Nuclear waste transportation: Is Georgia at risk?

The "representative" transportation routes that would take spent nuclear fuel by rail to the disposal site converge in Atlanta before heading west.

“Georgia is not ready for mass transportation of nuclear waste — we can barely handle rush hour and regularly become crippled in severe weather,” Glenn Carroll, coordinator of Nuclear Watch South, said in a statement.

For its part, the federal government touts a long safety record in moving nuclear waste.

"Over the last 40 years, thousands of shipments of commercially generated spent nuclear fuel have been made throughout the United States without causing any radiological releases to the environment or harm to the public," the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission states on its website.

That type of transportation is usually from one nuclear plant to another one that has space to store the waste. Moving massive amounts of waste regularly across country to central site like Yucca Mountain is another proposition altogether.

Credit: Chris Joyner

Credit: Chris Joyner

But the international nuclear community also backs the safety record of transporting radioactive waste, saying rare accidents have never resulted in nuclear disaster.

It's worth pointing out that the folks in Nevada aren't excited about any revival of the Yucca Mountain plan either.

"This stuff should not becoming across the country and never to Nevada," Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said Tuesday, according to KLAS-TV.

You can see the Georgia waste transportation map here.