Resistance to Yucca Mountain, NV high-level radioactive waste dump remains strong

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps, left, and Native Community Action Council's Ian Zabarte, right, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., during a youth climate rally in 2018.Over the past 32 years, since the raw politics of the "Screw Nevada" bill of 1987 (the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act, that singled out Yucca Mountain as the only site in the country to be further studied as a potential repository), a thousand environmental groups have stepped up to oppose the high-level radioactive waste dump.

The State of Nevada itself has fended off the dump at every turn, for more than a generation. This week, the state's Democratic U.S. congressional delegation has re-introduced its legislation, requiring high-level radioactive waste dumps to be consent-based -- something Yucca is not. Recently, Nevada -- led by its new Democratic governor, Steve Sisolak -- has fought back against secret U.S. Department of Energy shipments of ultra-toxic, weapons-grade plutonium, from South Carolina, for "temporary" storage at the Nevada National Security Site (formerly called the Nevada Test Site), near Yucca.

But no one has fought radioactive waste dumping, nuclear weapons testing, and other abuses upon their people and lands -- and violations of the "peace and friendship" Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863 -- longer than the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians, who have inhabited Nevada since time immemorial. Just the latest examples include a Jan. 15 submission to the UN Human Rights Committee, and a Feb. 15 submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Consequences of Exposure of Indigenous People to Toxic and Otherwise Hazardous Substances, made by Principal Man Ian Zabarte, on behalf of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians. (Above, Ian is pictured, at the right, holding his "Nevada is Not a Wasteland" banner, alongside Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps, at the left, at a youth climate rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. last year.)

What can you do? Please contact both your U.S. Senators, and your U.S. Representative, and urge they oppose any efforts in Congress or by the Trump administration, to revive the cancelled Yucca dump. You can be patched through to your Members of Congress's Washington, D.C. offices via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

To learn more about resistance to the Yucca dump, see Beyond Nuclear's website section.