[NukeNet] Radioactive waste alert: contact your state officials now
MJ
mollypj at yahoo.com
Thu Aug 3 11:43:48 CDT 2006
NIRS Action Alert
Stop Mobile Chernobyls and DOE-imposed long-term high-level radioactive
waste dumps in every state with atomic reactors
Contact your Governor, State Attorney General, and State Legislators
Urge them to contact U.S. Congressional Leaders and your State’s U.S.
Congressional Delegation to oppose the potential federal government’s
siting of atomic waste “parking lot dumps” against your state’s wishes
Contact info. for:
your Governor: http://www.firstgov.gov/Contact/Governors.shtml
your State Attorney General: http://www.naag.org/ag/full_ag_table.php
your State Legislators: http://www.ncsl.org/public/leglinks.cfm (use this
website to find your State Representative and State Senator)
Call, write, fax, or email your Governor, Attorney General, State
Representative, and State Senator. Urge them to act now to prevent a rush
to centralize long-term surface storage of high-level radioactive waste in
your State, which could launch risky atomic waste shipments onto the
roads, rails, and waterways, undermining safety and security.
Urge your Governor to join with Governors from other States to oppose this
attempt by the U.S. Congress to grant DOE authority to site radioactive
waste dumps over the objections of state and local governments.
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Background:
A Rushed, Secretive, and Sweeping Bill
On June 27th, H.R. 5427, the Fiscal Year 2007 U.S. Senate Energy and Water
Appropriations Bill, passed the Senate Subcommittee for Energy and Water
Appropriations. On June 29th, the bill was passed by the full
Appropriations Committee. Section 313 of the bill, entitled “Consolidation
and Preparation” facilities, would empower the U.S. Department of Energy
(DOE) to site 25-year, “interim” storage sites in each and every state
that has nuclear reactors.
Although governors would be granted a consultative role in the
siting process, the Energy Secretary would have final say. A State that
refuses to cooperate with the siting of “interim” storage within its
borders faces the specter of DOE designating that State as a regional
“interim” storage site: commercial irradiated nuclear fuel from multiple
surrounding states could then be centralized and “consolidated” in the
“un-cooperative” state.
Not only has this very troubling and sweeping change to U.S.
radioactive waste policy been inappropriately attached as a rider to a
spending bill, it was hatched secretly behind closed doors and passed by
the subcommittee and full committee without a hearing or debate. It will
likely be added to an omnibus spending bill after the November federal
elections, to be voted up or down without amendments by a “lame duck”
Congress.
What Could Happen: DOE-Imposed Long-Term Storage, and Radioactive Russian
Roulette on the Roads and Rails
As troubling as the process that led to the bill’s unveiling and passage
has been, the content of the bill is even more troubling.
Although the licenses for these “interim” storage sites would
be for 25 years and would be non-renewable, once waste is moved somewhere,
there is a high probability that it will remain there indefinitely into
the future. Thus, “temporary” storage could become long-term or even de
facto permanent storage.
Centralized “interim” storage, whether carried out state by
state or regionally, would lead to hasty, helter-skelter shipments of
high-level atomic waste by truck, train, and barge – possibly through
states having no reactors, considering shipments bound for potential
multi-state “regional interim storage” sites. This would multiply “Mobile
Chernobyl” accident risks and “dirty bombs on wheels” terrorist attack
risks, as waste would roll to “interim” storage sites, but would then have
to be transported yet again if and when a permanent national repository
was ever opened.
This flies in the face of recommendations made by the National
Academy of Science earlier this year, which advised that before a
large-scale transport program is undertaken, significant issues must be
addressed, studies carried out, and preparations made on: full-scale crash
testing of transport containers; the threat of terrorist attacks upon
shipments; the danger of long-duration, high-temperature fires during
severe accidents; numerous steps to improve the transparency, safety, and
security of DOE’s waste transport plans and policies (see
http://www.citizen.org/documents/NASTransportStudy.pdf for more
background).
DOE’s Targets for Long-Term Surface Storage
The following 34 States have either operational and/or shutdown reactors,
and thus are eligible to “host” one or more DOE-imposed “interim” dumps
for commercial irradiated fuel: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California,
Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas,
Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota,
Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York,
North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee,
Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin. (Michele Boyd at
Public Citizen has created a table listing the states with nuclear
reactors, where those reactors are located, when their operating licenses
expire, and the amount of irradiated nuclear fuel expected by 2046 in each
of those states. This document is available upon request from Michele at
202.454.5134 or mboyd at citizen.org, as well as from Kevin Kamps at NIRS at
301.270.6477x14 or kevin at nirs.org.)
