Response to Miss Nevada's Yucca Mountain comments

[stevedeshazer]

Miss Nevada is stirring up some controversy over her comments about Yucca Mountain. It happened Thursday when 23 year old Crystal Wosik was interviewed by judges.

According to the pageant director, the judges asked Wosik what she thought of Yucca Mountain. She told them "it has to go someplace and that Yucca Mountain was the best built facility in the country." Then a judge said what would happen if people could die? She, according to the pageant director, answered "we just have to take one for the team."

That drew a pretty direct response from Peggy Maze Johnson of Citizen Alert. Johnson is an outspoken critic of the nuclear waste repository planned about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Johnson said, "Before she gets up there and starts representing the state of Nevada, she needs to find out more about what the issues are. Instead, she's shooting from the hip with a ridiculous statement that feeds into many people's idea that Miss America contestants are bimbos".



http://www.kvbc.com/global/story.asp?s=4389605&ClientType=Printable

[acmavm]

1. I think it was Raymond Chandler that once said that 'a debutantes ball

is the closest thing we have to a Sudenese slave block in this country.'

I beg to differ. I think it's the Miss America pageant.

[rodeodance]

2. it pains me to se the 'pagants' are as dumb as they used to be.

[niyad]

3. oh, that is just depressing. I guess all the oxygen is in her. . . .

[havocmom]

4. 'Take one for the team'?

Forget Yucca Mountain. Send the stuff to her place.

[JitterbugPerfume]

5. this is what happens

when women are valued for "looks" and not brains

welcome to 1945

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

31. What looks?

I mean, really......

[senseandsensibility]

6. I"ll be accused of being sexist

and I'm a staight female so what do I know, but she doesn't look very attractive to me. Hmmm...no brains, no looks, what a loser.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

7. I agree . . .

. . . one would think that she'd at least be cute!

[benddem]

8. agree

in fact she looks homely to me.

[brook]

9. I'm worse than you....

my first thought at seeing her: "Looks like a Republican". Fugly.

[Endangered Specie]

17. Agreed...

stuck up, thinks her shit don't stink.

[snowbear]

27. Gotta agree with that one!

You mean to tell me that in all of Nevada... THAT is what they came up with?

[senseandsensibility]

39. Hey, no one's called me sexist yet?

You try to start a flamewar around here, and all you get is a bunch of yes people. :)

[stevedeshazer]

41. LOL!!

Problem is, you're right!

[xmas74]

23. I thought the same here.

I normally don't judge a person on their looks but this is a beauty pageant, by golly (drop the scholarship crap)!
Oh why couldn't I be ten years younger? I would have beat her by a mile.

[Hardrada]

58. If some of us guys were in drag

we could beat her. Not me though. I wear a mustache and it has gone gray from too many Bush years.

[xmas74]

59. I was a bit of a looker ten years ago.

Nowadays the hair is turning grey.

[Hardrada]

60. I'm sure you look just fine and don't let gray hair bother.

My sis-in-law has had graying/gray hair since 1079 (ha ha, I meant 1979) and she has had three husbands (widowed once) and now has a nice guy for a boyfriend.

[xmas74]

61. I also have frown lines and crows feet showing up.

The price of aging.
Oh well.

[Hardrada]

65. The Shrub regime will give anybody frown lines!

Not to worry.

[LeftyMom]

43. I was going to say the same thing

That's not a pretty face at all. Barely average really.

[Zorro]

10. Miss Nevada has a point

There's tons of spent fuel rods accumulating at reactors across the country. These are health and safety hazards to those communities where they are located.

Yucca Mountain has been studied for decades, and from my understanding is perfectly adequate to store the hazardous waste. It's also located in one of the most desolate spots in the country, a location that makes a lot of sense to me.

Some opinions are patently stupid; hers is not. I think a lot of the complaints about Yucca Mountain are of the NIMBY variety, but at least it isn't the same as conducting nuclear tests within sight of Las Vegas (as was the practice in the 50s/60s).

Flame away.

