Human Rights
The entire nuclear fuel chain involves the release of radioactivity, contamination of the environment and damage to human health. Most often, communities of color, indigenous peoples or those of low-income are targeted to bear the brunt of these impacts, particularly the damaging health and environmental effects of uranium mining. The nuclear power industry inevitably violates human rights. While some of our human rights news can be found here, we also focus specifically on this area on out new platform, Beyond Nuclear International.
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September 17, 2021New Beyond Nuclear fact sheets opposing Consolidated Interim Storage Facilities
See Beyond Nuclear's new fact sheet series, here.
The intended audience for the fact sheets are Members of Congress and their staff, as well as other officials at all levels of government -- federal, state, county, local, and Indigenous. (Please feel free to use the fact sheets as hand outs in your meetings with officials, whether face-to-face and hardcopy, or Zooms and links to PDFs!) But the fact sheets can also serve as important educational tools for citizens and activists concerned about highly radioactive waste, the general public, as well as the news media.
The author of the fact sheets is Beyond Nuclear's radioactive waste specialist, Kevin Kamps. Legal support for the fact sheets was provided by Diane Curran of Harmon, Curran, Spielberg & Eisenberg, L.L.P.
Beyond Nuclear would also like to thank numerous respected colleagues who provided peer review on these fact sheets. However, Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear remains responsible for any errors of commission or omission.
Winona LaDuke Among 7 Women Arrested Today at the Shell River; ENBRIDGE TO DRILL LINE 3 UNDER THE SHELL RIVER IN ANISHINAABE TREATY LANDS
Winona "No Nukes" LaDukeAs reported by Honor the Earth.
For a very long time now, Winona "No Nukes" LaDuke (pictured) has worked with Beyond Nuclear, NIRS, and others to block high-level radioactive waste dumps targeted at Native American reservations and treaty lands, such as Skull Valley Goshutes in Utah, Mescalero Apache in New Mexico, and Yucca Mountain on Western Shoshone land in Nevada. See the NIRS/Public Citizen backgrounder about the targeting of Native American communities and lands for high-level radioactive waste dumps.
This threat may well be rearing its ugly head again, as President Biden's Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm, has recently spoken repeated about "financial incentives packages" to entire "Native American tribal governments" to consider "consent-based siting" for high-level radioactive waste consolidated "interim storage" facilities on their lands. As Keith Lewis, environmental director for the Serpent River First Nation, said in the mid 1990s, "There is nothing moral about bribing a starving man with money." Serpent River was ravaged by the radioactive and toxic contamination resulting from a half-century of uranium mining and milling near Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada.
Decades ago, LaDuke did groundbreaking work in opposition to uranium mining and milling on Indigenous lands, and has exposed the nuclear power industry's targeting of Native sacred sites for facility construction and operation.
Last January, Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps traveled out to northern Minnesota, after Winona LaDuke put out the call for folks to stand in solidarity with the Water Protectors.