Beyond Nuclear files Petition for Review and Motion to Hold in Abeyance (re: Holtec/ELEA and ISP/WCS CISFs) with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit

Legal counsel for Beyond Nuclear (Diane Curran, of Harmon, Curran, Spielberg, & Eisenberg, L.L.P. of Washington, D.C.; and Mindy Goldstein and Caroline Reiser of the Turner Environmental Law Clinic at Emory University School of Law in Atlanta, GA) have filed a Petition for Review, and Motion to Hold in Abeyance (Beyond Nuclear, Inc., Petitioner, v. United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and United States of America, Respondents), regarding the proposed Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, and Interim Storage Partners/Waste Control Specialists irradiated nuclear fuel consolidated interim storage facilities. The filings were submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. See links to the documents, below:

Cover letter for Petition for Review.

Beyond Nuclear Petition for Review, and Exhibits A, B, and C.

Petitioner's Motion to Hold Petition for Review in Abeyance.

Certificate of Service.

Certificate as to Parties, Ruling, and Related Cases.

Petitioner's Rule 26.1 Disclosure.

To learn more about CISFs, visit Beyond Nuclear's Centralized Storage website section.

Resistance against high-level radioactive waste CISFs continues

Opposition to consolidated interim storage facilities (CISF) for irradiated nuclear fuel, targeted at the Southwest, persists. On Dec. 17, a coalition of environmental groups defended their legal standing, and dozens of legal and technical contentions, challenging the Interim Storage Partners (ISP) CISF for 40,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste, targeted at the Waste Control Specialists (WCS) national "low-level" radioactive waste dump in Andrews County, West Texas. Meanwhile, the licensing proceeding has moved ahead for the Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, targeting southeastern New Mexico -- just 40 miles from WCS -- with a CISF for another 173,600 MT of irradiated nuclear fuel. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Atomic Safety and Licensing Board has ordered oral argument pre-hearings in Albuquerque beginning at 9am Mountain Time on Wed., Jan. 23. Beyond Nuclear has legally intervened against both CISFs, after NRC rejected our motions to dismiss both licensing proceedings, for lack of legal jurisdiction or authority to even consider such proposals. What can you do to help stop these CISFs? When it comes to radioactive waste transportation, we all live in TX and NM. Urge your city, county, and/or state to pass resolutions opposing these CISFs, as many other communities have already done! To learn more, see our Centralized Storage and Waste Transportation website sections.

Vigilance needed to block federal funding for Yucca dump

Yucca Mountain, NevadaCongressional Republicans, such as U.S. Rep. Fred Upton from southwestern Michigan, have been trying hard to attach a rider to year-end budget legislation to keep the federal government operational, that would fund Yucca Mountain, Nevada (see photo, left) high-level radioactive waste dump licensing proceedings, to the tune of $60 million. Yucca is Western Shoshone Indian land, so the dump would not only illegally violate the Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863, it would also be an environmental injustice. However, the U.S. Senate's Continuing Resolution (CR), passed yesterday, contains no such Yucca dump funding. If the U.S. House passes the Senate's CR, and President Trump signs it into law, then no Yucca dump funding would be added, at this time at least. But that's a big if -- the latest news at press time reports that Trump appears to oppose signing the legislation, and U.S. House right wingers are either AWOL (having lost their re-elections, they just left D.C.), or excoriating Trump for even considering signing it. 

 

Meanwhile, Trump's Energy Secretary, Rick Perry, appears to be doing some creative accounting, trying to identify unspent funding across the vast Department of Energy, to put towards Yucca dump licensing -- to the tune of $120 million worth. When it comes to radioactive waste transportation, we all live in Nevada. 44 states, many major cities, and the vast majority of U.S. congressional districts, would be traversed by high-level radioactive waste truck and train shipments (see 2017 entries), as well as surface water barge shipments. Please take action. Contact both your U.S. Senators, and your U.S. Rep., and urge that they block funding for the wasteful and dangerous Yucca dump. You can call their D.C. offices via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Learn more at our Yucca Mountain website section.

Public has till Jan. 9 to comment on DOE proposal to abandon high-level radioactive wastes in situ

In response to a request by 76 environmental groups, including Beyond Nuclear, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has granted until January 9, 2019 for the public to comment on the agency's proposal to deregulate high-level radioactive wastes, and allow for their abandonment in situ, at such places as Hanford Nuclear (Weapons) Reservation on the Columbia River in Washington State, the West Valley reprocessing facility upstream of the Great Lakes in New York, etc.

For more info., including instructions on how to submit comments, see DOE's Federal Register Notice. Sample comments you can use to prepare your own will be posted at the top of Beyond Nuclear's Radioactive Waste website section ASAP. So too are news articles about this story.

UN Special Rapporteur says women and children should not move back to Fukushima

Un Special Rapporteur, Baskut Tuncak, who has already criticized Japan's treatment of Fukushima "cleanup" workers, has urged Japan not to force Fukushima evacuees back to the accident zone, especially women and chidren. In delivering his report to the UN, Tuncak said the Japanese government should “halt the ongoing relocation of evacuees who are children and women of reproductive age to areas of Fukushima where radiation levels remain higher than what was considered safe or healthy before the nuclear disaster seven years ago.”

He noted that returning vulnerable people to an area where allowable exposure rates have been raised from 1 to 20 mSv/yr (a dose far too high for civlians and a change made only because it is impossible to clean up the aftermath of Fukushima back down to 1 mSv/yr), was filled with "with potentially grave impacts on the rights of young children returning to or born in contaminated areas.” Read the full story on Beyond Nuclear International.