William Bryan: “the junior Senator from Nevada has been criticized and taken to task somewhat because he has referred to this…”

“the junior Senator from Nevada has been criticized and taken to task somewhat because he has referred to this legislation as a ``mobile Chernobyl.'' In that criticism, it has been said, ``Look, what happened at Chernobyl is a different situation entirely. There you had a reactor explode. This is not going to explode.'' I concede that there are differences in terms of causation, but the results are equally devastating. We are talking about the shipment of 85,000 metric tons of nuclear waste. That would involve, as has been estimated, about 15,638 shipments--6,217 by truck, roughly 9,421 by rail. So we are looking at about 15,638 to roughly 17,000 shipments. Each of those truck casks would weigh 25 tons. Each rail cask would weigh 125 tons. One rail cask--one rail cask--carries the long-lived radiological equivalent of 200 Hiroshima bombs--200. So when I use the ``mobile Chernobyl'' analogy, the risk to Nevadans, the risk to Americans, if indeed a rail cask ruptured as a result of an accident and radiation was released, it would be a mobile Chernobyl because the spread of radioactivity and the resultant contamination that results as a consequence could be widespread. I would simply point out to those who are so sanguine about transportation that we are daily reminded that human error--the chairman of the Energy Committee pointed out that Chernobyl was a product of human error.”