Dumping Ground Debate: Paul Leventhal

NEXT@CNN: Why is it so important to protect nuclear plants?

Paul Leventhal: Right now the nuclear power plants in this country are vulnerable to a terrorist attack, if it were one on a scale of what we saw on September 11.

NEXT@CNN: Why is spent fuel such an issue?

Levanthal: With a nuclear power plant you have two things to worry about in terms of potential sabotage. You have the reactor itself, which has a large amount of radioactive fuel inside of it. The other is the pool on the plant site where all the spent fuel is stored. NEXT@CNN: Would the Yucca Mountain option help?

Levanthal: Both from a site security standpoint and a nuclear non-proliferation standpoint, since spent fuel contains a lot of plutonium (a nuclear weapons material) it's better that the spent fuel be put for final disposal in a geological repository. And the site that's been selected, in this country, is Yucca Mountain. But, there's a lot of controversy about whether this is the appropriate site and whether it has been fully characterized to be safe. And it looks like it's going to take several years before they are in a position to speak authoritatively on that question.

We very much hope that the site can be safely characterized, so that the spent fuel can be gotten out of harm's way. There's another issue too. There are some in the nuclear industry and bureaucracy that would still like to reprocess that spent fuel to extract the plutonium, so that the plutonium can be recycled as fuel. This is a program that has been shut down in the United States since the late '70s, early '80s. But there are some die-hard supporters that think that the plutonium is too valuable a resource to throw away.

The problem is that in addition to being a potential fuel, it is also a potential atom bomb material. It is one of the two principle materials used in nuclear weapons. So our institute has been strongly advocating disposing of the spent fuel without reprocessing -- disposing of it in unaltered form, deep in the earth.

NEXT@CNN: What about the dangers of transporting it?

Levanthal: That is a major consideration. But it is one like nuclear plant security itself -- it is solvable if you apply the necessary resources. For nuclear power plants, we are advocating military protection when we are in a state of war against terrorists. Right now, the regulations do not require a military escort along the entire route -- only when it passes through, or near, large cities.

The notion that these massive casts are resistant to terrorist attacks is fallacious. There are ways that these casts can be penetrated through the use of high explosives, their contents dispersed. And therefore you have to make sure that terrorists can't get near them. You don't want to get into a situation where they've actually overcome the escort and are in a position to use explosives on the highly radioactive spent fuel.

NEXT@CNN: How bad could the radiation threat be?

Levanthal: A successful attack on a plant -- meaning that the core melts down, and the containment is breached so there is a pathway out of the plant for the highly radioactive plume -- you could have hundreds of fatalities within 10 miles of the plant. And within 50 to 100 miles of the plant, you could have tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of fatalities from cancer over the long term. And the downwind path for these types of causalities could extend for hundreds of miles.

NEXT@CNN: Can spent fuel be used for dirty bombs?

Levanthal: The biggest dirty bomb conceivable is the successful sabotage of a nuclear power plant. That's the ultimate dirty bomb. And that, of course, is the ultimate nuclear terrorism threat -- that terrorists could obtain atom bomb material or even a stolen weapon and detonate it. I am afraid that that's something we have to be concerned about as well.

NEXT@CNN: Any reason not to be depressed?

Levanthal: Well, I think there are reasons not to be depressed, but it's going to take some action. One is nuclear power plants probably can be adequately protected with military resources. But it's gonna take troops, not state police, and not the "rent a cop" guard forces that are often in place at these plants. The industry and the NRC talk about highly professionalized, well-paid paramilitary forces protecting the plants. The truth of the matter is that these plants are often protected by rent-a-cops whose salaries start at about eight or nine dollars an hour. So it's a situation not unlike what you find at airports, where you find the poorest paid employees are those checking your baggage before you get on a flight. That has to be corrected promptly.