[blonndee]

11. I think it was the "we have to take one for the team" comment

that caused the controversy. That is a stupid, absolutely thoughtless thing to say.

[niyad]

13. you ARE aware that that is an earthquake area, aren't you? and you

think it is SAFE? please explain.

[Zorro]

14. Puleeezzz

I live in SoCal, so I think I know a little bit about living in earthquake territory.

I'd appreciate it if you could point me to any reports from credible sources regarding the Yucca Mountain earthquake hazard.

I'd also appreciate hearing your recommended solution to the problem of what to do with the spent rods at nuclear power plants.

[XOKCowboy]

15. The onus is on nuclear supporters to figure out what to do...

wth spent nuclear fuel rods given their extreme and long-term toxicity. Yucca Mountain has NOT been proven to be a safe storage facility for that long of a time. It's merely handing off to our grandchildren (and their grandchildren) a very poisonous problem.

[tnlefty]

20. Not to mention shipping the stuff via train and trucks.

I used to have a map that showed the routes of the proposed rail lines, and one runs between both of the schools that my kids attend, one school is less than 1/8th of a mile from the tracks. This is a densely populated area, but what the hell, just load the shit up and ship it anyway.

[Zorro]

35. We're not talking about hauling nuclear weapons here

We're talking about hauling spent fuel rods. There's no chance of some spontaneous atomic event occurring.

I've seen videos where the containers are tested by being rammed by a locomotive. And the material is kept contained.

Every day tanker trucks are hauling gasoline through densely populated regions. There's a lot higher risk with those loads than with moving spent fuel rods.

[tnlefty]

36. Neither was I. This is about WASTE materials and questions surrounding

whether the shipping containers are in fact safe to transport. Jim Hall, former head of the NTSB, lives in my community and he has held talks on whether these containers are as safe as they are purported to be.

[Zorro]

42. So what does he say about container safety?

Does he state there are problems with the containers?

If so, what problems are there?

[tnlefty]

64. This is part of a long article from Nat'l Geographic, 7/02, which dealt

with DOE and it's past, and covered the Yucca Mountain facility. You can go to their website to see if you can search for this article if you'd like. While these comments aren't from Mr. Hall, they echo what he has stated as part of his concerns, and others as well.

This has to deal with 2 opposing views on the transportation casks, one view from Douglas Ammerman, an engineer at Sandia National Laboratories in NM, and another view from Don Hancock, nuclear waste program director for the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque.

This deals with Mr. Ammerman's testing of the casks: "His technicians drop, burn immerse, try to puncture, and otherwise torture such containers to test their integrity. In one spectacular instance, they rammed a locomotive at 81 miles per hourinto an obsolete, full-size cask mountd on a flatbed, damaging the locomotive but not the cask.

Ammerman told me (Michael E. Long the article's author) he couldn't think of a situation that might rupture a cask.

Mr. Hancock noted that a freight train carrying hazardous waste wrecked last year in a tunnel in Baltimore, causing a fire that burned for five days. "They had to close the tunnel. Suppose that had been a spent fuel shipment?" he asked.

Hancock observed that a propane fire burns at 2,000 degrees F. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission specifies that the casks be tested by burning them in fuel for a half hour at a temperature o 1,475 degrees F."

This goes on to mention how Mr. Long asked the NRC offices in Rockville, MD why the temp. of 1,475 degrees is used and he discovered that this was from the canons of the Internation Atomic Energy Agency in 1961. Mr. Hancock and others feel that these requirements are obsolete. He further states that he would like to see the full-size containers tested to failure to better determine the type of crash or fire will cause them to rupture or crack.

Mr. Hall has echoed feeling this need to test the casks to determine under what circumstances they will fail.

[wtmusic]

25. Shame on you for asking for reasonable alternatives

There aren't any, but KEEP THE WASTE OUT OF YUCCA! :eyes:

[Emit]

33. Stable?

A site in southern Nevada under consideration as a permanent geologic repository for high-level radioactive waste may be more unstable than previously thought, according to the findings of a team of geologists and geophysicists who studied the area for seven years.

