[DOE has extended the public comment deadline to July 31, 2016: DOE is extending the comment period for the "Invitation for Public Comment to Inform the Design of a Consent-Based Siting Process for Nuclear Waste Storage and Disposal Facilities'' to July 31, 2016. See the Federal Register Notice, dated March 22, 2016.]
On Dec. 23, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced a public comment period on its effort to define the "consent-based siting" of radioactive waste dumps.
The comment period is another step to enact a policy called for by the Obama administration's Blue Ribbon Commission for America's Nuclear Future (BRC). As reasonable and focus-grouped as "consent-based siting" sounds, it can be expected, however, to continue a long tradition of nuclear industry efforts to force dumps on unwilling, or uninformed, communities.Thus, this is another "speak now, or forever hold your peace" juncture in DOE's efforts to identify the path of least resistance to opening controversial and risky radioactive waste dumps.
The public comment period is open till June 15, 2016. The first public comment meeting will likely take place in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 20, 2016, at a time and location to be announced. Reportedly, six additional public hearings around the U.S. will be announced in the weeks and months to come.
The BRC issued its Final Report in Jan. 2012.
A year later, DOE Secretary Steven Chu announced the Obama administration's "strategy" for adopting the BRC's recommendations. Included were target dates for opening a "pilot" parking lot dump by 2021, and one or more full-scale parking lot dumps by 2024. The target year for opening the country's first burial dump was set at 2048.
(The camel's nose under the tent, the "pilot" parking lot dump would supposedly be "only" for "stranded" or "orphaned" waste from permanently shutdown reactors. This ploy dates back to the George W. Bush administration, when it was argued, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, that security dictated that irradiated nuclear fuel from such sites as Big Rock Point, MI should be moved to Yucca Mountain -- see Energy Secretary Abraham's early 2002 congressional testimony. Nowadays, the argument is made that moving "orphaned" waste to a "pilot" parking lot dump would "free up" the land at shutdown reactors for "unrestricted re-use." Never mind that, as at Big Rock Point, that land itself is still radioactively contaminated, even after decommissioning has been declared "completed." Local concerned residents, and long-time environmental watchdogs, living in the shadows of this "stranded" waste, have clearly said "not in our names" should the wastes be forced on others, as parking lot dumps would do.)
In March 2015, Obama's current Energy Secretary, Ernest Moniz, announced the "un-comingling" of commercial nuclear power and nuclear weapons wastes, a reversal of decades-old policy, which would have disposed of both waste streams in the same dump-site. Now, the two waste streams will be on separate tracks, bound for separate dumps.
In its rollout announcing the current "consent-based siting" comment period, DOE stated:
The first step for commercial spent fuel begins with developing a pilot interim storage facility that will mainly accept used nuclear fuel from reactors that have already been shut down. The purpose of a pilot facility is to begin the process of accepting spent fuel from utilities, while also developing and perfecting protocols and procedures for transportation and storage of nuclear waste. It is our goal that throughout the process of developing a pilot interim facility that the Department of Energy builds trust with all of the local communities involved. (emphasis added)
This is a most ironic statement. First, it expresses DOE's goal of "building trust" with impacted communities. And it implies that DOE will be involved in this process of siting dumps going forward.
But the BRC, based on the large number of public comments submitted from 2010-2012 in the lead up to its final report, agreed with critics that DOE has so bungled radioactive waste management over the past 40 years, and had so earned the public's distrust, that a new entity must be created to take over radioactive waste management, storage, and disposal.
In fact, the BRC listed, as its second-highest ranking of eight strategic "key elements," the following: A new organization dedicated solely to implementing the waste management program and empowered with the authority and resources to succeed. (see page vii, or page 7 of 180 on the PDF counter, in the BRC's Jan. 2012 Final Report)
In its comment period announcement, DOE also stated:
In addition to waste from generation of electricity, waste from defense activities requires safe storage and disposal. The deterrent provided by the nation’s nuclear stockpile has kept this country safe for generations. In order to maintain our nuclear deterrent, warheads must be replaced every twenty years. Currently this older material is stored at a few defense locations across the country. While it is also secure, and there is far less of this high level waste material than commercial spent fuel, a solution for the long-term disposal of this material is needed to address our Cold War legacy. (emphasis added)
This is a biased and self-serving statement. While nuclear weapons complex contamination, including lingering irradiated nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste stockpiles stored there, must be addressed, and responsibly managed, in order to protect the communities which live in their shadows, such false statements are objectionable. Rather than "keeping this country safe for generations," it can of course also be argued that nuclear weapons threaten omnicide on this planet, right up to the present day. "Maintaining our nuclear deterrent" violates the U.S. obligation, under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to abolish its nuclear weapons arsenal. And the statement that "warheads must be replaced every twenty years" is very misleading.
But then again, DOE's comment period rollout also touts the supposed importance of nuclear power to our country's well being. The BRC, with 15 pro-nuclear members, and not a single anti-nuclear member or even a nuclear power skeptic, framed the radioactive waste problem as one to be solved, so that nuclear power could flourish -- its marching orders from President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu in March 2010. BRC's final report reflected this deep bias, to continue generating radioactive waste -- the inevitable (and forever deadly) byproduct of nuclear power.
