition of potential transit states had a deciding impact on the choice of routes taken, most notably in the Japanese case. Perhaps most significant is the role now being played by transnational nongovernmental organizations such as Greenpeace and NCI in direct activism, coordination, and worldwide publicity. These transnational networks have increased communication among activists in different countries and drawn attention to the problems shared by many authorities. They thus constitute an important feature of the political landscape in nuclear issues.

Unconventional and confrontational opposition tactics remain common. These range from the outright dangerous (such as the tampering with rail tracks in Germany) to the symbolic (the boarding of the Pacific Swan by Greenpeace activists in the Panama Canal). The command of language and rhetoric remains important: The resonant phrase "Mobile Chernobyl," referring to the 1997 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, has entered the public lexicon in the United States. Normal democratic political channels seem to have been followed only in the United States, where extensive public discussion prior to the first RERTR shipment opened a forum to diverse opinions and led to an uneasy consensus. While the purpose of the shipment was generally accepted, fears remained over the route taken. On the other hand, the politics of nuclear power have never been as confrontational in the United States as in parts of Western Europe. U.S. protesters do not follow the same disruptive tactics: A representative of the California-based Western Coalition Against Nuclear Transport, whose members lined the route of the July 1998 REM shipment to Idaho, was quoted as saying, "We just wanted to make sure the first shipment arrived safely" --a view in marked contrast with those of some German protesters.15

The effectiveness of these strategies is striking, especially in comparison with those used to address many other environmental issues. Public awareness of all these shipments remained high, and several of the world's most powerful governments were put on the defensive throughout. This point is important. The intransigence of both sides has done little to further the debate over nuclear waste disposal and nuclear power in any constructive manner and nothing to dispel the widely held perception of the issue as a battlefield where no one is willing to surrender. This is, of course, not to suggest that opposition movements should give in to official policy. However, the (deliberate) absence of positive suggestions from different groups as to how nuclear waste could be safely and satisfactorily disposed of has contributed to the agreement gridlock in this area.16

Nuclear Waste shipments are transported to the Savannah River reprocessing site in South Carolina
via rail cars and then to storage locations by way of trucks.

The "Official" Response

Nuclear management has traditionally been dominated by governmental bodies and international organizations that are still largely responsible for setting policy and making many other key decisions. An examination of these cases shows that at least in three out of the four, officials deviated little from "traditional" modes of behavior. First, decisions were taken in a very top-down fashion. Transports were announced— either as part of a continuing policy (Japan) or as the only solution to a problem not solved by other means (Germany), with little or no public consultation or negotiation. In the Georgian case, the shipment was not announced at all. News of its occurrence was leaked to the New York Times, although British and U.S. offi-cials had decided to announce it after completion. This leads to the second characteristic of official behavior: secrecy, evidenced most obviously in shrouding transport dates and perhaps most damaging, covering up levels of radiation leaking from transport casks. The German and Japanese cases, where multiple transports have taken place over time, show that officials only became more defensive in response to protests. Security measures --those preventing shipments from the protesters, not those regarding safety— became more extreme and efforts to maintain secrecy over shipment dates more pronounced (leading to an interesting game of guessing and bluff between opponents and officials). No effort was made while shipment programs were in progress to rethink these policies or open up decisions to public discussion.

Does Nuclear Transport Have a Future?

Two of the cases described above— the Georgian fuel shipment and the reopening of the RERTR program --were more successful than the others in winning over public opinion and support from groups who otherwise would have opposed shipment. In the Georgian and REM cases, there was a clear security justification for the transport: If these materials were not relocated or returned to their place of origin. There was a high probability that they could be used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. This justification was clearly understood by all concerned. Also, both the shipments were extremely small, a mere five kilograms in the Georgian example. Nor was either linked to the continuation or expansion of civilian nuclear power programs in the home country.

These are, unfortunately, unusual conditions for most nuclear shipments, especially at a time when the notion of some form of international storage facility for spent fuel is being discussed in policy circles: A plan, were it to be enacted would require nuclear transportation on an unprecedented scale. Issues, too, of ownership and responsibility are not as straightforward in most cases as they are in the RERTR program. Where the U.S. responsibility for the research reactor fuels it leased to Asian and Latin American countries is quite clear. For example, while Japan does bear responsibility for the fuel it ships to France and Britain for reprocessing, the actual shipment has to take into account the interests of transit states as well as the complexities of local political arrangements (as in shipment through different prefectures).17

The Japanese case, in turn, demonstrates some of the additional legal and political complexities of cross-border transport compared with intranational transportation of hazardous substances. Still, it is hard to categorize any nuclear transportation as solely domestic. German policy decisions have important implications for Britain and France, while, as the Chernobyl meltdown showed, any accident in Europe is bound to have harmful impacts across many countries.18 Even transports within the United States have implications for policy makers in other countries, and the antinuclear movement is a strong transnational network.

