David Cay Johnston: “If I may answer that, because the Senator is a very thoughtful Senator and it is a fair question. First of all, let me…”

“If I may answer that, because the Senator is a very thoughtful Senator and it is a fair question. First of all, let me say, on the issue of reprocessing, you would need a central facility for reprocessing anyway. So that does not solve the transportation problem. Second, I would say to my friend that the studies that have been done--and you have four decades of experience with transportation of this fuel with never a radioactive release, plus you have a lot of postulated accidents. For example, they have taken actual accidents and made the studies of what that would have done to nuclear waste had it been involved. In one, in April 1982, there was a three-vehicle collision involving a gasoline truck trailer, a bus, and an automobile which occurred in a tunnel in which 88,000 gallons of gasoline caught fire and burned for 2 hours and 42 minutes. For 40 minutes the fire was at 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit. If a nuclear waste canister had been involved in this accident, it would have suffered no significant impact damage, and the fire would not have breached the canister. There would have been no radiological hazard. The spent fuel in the canister would not have reached temperatures high enough to cause fuel cladding to fail.”