Submitted via: <holtec-cisfeis@nrc.gov>
Dear Holtec-CISFEIS Resource and NRC Staff,
This is Beyond Nuclear's 29th set of public comments in this proceeding.
I submit these comments on behalf of our members and supporters, not only in New Mexico, near the targeted Holtec/ELEA Laguna Gatuna site, but across New Mexico, and the rest of the country, along road, rail, and waterway routes that would be used for high risk, highly radioactive waste shipments to Holtec's CISF, as well as to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, on Western Shoshone land -- illegally and improperly assumed by Holtec, as well as NRC, to someday become a permanent disposal repository.
Due especially to the numerous problems I have experienced submitting public comments via this <holtec-cisfeis@nrc.gov> email address, please acknowledge receipt of these comments, and please provide me with confirmation of their proper placement in the official public record for this proceeding.
This set of comments is in regards to process elements of the public comment proceeding, but also substance elements of the DEIS, and related documentation. As mentioned at the very end of my 28th set of comments, this 29th set picks up where the previous set left off.
Re: Slide #24, there is an example of NRC's slideshow getting worse over time, instead of better, negative regress instead of positive progress. In the slideshow on June 23rd, the relevant lines read:
"Evaluate if any minority or low-income population would be disproportionately and adversely affected".
But on the corresponding Slide #26 in the slideshow used in the late August/early September meetings, the language had been garbled:
"Evaluated if any minority or low-income populations would be disproportionately high and adversely by -".
This introduced error made the line unintelligible gibberish.
I brought this up during my verbal comments in one of the last meetings to be held, and I think it was during the slideshow presentation on the very last call-in session that NRC staff at least pointed out/mentioned the error in need of correction out loud. But once again, I must ask, how can such a sloppy error be made in the first place, about a subject as important as Environmental Justice? I assert it is a reflection of NRC's merely "going through the motions" of an EJ analysis, but not really caring very much about it at all. Such check the box behavior when it comes to EJ is an outrage in the year 2020!
The substance of NRC's EJ errors is much more serious than its mere surface reflection, as shown by sloppy gibberish in the slideshow, however.
As I have commented previously:
Re: Environmental justice: Holtec is targeting southeastern NM, where many of the surrounding communities in the area are majority Hispanic/LatinX. The Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation (itself previously targeted for a CISF!) is not far away. While a lot of money has been made in the Permian Basin from fossil fuel and nuclear industries, that wealth is not equitably distributed nor shared with the local population. Thus, there are very significant environmental justice issues of low income and/or BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color -- especially LatinX!) communities in southeastern NM being targeted for this dump. As shown by this remarkable map by Deborah Reade of Santa Fe, NM, southeastern NM, and the rest of the state, bears a tremendous pollution burden from these fossil fuel (concentrated in the Permian Basin, in NM's southeastern corner) and nuclear (throughout NM, but with a particular concentration of significant polluting facilities in/near the southeastern corner) and other hazardous industries. (See the map posted online here: <http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/356082/28292760/1588368272923/2020-ThreatsMap_11x17-v2.pdf?token=h%2BfTTqMcgIvh9a%2BkGv96kUkMzXU%3D>)
The cynical trickery employed in Holtec's Environmental Report and NRC's DEIS, in order to find no EJ impact, is to only compare southeastern NM (and only out to a radius of 50 miles from the Holtec CISF site), with the rest of the State of NM. But of course, comparing s.e. NM near Holtec to the COUNTRY as a whole, would show a much greater concentration of Hispanics/LatinX and Native American/Indigenous residents, than is typical of the rest of the COUNTRY as a whole. NRC's 50-miles out from Holtec's CISF radius focus, and then only in comparison to the rest of the State of NM, blinds it to the bigger picture of the COUNTRY as a whole. Combined with the fact that NM as a whole ranks towards the very bottom of all 50 states on many socio-economic indicators, NRC's willful blindness (and attempt to blind the public along the very same lines) to the EJ impacts of the Holtec CISF proposal is an outrage. Rather than engaging in NEPA's "hard look" legal-binding requirements when it comes to EJ, NRC instead engages in willful blindness itself, and forced blindness on the unsuspecting public. NRC's own behavior is an EJ violation, as is Holtec's CISF proposal to begin with!
