Media statement re: today's Obama administration delivery to Capitol Hill of its “Strategy for the Management and Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste”

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps released the following media statement regarding today's Obama administration delivery to Capitol Hill of its “Strategy for the Management and Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste”:

“Today’s Obama administration policy statement merely parrots the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future final report from a year ago, in putting top priority on establishing so-called ‘centralized interim storage’ away from reactors for highly radioactive wastes.

If enacted, this would launch unprecedented numbers of risky high-level radioactive waste shipments, by truck, train, and barge, onto our country’s roads, rails, and waterways. These risks could well turn out to be in vain, if the ultimate final disposal site ends up being located far away. This amounts to launching a risky radioactive waste shell game, all for naught.

Take the nuclear power industry’s recently cancelled Private Fuel Storage, LLC (PFS) parking lot dump targeted at the tiny Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in Utah. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission rubberstamped a construction and operations license for the facility in 2006, over the objections of tribal traditionals, the State of Utah, and nearly 500 environmental and environmental justice organizations across the country.

The plan at PFS was to store the irradiated nuclear fuel for 20 to 40 years, then transfer it to a permanent dumpsite at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. However, the Obama administration has wisely cancelled the Yucca dump proposal. 'Plan B' at PFS would then have been ‘return to sender.’ Wastes from the Maine Yankee atomic reactor, as but one example, would have traveled 2,000 miles out to Utah, and then returned 2,000 miles right back to where they came from in the first place. Maine Yankee’s 540 tons of highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel, in dozens of transport containers, would have traveled 4,000 miles round trip, accomplishing absolutely nothing.

The risks of accidents, attacks, and externally radioactively contaminated shipments means high-level radioactive waste transportation cannot be entered into for no good reason, such as nuclear industry lobbyists' pressure to transfer title and liability for the wastes from the utilities that profited from its generation onto the American taxpayer.

Delivering wastes to de facto permanent parking lot dumps would take decades. This means on-site pool and dry cask storage risks at the reactor sites would persist that whole time. For this reason, hundreds of environmental groups have long called for hardened on-site storage at reactor sites, to defend against attacks, safeguard against accidents, and prevent leaks into the environment during that inevitable waiting period.”

The Statement of Principles for Safeguarding Nuclear Waste at Reactors, endorsed by over 150 organizations representing all 50 states, is posted at:

 http://ieer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/HOSS_PRINCIPLES_3-23-10x.pdf

Update on January 16, 2013 by admin

Beyond Nuclear board chairman, Lou Friedman, has penned a letter to President Obama, expressing opposition to a rush to centralized interim storage and the unprecedented radioactive waste shipments that would launch, as well as expressing concern about President Obama's pro-nuclear power statements.

Update on January 16, 2013 by admin

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Chair of the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, has praised the Obama administration's call for centralized interim storage. Revealingly, she expressed her support in the context of a pro-nuclear expansion agenda: "Delaying the creation of a long-term policy on nuclear waste would simply make the problems more complex and dangerous -- particularly with the development of a generation of new small modular reactors."

Last year, Sen. Feinstein introduced legislation that would have funded an expedicted "pilot" centralized interim storage site, but the bill died in committee. Sen. Feinstein's proposals were also included in the U.S. Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee "Mark" for its Fiscal Year 2013 funding bill (see Section 312, beginning on page 58). Ironically, Feinstein's "Mark" was dated April 26, 2012 -- the 26th anniversary of the beginning of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe. However, this very provision is included in the Obama/Chu policy statement just delivered to Capitol Hill last Friday.

Please contact your two U.S. Senators, and your U.S. Representative. You can be patched through to your Members of Congress by calling the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Urge them to oppose a risky radioactive waste shell game on the roads, rails, and waterways!

Also contact President Obama at the White House, and urge him not to rush into Mobile Chernobyls by truck and train, or Floating Fukushimas by barge! Urge them to support hardened on-site storage, and to stop allowing high-level radioactive waste to be generated in the first place -- the only true solution to the problem.

