According to an Aug. 6 article from the Chicago Sun-Times, Illinois has finished preparations to move a railroad shipment of nuclear waste through the state and on to a federal storage site in Idaho.

The waste, spent fuel rods from a power plant in New York, will move through Champaign, Decatur and Springfield at a steady 35 miles per hour throughout the duration of its 2,300 mile trip.

The train was steered deliberately away from Chicago by the federal government in favor of the less-populated route downstate, and “because of safety concerns, neither the state nor federal governments will reveal when the radioactive material will come through Illinois,” although John Chamberlain, a spokesman for the Department of Energy, said it should be before the end of summer. Chamberlain continued by stating that the shipment would pose no threat to anyone along the train’s path.

“It would take perhaps an hour before someone directly next to the specially built containers carrying the material might amass radiation equivalent to a chest x-ray,” he said.

Let’s stop here for a minute and talk about this nuclear fuel. The preferred fuel of choice for most nuclear reactors comes from pellets of ceramic uranium dioxide that are sealed into hundreds of metal rods, which provide the nuclear power plant with its energy source. During production, uranium atoms in the rods split apart and release energy. When the usable uranium has been spent, the rod is removed from the reactor, and thus becomes waste.

Now while the level of radioactivity in this waste is very high, the amount of radiation produced is pretty small. Of the 360 millirems of radiation we’re exposed to in a year, only 0.2

mrem is supposed to come from the nuclear power industry. Not a bad number, considering an x-ray at a hospital exposes you to 50 mrem. Some people though, like Mary Jo Nelch, aren’t convinced.

Nelch, the owner of a Springfield concrete company that the train closely passed on its trip, was upset that she and others in the community were kept in the dark about the train.

“I didn’t realize it was coming through my backyard,” Nelch said. “It concerns me, and I’d like to know exactly when it was coming through because I’d choose not to be in the area, to tell you the truth.”

Hmm, interesting. Why do you think those people downstate weren’t told when the train would pass through their communities? If the cargo really didn’t pose any threat, where’s the harm in keeping concerned people informed about it? I know if I was living along the train’s route and heard it was going to be passing by my home or place of work, I’d probably want to leave, too. And c’mon, we don’t store these things in underground bunkers for nothing, y’know? There’s obviously got to be some level of danger in this nuclear waste if such extreme measures were taken to guard its transportation.

But maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. Maybe there’s really nothing to fear, and getting an x-ray really is more dangerous than New York’s nuclear waste. Even if that’s true though, shouldn’t the people decide whether or not they want to be near it? Why weren’t they given the option of packing their bags and getting the hell out of Dodge for a few days? If that sludge needed to be moved to an area where it could be safely stored, then I’m all for seeing that it gets done. But to keep people in the dark about the train’s coming and going was outrageously unfair.

“It should be our right to know when we’re being put in danger,” Nelch concluded.

She’s got a point.