Earth's crust around the site near Yucca Mountain about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas is "stretching" at least 10 times faster now than in the past, according to the report, which was published in the March 27 issue of Science magazine.

If so, this stretching could result in earthquakes that could expose buried radioactive waste to the environment, according to the article, "Anomalous Strain Accumulation in the Yucca Mountain Area."

The study was led by Brian Wernicke of the California Institute of Technology and James Davis of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. The study, conducted from 1991 to 1997, was funded by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the National Science Foundation.

~snip~

Period of Strain
"Our study showed that over the past seven years Yucca Mountain has been pulling apart at the rate of one or two millimeters per year," Wernicke told BNA. "This is 10 to 100 times higher than the geologic average rate."
This faster rate appears to indicate that Yucca Mountain is in a period of accelerated strain, which could result in more volcanic activity, he said. "I was very surprised by the results of the study," Wernicke said. The monitoring at Yucca Mountain was part of a survey covering a much larger area, he said.
"Something strange is going on here," Wernicke said. "Our study is in some sense preliminary. But it shows that Nevada, DOE, and NRC should support a redoubled need for geodatic monitoring in the area. There's a clear need to fully characterize the geologic data in a lot more detail."
Wernicke said monitoring needed to be more widespread than the five sites looked at by the study. With more study, scientists would have a much better understanding of the site in a few years, he said.

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:a-dg4GuIwDEJ:www.junkscience.com/news/yucca.htm+Yucca+Mountain+unstable&hl=en

Last week, the Senate approved the plan to ship nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain, against the wishes of the home-state, Nevada.
Aside from the fact that Yucca Mountain is geologically unstable (it recently suffered a 4.8 earthquake), the plan is idiotic simply because it's not a solution for our nuclear waste problem. Only a fraction of the country's waste will go to Yucca Mountain; when it's full, there will still be waste piles left at hundreds--if not thousands--of sites all across the US.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:q6YrrbP1CkMJ:eatthestate.org/06-24/MurrayCantwellNuke.htm+Yucca+Mountain+unstable&hl=en

BEATTY, Nevada (CNN) -- An earthquake occurred Friday not far from the site of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
The quake was measured at 4.4 magnitude and rumbled through the region about 5:40 a.m. PDT, said Butch Kinerney, a spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey.
The quake occurred about 30 miles east-southeast of Beatty, which is about 25 miles west of Yucca Mountain.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:MKSSRsuxUuUJ:archives.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/06/14/yucca.quake/+Yucca+Mountain+earthquake+2002&hl=en

The latest geological researches of the site at Yucca Mountain reveal that the site is situated in a geologically unstable formation. The earth’s crust at Yucca is less stable than scientists previously had believed and is stretching some ten times faster than expected. In addition the groundwater there moves faster than previously realized, thus ensuring faster migration of radioactive materials.

If a repository were to be built at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the earliest date that waste could be accepted is the year 2010. If an interim storage facility is built at the Nevada test site, as is proposed in current legislation, thousands of truck and train shipments would move dangerous radioactive waste across the country.

Transportation routes would go through as many as 43 states. There is considerable pressure in Nevada to prohibit transportation of irradiated fuel through the Las Vegas Valley, with a current population of about 1.3 million people, and is the fastest growing population center in the U.S. Las Vegas is also the center of Nevada’s tourism industry, with more than 40 million visitors each year. This could force transportation into rural areas of Nevada where the highways generally run through the center of small cities and towns, very close to schools, hospitals, businesses, and homes. The rural highways also cross steep mountain passes that are particularly dangerous during winter snowstorms.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:SWrxYGxhRzoJ:bluelink.net/en/energy/waste_en.htm+Yucca+Mountain+unstable&hl=en

Analysis of the available data indicates that, since 1976, there have been 621 seismic events of magnitude greater than 2.5 within a 50-mile radius of Yucca Mountain. Reported underground nuclear weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site have been excluded from this count.