Update & Alert: Nuke Waste Con Game, Radioactive Metal "Recycling"

Critics have long dubbed NRC's Nuclear Waste Confidence a Con GameThanks to everyone who submitted comments to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) by its absurdly short Jan. 2nd deadline regarding the scoping for the court-ordered environmental impact statement on the agency's Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision and Rule. Beyond Nuclear joined a coalition of environmental groups and states in submitting comments to NRC. The environmental coalition's comments were buttressed by expert testimony from Dr. Arjun Makhijani (IEER), Dr. Gordon Thompson (IRSS), and Phillip Museegas (Riverkeeper).

As a next step on NRC's Nuke Waste Con Game, please consider attending an NRC monthly update conference call, to be held on Wed., Jan. 16 from 1:30-2:30 PM Eastern. The toll-free number is 1-800-857-2553, passcode 3682386.

On another vital radioactive waste battlefront, NIRS has put out an alert against radioactive metal "recycling." NIRS asks, "Will the next zipper on your pants be radioactive? How about your silverware?", and explains:

"The Department of Energy wants to mix radioactive metal from nuclear weapons factories with clean recycled metal and let it enter into general commerce--where it could be used for any purpose.

It's a foot in the door for revival of a vast--and discredited--radioactive waste deregulation plan defeated in 1992.

You can help stop them here."

On the good news front, showing that citizen action does make a difference, a quarter-century of DOE and nuclear power industry targeting of the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in Utah for a high-level radioactive waste parking lot dump has ended with the utility consortium Private Fuel Storage LLC pulling the plug on the proposal, despite having an NRC license in hand. Nearly 450 groups opposed PFS's radioactively racist plan.

Also, despite more than a quarter-century of its being targeted for the national dumpsite for high-level radioactive waste, President Obama and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) -- backed by the support of more than 1,000 environmental groups -- still stand strong against the Yucca Mountain dump proposal. The Obama administration has zeroed out funding for the project; Sen. Reid stands ready to nip in the bud any attempts to restore funding on Capitol Hill.

NRC pleads lack of sufficient funds to resume Yucca Mountain dump licensing proceeding

Yucca Mountain's western face, as viewed through the frame of a Western Shoshone Indian ceremonial sweat lodge. Photo by Gabriela Bulisova.As reported by the Las Vegas Review Journal, despite a ruling by a three-judge panel from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals that the Yucca Mountain dump licensing proceeding should be resumed, a lawyer for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has admitted that there are not enough funds in the coffers to do so, with no relief in sight. The Obama administration, along with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), have zeroed out funding for the Yucca Mountain Project for several years.

The Review Journal reported that the State of Nevada has vowed to fight on if the licensing proceeding is resumed:

"...Halstead [Director of the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects] offered assurance that Nevada's legal team is prepared for a fight if the appeals panel signals resumption of the hearings. 'If they restart the licensing proceedings, we're ready to bloody them up on 200-plus contentions, and 100 of those are really, really strong,' he said. 'This is not going to be a cakewalk through the license application.'"

As reported by the Aiken Standard, however, Aiken County, South Carolina -- home to large amounts of high-level radioactive waste at the Savannah River Site nuclear weapons complex -- is arguing the licensing proceeding should resume post haste, with whatever funding is available. Aiken County, the State of South Carolina, and the State of Washington sued the federal government, to force the resumption of the Yucca licensing proceeding.

Ironically enough, while Aiken County and the State of South Carolina seek to export their high-level radioactive wastes to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, pro-nuclear boosters are simultaneously volunteering -- and lobbying the federal government -- to import large quantitites of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel for "centralized interim storage," and even reprocessing, at the Savannah River Site.