Without the ability to transport nuclear wastes and spent fuel to safer or less congested storage facilities --sometimes across national boundaries— it is likely that civilian nuclear power, programs do not have a future. At the same time, however, the country that has had the most success in overcoming domestic political gridlock in dealing with its nuclear waste is Sweden, which first announced plans to phase out its nuclear program in 1980 and reaffirmed its commitment in 1997 (although the exact timeframe remains vague). Assessing the long-term viability of nuclear energy as a power resource is beyond the scope of this piece. However, unless action is taken to remedy the problems arising from recent experience in nuclear transportation, such action is only going to become more difficult --leaving countries and regions "temporarily" storing spent fuel and high-level wastes in a very vulnerable position, regardless of whether existing power programs continue.

Drawing lessons from the particular circumstances of the above cases is not easy. However, if transportation of nuclear materials is to continue (and, despite the above problems, the case remains strong), three broad factors need to be addressed by policymakers:

The need for open and public negotiation. Most recent studies of policymaking in highly controversial, risk -plagued, and technical areas suggest that regulatory officials need to suspend the belief that the public is "irrational" or unable to absorb complex debates.19 Through open negotiation, and even the admission of uncertainty, people are more (not less) likely to develop trust in officials and transporting agents. By association, there exists a strong need for a clear chain of command and responsibility in these cases. Another important feature of the new political landscape surrounding the transport of nuclear materials is the growing involvement of private firms, especially shipping companies, which adds an additional layer of responsibility to an already complex picture. Private, commercial involvement in nuclear transport is in itself not a bad idea, given incentives molded by fears of liability in the event of accident. However, any negotiations over waste transport issues need to incorporate these actors as well.

By the same token, groups that actively oppose any attempt to deal with nuclear waste without ending civilian nuclear power programs also need to engage in this process if long-term success is to be assured. This does not mean dropping opposition to nuclear power-rather, it means taking seriously the concerns of people who live around nuclear power stations and alone, transportation routes and working towards a more stable solution that would help all concerned. IAEA, even though it administers regulations regarding the international transport of nuclear materials, needs to be accorded a stronger, mediating role given the increasing transboundary implications of most nuclear shipments.

As well as opening up plans for general discussion and feedback prior to shipment, such strategies also include forming "local compacts" between industry, local governments, and people regarding the safety of a shipment or the security of the route. Certainly these efforts are more costly and time consuming, but both could have large payoffs in terms of breaking through "nuclear gridlock."

Technology. This analysis does not recommend radical changes in or higher expenditures on existing cask, technology. The "bigger, better, faster" approach seems inappropriate under the circumstances, and beyond addressing the problems of cask leakage discussed above, it would be more productive to address exogenous safety factors such as protecting shipments from attack or accident.

Problem-framing. The underlying rationale for nuclear shipments needs to be carefully spelled out and understood by all participants. This is a malleable variable, it is true, but evidence demonstrates that potential opponents are more likely to support some kinds of shipments than others. It is likely, though little work has been done on this, that acceptable reasons for transport will differ from country to country. A meaningful endpoint matters as well: for example, converting research reactors to more proliferation-resistant models, enabling self-sufficiency in nuclear energy generation, building a safe international or regional storage site for spent fuel, or as a first step in dismantling nuclear power programs.

As Germany and Sweden (and now the United States) are finding out confronting nuclear power and its dangerous legacy of waste is one of the hardest problems for a society to address. This task is at once made harder and easier by the growing "globalization" of nuclear transport issues: Transboundary implications of transportation programs add a new layer of complexity to national decisions. However, there is now an unparalleled opportunity for countries to learn from others' experience. While, of course, regulatory authorities can still carry out shipments despite strong opposition, it is to be hoped they take to heart the concerns raised by opposing groups and that some form of consensus ultimately be forged.

