Anti-nuclear
activists ride Downeaster rails to make point.
About a dozen anti-nuclear activists who doubt the
government's assurances of safety rode Amtrak's Downeaster between Dover and
Exeter yesterday to underscore that spent fuel from the Seabrook Station and
Maine Yankee nuclear power plants would travel to a repository on the rails
that now carry passengers between Portland and Boston.
The plan to transport to and bury in Yucca Mountain,
Nevada, 77,000 tons of radioactive spent fuel now held in temporary storage
pools at the nation's nuclear power plants has been approved by the U.S. House and will soon be considered by the
U.S. Senate.
"The
public is not being informed about the fact that there are proposals to
transport nuclear waste through communities like Dover, Durham and
Exeter," said Jennifer
Hicks, field director for the Seacoast Anti-Pollution League.
"We want
to see from the federal government more assurances that their plans to
transport the waste are safe. We have
to think a lot harder about the human element in these kinds of plans. We hear about train and truck accidents all
the time and we know that if there were ever an accident with this waste it
would render a large area uninhabitable, cost millions to clean up and put
millions of people at risk," she said.
SAPL, Clean
Water Action and the Sierra Club Seacoast Group sponsored yesterday's event,
which began with a 9 a.m. rally at the
railroad station in Dover, where Rep.
Gary R. Gilmore, D-Dover, and
Nick Patel of the Sierra Club spoke to a gathering of about 30 environmental
advocates. About a dozen activists boarded the train in Dover, traveling to
Durham and Exeter where they distributed maps and educational material.
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