YUCCA MOUNTAIN BLUES

Crawling from the woodwork,
Spouting virtues of nuclear,
Asserting dangers don’t lurk,
Clean fuel, nothing to fear.

Waste to be disposed of neat,
Where nothing can disturb,
Wrapped in glass and concrete,
Away from populated suburb.

Containers up to standards set,
Millennium service they’re rated,
Yet real safety goals are hardly met,
After million years, rays not abated.

Cesium, Strontium, by fission
Of Uranium rods in a core,
Stored in pool to control emission
Now radiate a million times more.

Virtually forever a health threat,
“Disposal” does not apply,
Nowhere can it be safely set,
Where exposed life won’t die.

Some 47,000 metric tons spent,
Double that, now licensed to be,
20 year DOE license may extend
To 100 if Congress can agree!

A thousand years from this date,
Who knows if US will even exist,
Or irradiated concrete cask’s fate,
From water, earthquake, or anarchist.

It’s a fateful year, 2010,
Hot fuel rods, Yucca bound,
Yucca bound and hell bent,
Down deep where we can’t see.

A hundred thousand loads
From reactors across the land,
Will cross streets, these railroads,
And trestles, on steel bands.

A recipe for tragic incident,
This “mobile Chernobyl” net,
One hesitates to say “accident,”
Against fact, proponents dead set.

How safe this Yucca Mountain vault,
If leaks into aquifer someday seep?
Whose responsibility, whose fault?
Whose children the sickness reap?

Just 10 miles from the deadly mix,
Five point six Richter in ‘92,
Within fifty miles since ‘76
600 over 2.5 — big one due!

For Amargosa Valley dairy farm
Yucca aquifer is only water source.
To adults it will bring deadly harm
And sicken their children, of course.

But more madness we’ll convey.
They sell to Los Angeles with velocity
Of thirty-five thousand gallons a day.
City fed hot milk -- another atrocity!

Global Warming! Energy Crunch!
Excuses to avoid making hard choice —
Change oil to renewable counterpunch,
Reduce demand to pay invoice.

No one has the right to forever remove
Viability from our home, this earth —
No matter it temporarily behoove
Humans with humanity dearth.

© 2007 R. Leland Waldrip