States have no confidence in NRC's Nuke Waste Con Game

VT AG William SorrellAs reported by the Rutland Herald, Vermont and New York have filed joint comments with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the agency's Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision and Rule. The Attorneys General of VT and NY, who filed the joint comments, along with the Attorneys General of CT and NJ, were plaintiffs in the original lawsuit, which resulted in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals nullifying NRC's Nuclear Waste Confidence on June 8, 2012. The court then ordered the agency to carry out an environmental impact statement on the risks of long-term storage of high-level radioactive waste at reactor sites, such as Entergy Nuclear's Vermont Yankee and Indian Point near New York City.

The State of Vermont Department of Public Service joined in the VT and NY AG's joint comments. VT's Public Service Board is currently considering whether or not Entergy Nuclear, which has actually sued its three commissioners by name, whether the out-of-state utility deserves a Certificate of Public Good to continue doing business in the Green Mountain State.

State of Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell (pictured, left) stated that "Until the D.C. Circuit’s ruling, the NRC licensed and relicensed nuclear reactors on the assumption that the federal government would take away all of the spent fuel from each reactor site at some defined time, so the NRC never looked at the possibility that the fuel might stay there for years, decades, or even centuries.” He added that NRC has to consider whether licensing new -- and extending the licenses at old -- reactors makes sense in light of the long-term environmental impacts of onsite irradiated nuclear fuel storage, and the uncertainty surrounding the availability of a permanent dumpsite at any point in the future. In the 1980s, the U.S. Department of Energy was eyeing 7 potential sites in Vermont's granite for a national repository, as well as additional sites in neighboring New Hampshire (Hillsboro) and Maine (Sebago Lake).

Sorrell's office will present oral arguments at the Second Circuit Federal Court of Appeals in New York City on January 14th, seeking to overturn a federal district judge's ruling in favor of NRC's rubberstamping Entergy Vermont Yankee's 20-year license extension, despite the laws of the State of Vermont to the contrary.

Both VT and NY are strongly resisting 20-year license extensions at Entergy Nuclear's Vermont Yankee (already rubberstamped by NRC in March 2011, just days after the twin design Fukushima Daiichi Units 1 to 3 GE BWR Mark Is melted down and exploded in Japan) and Indian Point Units 2 and 3 near New York City.

24 Groups: NRC Rushing Nuclear “Waste Confidence” Process, Not Satisfying Court-Ordered Requirements

Critics have long dubbed NRC's "Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision and Rule" a Nuke Waste Con Game. In June, the federal courts agreed.An environmental coalition, including Beyond Nuclear, has asserted that NRC's incomplete "Nuclear Waste Confidence" process should trigger continued suspension of all reactor licensing and re-licensing. Beyond Nuclear has applied the related court victory to challenge the proposed new Construction and Operating License Applications at Fermi 3 in Michigan and at Grand Gulf in Mississippi, as well as applications for 20-year license extensions at Grand Gulf Unit 1 and Davis-Besse in Ohio.

The coalition's press release began:

"In documents filed Wednesday with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a wide range of national and grassroots environmental groups said it would be impossible for the NRC to adequately conduct a court-ordered assessment of the environmental implications of long-term storage of spent nuclear reactor fuel in the two short years the federal agency envisions for the process.  

The groups’ comments and related declarations by experts are available online at http://www.psr.org/resources/nrc-rushing-nuclear-waste-confidence-process.html.  

In June 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit vacated the NRC’s 2010 Waste Confidence Decision and Temporary Storage Rule and remanded them to the agency for study of the environmental impacts of storing spent fuel indefinitely if no permanent nuclear waste repository is licensed or if licensing of a repository is substantially delayed.  Spent nuclear fuel remains highly dangerous for prolonged periods.  It has long-lived radioactive materials in it that can seriously contaminate the environment and harm public health if released.  Additionally, spent nuclear fuel contains plutonium-239, a radiotoxic element that can be used to make nuclear weapons if separated from the other materials in the fuel.  Plutonium-239 has a half-life of over 24,000 years."

The complete press release can be read here.