Anti-nuclear activism intensifies in Great Lakes Basin

In addition to Dominion Nuclear's announcement this week that it will close its Kewaunee atomic reactor on the Lake Michigan shore in northern Wisconsin, and the quickly approaching "Mountain of Radioactive Waste 70 Years High" conference scheduled for Chicago on December 1st to 3rd, Beyond Nuclear has more Great Lakes anti-nuclear news to report.

Participants in "The Nuclear Labyrinth on the Great Lakes" conference, that was held on October 4th to 6th in Huron, Ohio on the Lake Erie shoreline, have published a "Huron Declaration." The declaration focuses on international opposition to the proposed "Deep Geologic Repository," or DGR, as the Canadian nuclear establishment likes to call it (or, as opponents call it, the DUD, for Deep Underground Dump). The "Huron Declaration," signed by 40 individuals and organizations from the U.S., Canada, and Native American First Nations, has already been delivered to every U.S. House and Senate office on Capitol Hill, and will soon be delivered to the Obama administration as well. Beyond Nuclear was proud to co-sponsor this conference, send its Radioactive Waste Watchdog Kevin Kamps to speak on several workshop panels, and provide an extensive information table from start to finish.

On November 5th and 6th, Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps will return to Ohio, this time for U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Atomic Safety (sic) and Licensing Board (ASLB) oral argument pre-hearings in Toledo, concerning FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company's (FENOC) bid for a 20-year license extension at its problem-plagued Davis-Besse atomic reactor on the Lake Erie shoreline. FENOC will be attempting to have nixed what little the NRC Commissioners and ASLB itself have left remaining of environmental interveners' Severe Accident Mitigation Alternatives (SAMA) analysis contentions (the coalition consists of Beyond Nuclear, Citizen Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, Don't Waste Michigan, and the Ohio Green Party). The ASLB will also consider the environmental interveners' concrete containment cracking contention, which was initially filed on January 10, 2012, and which they have supplemented several times this year, as with "smoking gun" documentation, un-earthed via a Beyond Nuclear Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. At the launch of its intervention against Davis-Besse's 20-year license extension in late 2010, Beyond Nuclear prepared a backgrounder on the atomic reactor's many close calls with disaster -- which U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) later introduced into the congressional record as a concise summary of Davis-Besse's decades of serious problems. On August 9, 2012, Beyond Nuclear also published a summary of the concrete containment cracking scandal. Congressman Kucinich has praised Beyond Nuclear's grassroots efforts to block Davis-Besse's dangerous license extension.

On Friday, December 7th in Dearborn, Michigan, the brand new organization, Alliance to Halt Fermi-3, will celebrate its official launch with a presentation by Harvey Wasserman entitled "From Fukushima to Fermi-3: Getting to Solartopia Before It's Too Late." Wasserman serves as senior advisor to both Greenpeace USA as well as Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS). Beyond Nuclear is proud to currently serve as the Alliance to Halt Fermi-3's fiduciary agent, as well as to be a member of the environmental coalition (including Citizens for Alternatives to Chemical Contamination, Citizen Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, Don't Waste Michigan, and Sierra Club Michigan Chapter) officially intervening against the proposed new Fermi-3 reactor targeted at Frenchtown Township near Monroe south of Detroit.