Just How Fast This Might Go Down
This bill also establishes very short deadlines for these “interim”
storage sites to be opened. Within just six months of enactment of the
legislative language, DOE would publish a report on siting these “interim”
storage sites. Within three months after that report, DOE must designate
one or more “eligible sites” (on any federal land except National Parks,
Nat’l Forests, Nat’l Wildlife Refuges, or U.S. BLM land; or, any private
land willingly sold to the federal government) for “interim” storage
within each state with nuclear reactors. Just one month after that
designation, DOE must submit a license application to the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) seeking permission to open and operate these
“interim” storage sites. After it receives such applications, NRC is
allowed only 2 years and 8 months to publish an environmental impact
statement on each proposed “interim” storage site, and to make a licensing
decision. Thus, in just three and a half years, centralized, long-term
surface storage facilities for high-level radioactive waste could be
operating in each state with atomic reactors.
Political Ins and Outs
Senator Harry Reid, Senate Democratic Leader and Ranking Democrat on the
Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, helped craft this
bill as a way to further oppose the ill-conceived and dangerous Yucca
Mountain dump targeted at his State of Nevada. Sen. Reid believes that no
governor would designate a new, clean site for interim storage of wastes,
but would instead designate the reactor sites themselves, where the waste
is already stored. In addition, this bill would transfer title for the
waste to DOE, thereby avoiding court-awarded damages – costing U.S.
taxpayers hundreds of millions to billions of dollars – to nuclear
utilities since DOE has failed to “pick up the garbage” beginning in 1998
as required.
One flaw in that logic, however, is that as written the
legislation would allow the Energy Secretary to override governors’
decisions, and open waste dumps over the objections of state and local
governments – even at away-from-reactor sites, if DOE deems that “feasible
and desirable.”
In addition, Sen. Pete Domenici, Republican Chairman of the
Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee (and also chair of the Senate
Energy and Natural Resources Committee) is a leading booster and advocate
for commercial waste reprocessing. Centralized “interim” storage, whether
within states or regions – and the transportation needed to accomplish it
– would support Sen. Domenici’s scheme to revive reprocessing in the U.S.
Also, this FY07 spending bill would approve $10 million to “promote the
development of one or more” consolidation and preparation “interim”
storage facilities that are “away from civilian nuclear reactors.”
Although $10 million is a relatively small amount of money when it comes
to national nuclear waste schemes, its exclusive use for away-from-reactor
“interim” storage points to rushing waste onto the roads and rails, rather
than keeping it on-site at the reactors where it was generated.
Sen. Domenici is also a leading advocate for new nuclear
reactor construction in the U.S. Another key aspect of H.R. 5427 would
declare “Nuclear Waste Confidence” – that irradiated nuclear fuel and
high-level radioactive waste will be “disposed of safely and on a timely
basis for the purposes of the [U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s]
decision to grant or amend any license to operate any civilian nuclear
power reactor” – the law of the land. This would effectively block
interventions by concerned citizens, environmental organizations, or even
State governments that reactor license extensions, and operating licenses
for new reactors, make no sense, given the lack of a solution for the
nuclear waste problem.
But Sen. Domenici’s push for statewide or regional “interim”
storage for at least 25 years shows that states hosting new reactors will
be stuck with the wastes generated there for a very long time to come. As
Michele Boyd at Public Citizen has pointed out, Congress could revoke the
Law of Gravity if it wanted to, but of course the reality is, gravity
would still apply. Likewise, Congress can declare “confidence” that a
radioactive waste repository will be opened, but the fact remains that –
due to Yucca’s leaky geology -- no scientifically suitable site has been
identified. As Michael Keegan of Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes
has put it, “interim storage” is as much an illusion of a solution to the
radioactive waste dilemma as is the Yucca dump itself. Once generated or
moved, high-level radioactive waste tends to stay put for many decades
into the future.
Significantly, Sen. Domenici is also a leading proponent of
the Yucca Mountain dump, and is still pushing hard to open it in some way,
shape or form. He seems to believe that this bill would not do away with
the need for Yucca. Rather, it could embolden Yucca dump proponents to
declare atomic waste transport safe, and facilitate shipments through the
45 States (and Washington, D.C.) targeted for Yucca-bound shipments (see
http://www.ewg.org/reports/nuclearwaste/find_address.php for how close
these road and rail routes come to your address).
Further Reading and Resources:
To read H.R. 5427 itself, go to
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_bills&docid=f:h5427rs.pdf.
See Section 313, “Consolidation and Preparation Facilities,” on pages 111
to 122.
Public Citizen’s “Summary of Nuclear Waste Storage Provisions in the
FY2007 Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Bill” is available upon
request from Michele Boyd at Public Citizen (202.454.5134 or
mboyd at citizen.org) as well as from Kevin Kamps at NIRS (301.270.6477x14 or
kevin at nirs.org).
NIRS’ comprehensive critique of U.S. radioactive waste policy, with
suggested alternative approaches, is at:
http://www.nirs.org/mononline/nm643.pdf
Contact Kevin or Michele if you have questions.
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
6930 Carroll Avenue, #340
Takoma Park, MD 20912
301-270-6477, www.nirs.org
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"I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."
Bush, June 18, 2002
"War is Peace"
Big Brother in George Orwell's 1984
Molly Johnson
6290 Hawk Ridge Place
San Miguel, CA 93451
Cell: 805 296-0524
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