This is further underscored by the experience of Alliance for Environmental Strategies in the NRC ASLB licensing proceeding. AFES is a largely Hispanic/LatinX EJ group in s.e. NM. It intervened against the Holtec CISF, raising EJ contentions. Incredibly, the ASLB and NRC never even clearly acknowledged or recognized AFES's legal standing to bring such contentions. But both ASLB and NRC rejected AFES's EJ contentions outright. Such ASLB and NRC behavior is, in itself, an EJ violation! NRC Staff, vis-a-vis its DEIS, and the NRC's ASLB and Commissioners in regards to their related licensing proceeding rulings, should all be ashamed of these regards, in these regards. NRC's mandate is to protect public health, safety, and the environment. Instead, NRC itself engages in perpetrating environmental injustice, environmental racism, and radioactive racism, while doing all it can to obscure its own misbehavior, and cover for Holtec's similar or even identical misbehavior.
Submitted via: <holtec-cisfeis@nrc.gov>
Dear NRC Staff,
Don Hancock of Southwest Research and Information Center (SRIC) in Albuquerque, NM has pointed out:
"The Overview (like the Holtec one) again repeats the factual error that PFS's [Private Fuel Storage, LLC] license is terminated (page 4)."
Here is the false statement, as printed in NRC's Overview:
"The NRC previously licensed one other away-from-reactor dry cask spent fuel storage facility, called Private Fuel Storage (NUREG-1714); however, that facility was never built and the license was subsequently terminated." (emphasis added)
This is not true. The license was not subsequently terminated.
Thus, NRC's CISF DEIS Overviews, re: both the Holtec/ELEA and the ISP/WCS CISFs, are inaccurate as to NRC's own licensing decisions.
NRC made the same mistake in its Holtec/ELEA NM CISF DEIS summary/overview, first published on March 10, 2020, as it also has done in its ISP/WCS TX CISF DEIS summary/overview.
And the DEIS documents themselves do not state that the PFS license is terminated. So in that sense, the summaries/overviews contradict the DEIS documents, as well.
Significantly, if Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, Interim Storage Partners/Waste Control Specialists, and the nuclear power utilities, were serious about these CISFs being entirely private, then why not use the license already rubber-stamped by NRC at PFS more than a decade ago? Why seek new CISF licenses at Holtec/ELEA in NM, and at ISP/WCS in TX? Because the actual goal is to transfer title/ownership, and liability, onto the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) -- that is, federal taxpayers. Which is illegal, a violation of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended. This illegality is at the heart of Beyond Nuclear's lawsuit against both CISFs. Don't Waste MI et al. (a seven-group national grassroots environmental coalition), Sierra Club, and Fasken Oil and Ranch, have also challenged this violation of the NWPA represented by these CISF schemes, and NRC's complicity in them, in violation of federal laws like the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended, and the Administrative Procedure Act.
Not that Beyond Nuclear and our environmental and environmental justice allies think the PFS CISF targeting the Skull Valley Goshutes was or is a good idea. Quite the opposite. It was and is a dangerously bad idea, and an outrageous violation of environmental justice. Learn more about the environmental movement's successful resistance to the PFS CISF, a victory won in close solidarity and collaboration with Native American partners, including Skull Valley Goshute dump opponents Margene Bullcreek and Sammy Blackbear, Indigenous Environmental Network, Honor the Earth, and others, posted online at this link: <http://archives.nirs.us/radwaste/scullvalley/skullvalley.htm>.
The following documentation shows that the PFS license was never terminated, as NRC Staff have falsely stated in their CISF DEIS Overviews:
PFS / NRC - Withdrawal Of License Termination Request.
| Document Title: | Withdrawal of Termination Request of NRC licence SNM-2513 for Private Fuel Storage, LLC. |
| Document Type: | Letter |
| Document Date: | 09/12/2014 |
| Document Title: | Letter To R. M. Palmberg re: Withdrawal Of License Termination Request. |
| Document Type: | Letter |
| Document Date: | 09/18/2014 |