1 Many different radioactive substances are transported by rail, road, water, and air and have been throughout the nuclear era. These include low-level radioactive wastes, spent fuel rods from nuclear power stations, excess fissile materials and high-level wastes, and plutonium resulting from nuclear reprocessing. Enriched uranium, both high and low, is also often transported. This article concerns itself with shipments of the more dangerous variety: spent fuel. high-level wastes, and plutonium. Transport methods and policies differ from country to country. Rail transport is often preferred because of its relative stability. Road convoys are common in Europe, and vary in speed: Germany prefers high-speed convoys while other countries prefer slower transport on closed or specially designated roads. Air transport always involves military planes. The materials are almost always encased in casks specially designed to high standards to withstand accidents, collisions, and fire --although some argue these standards are not high enough.

2 Such difficulties are far from limited to the cases discussed here: In particular, the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are dealing with the legacy of the Eastern Bloc, and with Russia now reneging on earlier policies of spent fuel return, the situation grows ever more complex, especially with the threat of political instability in the region.

3 According to the Washington. D.C.-based Nuclear Control Institute, "more than 3,000 canisters of vitrified nuclear waste are to be returned to Japan from France and Britain. There were 28 canisters in the first shipment in 1996, 40 canisters in the second shipment in 1997 and 60 canisters in the 1998 shipment. Future shipments will carry 150 canisters, At least 15 to 30 shipments are likely over a 15 year period ." (See S. Tanzer, "The Most Important Questions and Answers about the Nuclear Waste Shipment, "The Nuclear Control Institute, 1998; accessed via http://www.igc.apc.org/nci. There are also flows in the reverse direction. See "Tokyo Plans Eventually to Ship 7,100 Tons of Spent Fuel to France and Britain for Reprocessing into 30 Tons of Fuel Grade Plutonium, Yielding 3,000 Tons of Waste" (Reuters, 13 October 1997). Note that the latter figure only includes high-level waste.

4 Figure from "World Uranium Production and Nuclear Share," The Uranium Institute, London, 6 August 1998 (http://www.uiIondon.org/uprod94.htm).

5 "Nuclear Row Hits Meltdown," The Guardian, I March 1997.

6 M. Hibbs, "Stage for German Waste Conflict Shifting from Gorleben to Ahaus," Nucleonics Week, 5 February 1998, 7.

7 On 25 January 1999, it was reported that Chancellor Schroeder had decided to delay a ban on exports of nuclear waste in the face of opposition from the British and French governments and from the German nuclear industry, who complained of lack of storage space.

8 M. Linklater, "Nuclear Leaks Are Bad News," The Times, 23 April 1998.

9 J. Arlidge, "Fresh Scare on Nuclear Waste," The Guardian, 2 February 1998.

10 A. 1. Kuperman, "The Good Achieved by Nuclear Transports," The Sacramento Bee, 21 July 1998.

11 Available on the Web at http://www.em.doe.gov/eis/index.html.

12 Tanzer, note 3 above.

13 On Japan, see "Data Falsified on 37 out of 43 Nuclear-Fuel Receptacles," The Daily Yomiuri, 14 October 1998; and "Nuclear Firm to Fold over Falsified Data," The Daily Yomiuri, 4 December 1998. On Britain, see M. Woolf and R. Evans. "MPs Call for Ban on Nuclear Rail Cargoes; Containers 'Sweat' Radiation up to 60 Times Safety Limits," The Observer, 21 June 1998; and D. Lee, "Trainstopping," The Guardian, 18 November 1998, On Germany, see M. Hibbs, "With German Transports Suspended, Reactors Face Specter of Closure," Nuclear Fuel, 1 June 1998. These revelations were paralleled in Sweden ("Sweden Also Finds Contamination Problems with SF Transport Casks," Nuclear Waste News, 9 July 1998).

14 Radiation levels of 10 to 20 bequerels (BQ) per square centimeter were discovered (the norm is 4 BQ per square cm).

15 Jackie Cabasso, quoted in "Foreign Reactor Fuel Arrives in California; Group Seek Policy Change," Inside Energy, 27 July 1998. Western Coalition Against Nuclear Transport activists pledged to continue opposition to future transports through California.

16 The stated aim of groups such as Greenpeace in this matter is to continue opposing efforts to deal with nuclear waste until nuclear power programs are closed. As they argue, there's no point in unplugging the bathtub while water is still pouring in.

17 Technically, the United States owns and has ultimate say over how Japan uses nuclear resources. However, in this case, the United States has ceded responsibility, if not actual ownership of the fuels, to Japan.

18 See also A. Blowers and D. Lowry, "Nuclear Con-flict in Germany: The Wider Context," Environmental Politics 6.3 (1997): 148-55, for further discussion of this point.

19 In particular, see the essays collected in D. Munton, ed., Hazardous Waste Siting and Democratic Choice (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996).

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