The most notable event during this period was a magnitude 5.6 earthquake near Little Skull Mountain, about 8 miles southeast of the Yucca Mountain site, that occurred on June 29, 1992. This earthquake caused damage to a nearby Department of Energy field office building. This earthquake, and many after-shocks, occurred on a fault that had not previously been identified. The Little Skull Mountain earthquake and numerous others at about the same time in the western U.S. are considered to have been triggered by the magnitude 7.4 Landers earthquake, in California.

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:frYOiUXE1H8J:www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/yucca/seismo01.htm+earthquakes+near+Yucca+Mountain&hl=en

[Zorro]

37. Thanks for the info

I gather from the material that after 1000 years Yucca Mountain may have "stretched" one or two meters.

And that the most significant earthquake in the past 30 years was magnitude 5.6.

Don't know about things around where you live, but a 5.6 earthquake just rattles the windows around here. I wouldn't expect it to cause much damage at Yucca Mountain.

[stevedeshazer]

44. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,360 years.Shouldn't we have a better plan?

Look, I understand that we will be forced into using nuclear power. Why can't we look ahead at what we're gonna do with the waste beyond 1,000 years?

I don't know wher you live, but in my region, in the last 24,360 years there have been multiple civilations destroyed, the largest floods ever recorded, and in just the last 100 years, the drainage system for the entire Columbia River system from Alberta to Oregon has been altered.

Respectfully, that is a very short-sighted view.

[Zorro]

46. Respectfully, IMHO Yucca Mountain is the best plan

A lot of experts worked on making the Yucca Mountain recommendation, based on the best information available.

Of course it's impossible to accurately predict what the natural environment will be in 5,000 or 10,000 or 20,000 years from now...after all, recorded history only goes back about 5-6,000 years or so.

But how to handle nuclear waste is a problem today, and a storage environment drilled into the bowels of a mountain in the middle of nowhere is the solution the best minds that have looked at the problem have come up with. Seems reasonable to me.

[stevedeshazer]

47. We can't figure it out now, how can we burden future generations with it?

Do you think that the same society that exists today will be able to deal with it (nuclear waste) over such a long period?

It's short-sighted. It guarantees poisoned places for thousands of years to come.

Do you remember where your ancestor thousands of years ago buried such deadly poison? I sure don't.

I have to think that somehow nuclear power supporters think that the waste issue will be dealt with by future generations. Hell, we don't even know what happened with toxic waste buried 50 years ago, within my lifetime.

The oldest human structures I know of are the dwellings of Native Americans in the Southwest US. The Navajo, Paiute, Hopi and Anasazi cultures existed for millennia. They're thousands of years old, and we still don't understand their full meaning.

I respect what you say, but I think it is very short-sighted.

The responsible thing to do is figure out what to do with it (nuclear waste) before we produce more. Perhaps it can be done, but we shouldn't create something that is little more that a latrine into which inconvenient waste is dumped. That sort-changes future generations even beyond the massive federal deficit we are going to have to deal with into the coming years.

The Chernobyl meltdown proved that human fallibility can destroy a significant part of the planet with one single mistake.

Check it out twenty years later: http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-revisited/

[Zorro]

49. The problem is here and now

and the problem will keep getting worse.

Now is the time to act, because you and I are not going to stop the steady accumulation of radioactive waste.

Yucca Mountain is the best solution at this time to this problem.

[stevedeshazer]

66. If we're not going to stop the steady accumulation of radioactive waste,

Then why are we continuing to create it?

Do you have any idea how this waste will be transported to the place where you maintain that no one lives?

You insist that Yucca Mountain is the best solution.

Why? Because "no one lives there?"

[wtmusic]

68. It's the best solution

for many reasons, among which are it's dry; it's fairly remote; and it's very, very stable.

Radioactive waste is less dangerous by several orders of magnitude than weapons-grade plutonium, which is transported all the time via truck and rail.

[Nutmegger]

50. Wow - thanks for post this! Very interesting. n-t

[wtmusic]

52. Radioactive waste is in a completely different form

than active fuel rods. It will be combined with melted glass to form "pucks" which don't leach and don't corrode.

