Politico: "Democrats Turn Eye to [Energy Secretary] Rick Perry in Ukrainian Probe"

As reported by Politico in an article entitled "Democrats Turn Eye to Rick Perry in Ukrainian Probe":

The former Texas governor has been a regular visitor to Saudi Arabia, where he traveled in 2017 to persuade the Kingdom to partner with the U.S. rather than Russia or China to develop two nuclear reactors. That effort came as the Trump administration continued to seek close ties with the Saudis, despite intelligence linking them to the death of dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi last October.

Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians letter to U.S. House, opposing H.R. 2699

Principal Man Ian Zabarte

Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians

P.O. Box 46301, Las Vegas, NV 89114

October 1, 2019

Committee on Energy and Commerce

2125 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington, DC 20515

For the Record: HR 2699 Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019.

Dear Members of Congress,

The Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians are an intervenor in licensing of the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste repository before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety Licensing Board Panel Docket 63-001. The Department of Energy has failed to prove ownership of the proposed Yucca Mountain site title to which is vested in the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians. Shoshone title remains unextinguished and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not adjudicate title. We strongly oppose amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that does not conform to the law of the land, the Treaty of Ruby Valley controlling, and will assert ownership of Yucca Mountain if licensing resumes.

We have prepared additional legal contention(s) for the resumption of licensing that include “cultural triage” a systematic process to dismantle the living lifeways of the Shoshone people at Yucca Mountain. The DOE created and employed “cultural triage” in 1990[1] as part of the Yucca Mountain cultural resource studies in a culture of secrecy that demonstrates intent to violate the Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1987. We seek enforcement through the Human Rights Enforcement Act of 2009 and intend to use the licensing proceedings to prosecute our case as an additional contention. We hope you agree that this is the best way to bring American abuse of Native Americans into focus with a broader audience concerned about nuclear waste.

Sincerely,

Principal Man Ian Zabarte

Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians

---

[1] Native American Cultural Resources Studies at Yucca Mountain 1990 prepared for Science Application International Corporation under contract number DE-AC08-87NV10576 (page 167).

[See a PDF of Zabarte's signed letter, here.]

Beyond Nuclear marches and stands for climate justice

Strike for Climate Action, San Francisco, CA. Photo: Mary Spadaro.In Washington, D.C., Beyond Nuclear staff took part in both the International Youth Climate Strike on Friday, September 20, 2019, as well as the Shut Down DC climate action on Monday, Sept. 23.

D.C.'s International Youth Climate Strike had around 20,000 participants, marching from Judiciary Square, and rallying for hours on the National Mall at the U.S. Capitol. There were 1,100 separate such strikes across the U.S., and 4,500 around the world, in 150 countries. Altogether, four million people took part globally, the single largest day of action to save the climate yet.

Anti-nuclear colleagues took part in Climate Strikes in their home towns, such as Nuclear Energy Information Service in Chicago, and Native Community Action Council in Las Vegas, Nevada, to name but two.

The Shut Down D.C. climate action in D.C. involved 2,000 activists willing to risk arrest, conducting 22 separate non-violent direct action blockades of major intersections across the city, resulting in around three dozen arrests. Another Shut Down climate action took place in San Francisco, involving spectacular street art. See image at right, and more aerial photos here.

Three Mile Island: What was once too cheap to meter, is now too toxic to clean up

Three Mile Island Alert has put up a billboard in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, warning folks that vigilance is still very much needed, even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant's last operating unit shut down for good last Friday.

Of course, the "too cheap to meter" part is a sarcastic joke. Nuclear power has long been too expensive to matter. (And in their remarkable 1999 book, The Nuclear Power Deception: U.S. Nuclear Mythology from Electricity "Too Cheap to Meter" to "Inherently Safe Reactors", authors Arjun Makhijani and Scott Saleska document that Lewis Strauss, chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, who uttered the infamous phrase in the early 1950s, already had in hand plenty of evidence that nuclear power would be exorbitantly expensive.)

While de-fueled reactors means a core meltdown is no longer possible, by definition, the high risks have now moved to the high-level radioactive waste storage pools, and irradiated nuclear fuel dry casks. And, as TMIA warns above, hazardous radioactive contamination blankets the site in the middle of the Susquehanna River.

Nuclear corporations Exelon of Chicago, IL, and FirstEnergy of Akron, OH, are currently responsible for the decommissioning phase at Three Mile Island's Unit 1s and 2. Word is, they will "SAFSTORE" the plant for decades to come, before beginning facility dismantlement, and "low-level" radioactive waste and contamination export to a dump someplace else. (There is nowhere for high-level radioactive waste to be shipped off to.)

But nuclear utilities sometimes change their policy on a dime, and move into prompt decommissioning at breakneck speed. In fact, both scandal-ridden Holtec International (and its decommissioning partner, SNC-Lavalin), as well as NorthStar (a consortium which includes Waste Control Specialists, as well as Orano, formerly Areva, of France) claim such prompt decommissioning as their business model.

Vigilance is required. Such firms often seek to drain down already woefully inadequate decommissioning trust funds, as at Three Mile Island, to line their own pockets, and pay unrelated bills. All this, while doing as little actual radioactive contamination cleanup as they can get away with, and taking as many short cuts on safety and security re: on-site high-level radioactive waste management as they can get away with. The fight is on.

EnviroVideo hosts Beyond Nuclear on "Trump's Nuclear Push"

EnviroVideo's Karl Grossman interviews Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps on the Trump Administration's effort to revive the economically failing and increasingly dangerous nuclear power industry in the United States and foreign sales most notably in Saudi Arabia. The interview covers the range of important nuclear issues with industry myth-busters including its latest false claim that nuclear power is a "zero emissions" solution to the growing climate crisis.