My LTTE Got Published Today!

Moved to Las Vegas in June. This is the second LTTE I've had published. The first was a Bill Bennett-basher that appeared in the right-wing LV Review Journal. Today's was in the left-wing LV Sun. Both letters took pot shots at repugs.

Today: October 31, 2003 at 8:56:42 PST

Letter: Yucca would be looming disaster

Las Vegas' air quality has been affected by smoke billowing from multiple wildfires in California. I found it truly amazing -- and distressing -- to see the normally clear, blue sky of our valley so suddenly and quickly obliterated by smoke emanating some 200 miles to the west. It seems that despite mankind's best efforts, Mother Nature will always have the last word when it comes to the wide-ranging effects of disasters, both natural and man-made.

Which brings me to the Bush administration's eyes-wide-closed plans to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. This is a disaster waiting to happen, a disaster whose scale would make the current wildfires in California look like a walk in the park by comparison.

No one will ever, ever be able to guarantee the 100 percent safety of the Yucca Mountain site as a repository for nuclear waste, any more than encyclopedic building codes, well-trained and equipped emergency forces and uncommon environmental awareness were any guarantee against the ravages of the current disaster in California. The only thing that we can be sure of is that when a disaster occurs at Yucca (and it will), our feeble attempts at containment will be no match for the non-discriminating power and unpredictability of nature's own elemental onslaught.

Heaven help us when that day comes!

(Name withheld for DU comsumption)

Here:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z41425766

congrats on getting it printed

What are you expecting a pile of nuclear waste to do to create a disaster?

nuke waste will be transported by truck and rail from all over the country to reside there. At present, even the proposed containers that are to be used to transport the waste are not failsafe.

Sure, Yucca will be safe because trains never derail, trucks never overturn, earthquakes never occur in the ring-of-fire, terrorists will ignore all of the above as targets...and on and on it goes. Just how much nuke waste needs to be atomized and released into the air to be carried by wind and rain to the States that neighbor Nevada before Nevada's problem becomes the entire west coast's diasater?

The oldest bedrock in North America is the 2 Billion year old rock of the Canadian shield. It is not near any fault lines and is demonstrably stable. These "original" parts of continents are called "cratons".

Now I am not advocating we send our waste to Canada, but there are better places in the United States than Nevada. Ohio or Pennsylvania would be more stable than Nevada, because they are older. The only reason Nevada was picked was its small population: Yucca Mtn is out of the way, and the small state was politically weak.

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Good letter, btw. Good imagery of "nature's own elemental onslaught".