Of course, nuclear power promotion is the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy's (ONE) mandate. How ironic, then, that the BRC would be "hosted" by DOE ONE, making the "solution" of the radioactive waste problem a stepping stone to nuclear power's promotion, expansion, and continuation (and with it, more radioactive waste generation). DOE ONE is now running this comment period on defining "consent-based siting," and seems intent on running the parking lot dump and burial dump site searches, as well as their ultimate operations, in the years and decades ahead, as well.
As deeply troubling as DOE ONE's role is, NRC's collusion and complicity is even more objectionable. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is supposed to protect public health, safety, and the environment. As the country's nuclear safety regulatory agency, NRC is not supposed to promote nuclear power.
Yet, at its recent Division of Spent Fuel Management RegCon (Regulatory Conference), NRC's Tony Hsia, Acting Director of the Division of Spent Fuel Management, in his closing remarks, concluded the two-day symposium with no less than a rally cry. He passionately called for industry and NRC (as well as DOE, and other nuclear establishment players) to work together ("[If we] all work together, we can make it [centralized interim storage] happen!"), to open parking lot dumps, such as at Waste Control Specialists, LLC in Andrews County, TX, or Eddy-Lea near WIPP in NM. This was incredibly inappropriate.
The Japanese Parliament concluded that the root cause of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe was collusion between regulator, industry, and government officials. It was the reason the three reactors, that melted down and exploded, were so very vulnerable to the earthquake and tsunami that struck them on 3/11/11. Such dangerous collusion exists in spades in the U.S. on radioactive waste, as between NRC, industry, DOE, and even the White House and Congress.
DOE ONE has created an entire website on "consent-based siting," pushing its various suspect schemes.
Whether parking lot dump or burial dump-site, their opening would launch Mobile Chernobyls, Dirty Bombs on Wheels, and Floating Fukushimas on most states' roads, rails, and waterways. The main driver is not public health, safety, or environmental protection, but rather the transfer of liability for the radioactive wastes, from the nuclear utilities that have profited from their generation, onto U.S. taxpayers. As soon as the irradiated fuel leaves the nuclear power plant sites, the title transfers to DOE -- that is, U.S. taxpayers.
In a sign of what's to come, a number of Republican U.S. Senators, including James Risch of Idaho, during 2013 hearings on that session's version of the "parking lot dump bill," most cynically joked that "consent-based" hinged entirely on "incentives" -- that is, money.
In certain contexts, that would be called bribery.
As Keith Lewis, environmental director of the Serpent River First Nation in Ontario, put it in the book This Is My Homeland, "There is nothing moral about bribing a starving man with money." He was speaking about the decades of uranium mining that so ravaged his region.
But such environmental injustice can be expected yet again in the context of "consent-based siting" of high-level radioactive waste parking lot dumps. In fact, low income Native American reservations are explicitly targeted.
But such radioactive racism has been stopped before, time and time again. Grace Thorpe -- daughter of Greatest Athlete of the 20th Century, Jim Thorpe -- not only immediately stopped the parking lot dump targeted at her Sauk and Fox Reservation in Oklahoma, but hit the road and helped scores of other reservation communities fend off such dumps. (NIRS also served as emeritus board member of NIRS. In March 2009, President Obama himself praised her efforts to defend her community, and others, against radioactive waste centralized interim storage targeted at them. How ironic, then, that Obama's own BRC, and now DOE, would yet against target Native American reservations for parking lot dumps!)
Margene Bullcreek and Sammy Blackbear led efforts to fend off a parking lot dump targeted at their Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in Utah. With help from 437 Native American and environmental justice groups from around the country, and even overseas, they succeeded, despite NRC rubber-stamping the scheme.
And the Western Shoshone Indian Nation has led environmental justice efforts to block not only "interim storage," but also permanent disposal, of high-level radioactive waste on their sacred treaty lands at Yucca Mountain, Nevada for three decades. (See NIRS and Beyond Nuclear website sections for more info.)
Given the nuclear establishment's incessant radioactive racism, it seems we will have to continue fighting such dumps.
In the near future, Beyond Nuclear, working with grassroots allies across the country, will publish talking points and backgrounders, to help folks prepare their own oral comments for the public meetings, and to submit in writing to DOE, in the weeks and months ahead.
We must push back, yet again, against DOE's and the nuclear industry's coming efforts to gut the definition of "consent-based siting." They are seeking to expedite the "parking" of high-level radioactive waste on Native American reservations; DOE nuclear weapons complex sites, already badly radioactively contaminated and/or heavily burdened with irradiated nuclear fuel (such as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in NM, Savannah River Site in SC, Idaho National Lab, etc.); "private" sites (such as Waste Control Specialists, LLC in Andrews County, TX, already threatening the Ogallala Aquifer with "low" level radioactive waste dumping); and nuclear power plants (such as Dresden in IL, which already "hosts" around 3,000 metric tons of irradiated nuclear fuel, between the three reactors there, as well as the General Electric-Morris storage pool next door!).
Truth be told, the nuclear establishment in industry and government hope the parking lot dumps can be turned into burial dumps, if they can get away with that, as well. Such "just bury it where you park it" language has been included in congressional bills for the past 2.5 years (the current incarnation of this legislation is Senate Bill 854, the Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2015). All these risky schemes must be stopped, dead in their tracks, yet again!