Nuclear waste could travel through SLO
One plan would send Diablo’s loads by truck over local roads to a rail pickup in or near the city
The latest plans for transporting highly radioactive waste from Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant to a proposed underground disposal site in Nevada allow for the possibility that the waste could be shipped by truck over local roads to San Luis Obispo to be loaded onto trains.
However, officials with the federal Department of Energy say the exact method of transport will be made on a case-by-case basis for each nuclear power plant. This leaves open the possibility that Diablo’s waste could be taken by barge from the plant to Port Hueneme, where it could be loaded directly onto trains, thereby bypassing local roads.
“If a utility has the crane capacity and other infrastructure to load a rail cask but does not have access to a railhead, then a barge or heavy-haul truck will be used to move the cask to a railhead,” said Allen Benson, a spokesman for the Yucca Mountain Project. Crane capacity at Diablo Canyon should
