This infrared image shows railroad cars carrying 123 tons of nuclear waste. Don’t worry about all that heat though, because according to nuclear energy and proliferation expert Matthew Bunn, it “doesn’t mean anything in particular in terms of how dangerous [the waste]is”.
Along with Bunn’s comforting words, we also have the knowledge that nuclear waste has been safely transported the same way for years:
The train is hauling a so-called CASTOR convoy, named after the type of container carried: Cask for Storage and Transport Of Radioactive material. These trademarked casks have been used since 1995 to transport nuclear waste from German power plants to France for reprocessing, then back to Germany for storage.
All those facts aside though, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near the areas that train is going through, so props to the folks from Greenpeace International for snapping those images. [National Geographic via The Atlantic]
Images via Greenpeace