Trains through Takoma and Silver Spring
could carry radioactive waste
by Linda Gunter

April 2006.
Like many—I’d almost venture to say most—adult residents of Takoma Park I am a parent. Our community is joyfully awash with children. This is a family town, most conveniently situated close to one of the best family cities—Washington, DC. My daughter loves to go down to the Mall to ride the carousel and visit the museums. To get there, we take the Metro train. Standing on the platform, my daughter, like most young children, eagerly awaits the prospect of a freight train rumbling through the station.

In less than two years those same trains could be carrying casks of high-level radioactive waste. We won’t know when they are coming. We can’t time our Metro trips to avoid them. If something happens and there is an accident, there will be nowhere to run to.

When I became a parent I learned firsthand about the powerful and extraordinary force called motherhood. Suddenly I became a tigress, ready to protect my child at all costs. I would put myself between my child and any kind of harm or danger without a second’s hesitation. I would give my life to save hers if I had to.

But I can’t shield my daughter from radiation. I can’t stand between her and a radioactive plume or fallout. I can’t protect her from the radiation leaking from that passing freight train. My daughter can still get a dose, just standing on the platform- equivalent to one chest x-ray an hour if we are close enough. And if that train derailed or was attacked and there was a major radiation release – what then? I couldn’t protect her. I might not even survive to be there for her. Nor might she.

Those radioactive trains could be rolling through our community because of a mistake we made in 1957 when the first commercial U.S. nuclear reactor came on line. We bought the illusory idea of the “peaceful atom.” We thought that the very technology that prompted Robert Oppenheimer to quote, “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” could and should be used to turn our lights on. We began building nuclear power plants.

In a rush to find a political—rather than a scientific solution—Yucca Mountain in Nevada was selected as a “burial” site for nuclear waste. Now that project is mired in scientific scandal and delay there is a move to dump the waste “temporarily” on an impoverished Indian reservation in Utah. If either dump opens – and the Utah one could go forward in under 24 months – trains will start transporting high-level waste through the Takoma and Silver Spring stations.

We remember the horrific rail tunnel fire in Baltimore. But imagine the same scenario involving radioactive waste casks? Every train cask contains 200 times the amount of long-lasting deadly radioactivity as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. A similar accident or an attack involving such a release could render Baltimore and parts of Maryland uninhabitable for millennia. April 26th, the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, should serve as a ghostly reminder of the consequences of nuclear catastrophe.

Such horrible eventualities need not occur however. After all, we have alternatives. Every time the sun shines on my daughter’s cute little face or the wind blows through her silky hair, I am reminded what those alternatives are, how free and harmless they are as energy sources. Why wouldn’t we harness sun and wind power instead of nuclear power? Why not simply lower the demand by using energy more efficiently? These are easy, off-the-shelf solutions.

If we let nuclear power expansion continue, there will be more waste and more trains and more fears of accident or attack. We will be choosing to poison our children.

I volunteer for the Nuclear-Free Takoma Park committee and I work to end nuclear power at my “day” job at Nuclear Information and Resource Service. Sometimes I wish it would all just go away and I could think about something pleasant all day. But when I come home in the evening and I look into the soft dark eyes of my daughter, I know I have no choice.

Linda Gunter is the director of development and media relations at Nuclear Information and Resource Service. She is a member of the Nuclear-Free Takoma Park Committee. She can be reached at: 301-270-6477.

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