I don't see how you can consider this solution "short-sighted". What's shortsighted is arguing about whether Yucca Mountain is the safest place (although it might not be, it's very, very safe) while untreated nuclear waste builds up at hundreds of facilities across the country. Notwithstanding the obvious security issues of safeguarding hundreds of facilities vs. one, the moisture and geologic activity of these places creates a far greater hazard for long term storage.

Even if Yucca isn't permanent, the waste can be moved from there in the future if necessary, and even better--there's a good chance in the next 10,000 years we'll find a way to recycle it.

[Emit]

48. A magnitude-5.6 earthquake might rattle your windows

But it can also cause structural damage.

[salin]

51. I recall a similar magnitude earthquake in the Bay Area

around 1998 - shook me out of bed... but closer to the epicenter - roads were a bit torn up (cracks, broken and heaved up pavement.)

[wtmusic]

26. It's one of the least geologically-active places in the country

and that's why it was chosen. You obviously have a better place...won't you let us know where? Hmm?

[chat_noir]

62. Nevada says differently

Earthquakes In The Vicinity Of Yucca Mountain


Nevada ranks third in the nation for current seismic activity. Earthquake data bases are available that provide current and historical earthquake information, and these can be accessed to gain information on seismic activity in the vicinity of the proposed High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository site at Yucca Mountain, in southern Nevada. The data bases reviewed for the southern Nevada area were the Council of the National Seismic System Composite Catalogue and the Southern Great Basin Seismic Network.

Analysis of the available data indicates that, since 1976, there have been 621 seismic events of magnitude greater than 2.5 within a 50-mile radius of Yucca Mountain. Reported underground nuclear weapons tests at the Nevada Test Site have been excluded from this count.

The most notable event during this period was a magnitude 5.6 earthquake near Little Skull Mountain, about 8 miles southeast of the Yucca Mountain site, that occurred on June 29, 1992. This earthquake caused damage to a nearby Department of Energy field office building. This earthquake, and many after-shocks, occurred on a fault that had not previously been identified. The Little Skull Mountain earthquake and numerous others at about the same time in the western U.S. are considered to have been triggered by the magnitude 7.4 Landers earthquake, in California.










http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/yucca/seismo01.htm

[proud2BlibKansan]

22. Well then you can be the one to take one for the team

[jschurchin]

40. Yeah, but I think her hair covers it!!!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[oldcoot]

55. Science had nothing to do with the selection process

Instead, politics determined the selection of Yucca Mountain. Originally, Congress had passed a bill-the Nuclear Waste Policy Act-that would have allowed for the selection of two sites-one west of the Mississippi and one east of the Mississippi. Unfortunately, no site was ever selected east of the Mississippi. Instead, three western sites were chosen-in Texas, Washington, and Nevada. In 1987, this bill was amended and only the Nevada site was selected for study. At the time, Nevada only had one representative in the House of Representatives.

Recent events have given Nevadans even more reason to mistrust the science behind the project. Local papers have reported on emails from government officials, which contradicts the federal government's rosy picture of this project. The DOE is even investigating whether U.S. Geological Survey employees may have made up scientific information concerning the project. (see http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/sun/2005/may/10/518734305.html?Yucca%20Mountain%20Emails).

By the way, Nevada does not have any nuclear dumps.

[ContraBass Black]

57. There is one issue with it:

I head from a person that was involved in the study that the local rock outgasses a substance that corrodes the spent fuel storage containers.

[MadHound]

70. Well apparently your understanding is not perfectly adequate

There are two big drawbacks to Yucca Mt. One, it is in an earthquake prone area. The second is that the ground underneath it leads directly to Las Vegas drinking water. Dye tests have been done at Yucca Mt. and within two weeks of injecting the dye, it showed up in the Las Vegas drinking water.

