Sam Gibbons: “You bet. An accident like this, if it even allowed a fraction of the radioactive material out of these casks, would…”

“You bet. An accident like this, if it even allowed a fraction of the radioactive material out of these casks, would contaminate an area that they estimate would be as large as 4 square miles. Cleanup of that 4-square-mile area would cost nearly $19 billion. That is billion with a ``B'' dollars. Because every structure on it in that 4 square miles would have to be razed. The soil, depending upon the penetration of the cesium and other parts of the nuclear reactor content, if they penetrated the soil would also have to be removed. And it would be years before they could actually certify that they have cleaned up that area. Put that in downtown Denver, put that in downtown Cleveland, and put that in downtown St. Louis on the Mississippi River and guess what we have got? We have a national catastrophe within which the Superfund that we have created to handle environmental cleanup would never be able to even address in its wildest, richest moments, let alone the fighting and the attorneys that would take the money.”