As far as what to do with the material, well, spent fuel rods can be recycled. Some of the rest of the waste can be safely incenerated. But some of it just is, and there is nothing one can do about it. If we could guarantee a rocket launch to the sun wouldn't break apart in the earth's atmosphere, well hell, we could ship it to the sun. But we can't make that sort of guarnatee. And with no feasible alternatives, perhaps the best we can and should do is stop producing nuclear waste, ie shut down our nuke plants.

[RebelOne]

12. Well, in my opinion, with that comment, she is already a loser. n/t

[Name removed]

18. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JVS]

16. LOL! Classic! CROWN HER NOW!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[dogday]

19. In that case, just dump the crap in her back yard

she wants to take one for the team, then take the whole nasty mess of it. This stuff kills, it cause birth defects and debilitating suffering... You Stupid Miss America WannaBE....

[proud2BlibKansan]

21. Bimbo alert

[Deja Q]

24. She can live next door if shes that confident of the "best built" facility!

:dunce:


Will she take it for the team? I rather doubt it. It's always noble for such people to be so rational and cool-headed. Until they realize it's their own head on the chopping block. That's when the true survival mechanism takes place.

If she opted to live there, she'd prove herself she's no brainless bimbo.

[Zorro]

38. Have you been to Yucca Mountain?

There's a whole lot of nothing and nobody out there. That's why it's the best place I can think of to put the stuff.

Either that, or it stays in the backyards of hundreds of communities. What's worse?

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

28. You can't tell me.....

.....they couldn't find someone better looking and smarter than her.

[snowbear]

29. Hard to believe, isn't it....

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

30. She looks like she came from Yucka Mountain

Yuck.

[leftofthedial]

32. but does she have big boobs?

That would be a great Vegas stripper stage name

Yucca Mountains.

Who *cares* what Miss Nevada says about anything?

[Midlodemocrat]

34. I have to say, as the mom of two girls.

Both who are gorgeous BTW, IMHO, I don't like pageants, or 'scholarship contests'. If you are going to pick a Ms. USA, how about someone who has worked at a food kitchen, or helped to rebuild after Katrina, or volunteered in a Hospice? THAT is America. That is who we all should strive to be. Eliminate the poverty that so many forced to endure.

I don't like the emphasis on looks. It bothers me. There is so much more to any one of us than the package we came in.

JMHO. YMMV.

[Maru Kitteh]

45. You first babe.

yay team.

[iconoclastNYC]

53. That's such a low blow and counterproductive.

You know if i were on the board of that group I'd have her fired. Resorting to personal attacks is unprofessional.

And this whole anti-Yucca thing is NIMBY stupidity. Everyone is going to deal with the effects of global warming, and that doesn't even require an accident or bad engineering. It's happening all around us. And you can argue that this waste is safer in 300 different facilities across the country.

[sakabatou]

54. All beauty (if any) and no brains

[oldcoot]

56. What part of Nevada is she from?

It is pretty easy to say that Nevadans "should take one for the team" if you live in Reno and it would be Southern Nevadans who would be dying for the team.

[Poll_Blind]

63. "Taking one for the team" is letting a judge bust all over your grille...

....so you'll get a few more points in the talent competition. Nothing about innocent people being hurt or killed represents "taking one for the team" in this case. Unless Miss Wosik is playing for another team...

PB

[Beelzebud]

67. Honestly, this is the best place for this stuff to go.

Over 300, thats Three Hundred, atmospheric nuclear bombs were detonated about 15 miles from Yucca mountain. The mountain is in the Nevada Test Range.

If you ask me, this is the best place for the stuff. It's already totally contaminated there... What other place do people expect them to put it?

I say put it where you've already ruined the area. 300 nuclear bombs... That is no small number.


As for her "take one for the team" comment. Well thats just fucking stupid. But Las Vegas already "took one for team" in the 40's 50's and 60's. Las Vegas is only about 50 miles from the site where they detonated 300 nukes...

[oneoftheboys]

69. Well, she is right.

It does have to go somewhere. And buried underground out in the middle of the desert seems like a good idea to me.

What are we supposed to do. Send the stuff to some poor third world country?