Action alert sent by Beyond Nuclear on May 1st:
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
We have learned from the Sierra Club that there is a good chance that U.S. Representative John Shimkus's (Republican-Illinois) bill, H.R. 3053, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 2018, will very likely go to the U.S. House floor for a vote next week.
H.R. 3053 has officially popped up on the Rules site now, so unless something changes (which isn’t impossible), we’ll be seeing a vote next week. Probably Wednesday, May 9th or Thursday, May 10th.
Please act ASAP to help stop this dangerously bad bill! Both groups and individuals can take action.
An environmental coalition of 120+ organizations sent a letter to the U.S. House last October, urging opposition to H.R. 3053. The letter will be sent one more time, early next week, so please act fast. There is still time to sign your group on if you haven't already, but do so by close of business Eastern time Friday, May 4th. Please remember that NRDC's Washington, D.C. office is on Eastern time, so those in other time zones, please act ASAP! (Check to see if your group has already signed on -- the full letter, and current list of signatory groups, is in italics below).
To sign your organization on if you haven't already, please fill out and and submit this Google form, or else directly email Sean Alcorn at Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) your name, title, organization name, city and state.
Individuals, please contact your own U.S. Rep., and urge them to oppose H.R. 3053. Sierra Club has a webform you can fill out and submit to your U.S. Rep. SEED Coalition of Texas has launched a CREDO petition you can sign. You can also phone your U.S. Rep.'s D.C. office, via the Capitol Switchboard, at (202) 225-3121, by following the instructions. Or you can look up your U.S. Rep.'s direct contact info. here, by entering your zip code, clicking the FIND YOUR REP BY ZIP button, and following the links.
(What's the alternative to such a dangerously bad bill as H.R. 3053? Beyond Nuclear has joined with hundreds of groups, representing all 50 states, to long advocate for Hardened On-Site Storage (HOSS), as close to the point of generation as possible. HOSS is a needed safety and security upgrade, an interim alternative to such dangerously bad schemes Shimkus's Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2018. The bill would launch Mobile Chernobyls on roads and rails through 44 states, many major cities, and 330 of the 435 U.S. congressional districts, bound for dumping on Western Shoshone Indian land at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. It could also launch Floating Fukushima barge shipments on surface waters in many states, including on the Great Lakes! As well as the California coast! Just to name a couple examples.).
The bill also authorizes the targeting of southeast New Mexico (Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance), west Texas (Waste Control Specialists, LLC), and perhaps other locations (such as Dresden nuclear power plant/General Electric-Morris Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation in Morris, Illinois, as but one more example), for so-called "centralized or consolidated interim storage facilities," a.k.a. "monitored retrievable storage sites," in the near term ( beginning in the early 2020s). East to West shipments, as to New Mexico and/or Texas, would follow similar to identical truck, train, and/or barge routes as those to Yucca, especially the further east you look.
Each of these schemes would violate basic criteria for safe, sound radioactive waste management: scientific site suitability; consent-based siting; environmental justice; regional equity (East dumps on West -- 90% of reactors, and waste, are in the eastern half of the country; 75% are east of the Mississippi River); and legality (violation of U.S.-Western Shoshone Indian Nation "peace and friendship" Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863, equal in stature to the U.S. Constitution itself, as the supreme law of the land). These dangerously bad nuke waste dumps, and their high-risk shipping schemes, must be stopped!
Thank you for taking action, and spreading the word far and wide ASAP (please share this action alert with your networks)!
To learn more about why H.R. 3053 is a dangerously bad idea, see Beyond Nuclear's Yucca Mountain burial dump, de facto permanent surface storage parking lot dump, and radioactive waste transport risk website sections. If you have taken action already, thank you very much. Please consider spreading the word as widely as possible, given the grave risks and high stakes!
Sincerely,
Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist, Beyond Nuclear & board member, Don't Waste Michigan
TEXT OF LETTER TO U.S. HOUSE MEMBERS, AND CURRENT LIST OF SIGNATORY ORGANIZATIONS
Dear Representative:
On behalf of our millions of members, the undersigned organizations urge you to oppose H. R. 3053, the “Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017” (115th Congress, 1st Session). This bill will put our nation’s nuclear waste storage policy on the wrong track yet again. It ignores environmental concerns, states’ rights and consent to host the waste in the first instance, and attempts to truncate public review in order to force a “solution” – either Yucca Mountain or a new consolidated interim storage site – that have both proven to be unworkable. Rather than blindly charge forward at the cost of public safety and public resources, we urge Congress to reject this bill and start the important and necessary work on a comprehensive set of hearings to commence building a publicly accepted, consent based repository program.
The bill you will vote on retains the flaws contained in its earlier forms. Some of these harms include unwise efforts to recommence the licensing process for proposed repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. This is a project certain to fail the NRC’s licensing process due to the geology and hydrology of the site that make it unsuitable for isolating spent nuclear fuel for the required time. Next, the draft legislation suggests going forward with a consolidated storage proposal before working out the details of a comprehensive legislative path to solve the nuclear waste problem, entirely severing the link between storage and disposal, and thus creating, an overwhelming risk that an interim storage site will determine or function as de facto final resting place for nuclear waste. The draft provides no safety, environmental or public acceptance criteria, only speed of siting and expense. This is precisely the formula that produced the failure of the Yucca Mountain process and made it, as the previous administration noted, “unworkable.”
Other provisions conflict with the well-established and necessary requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act, 42 U.S.C. §4321, et seq. Doing so exacerbates the public interest community’s (and that of Nevada) objection of the last two decades – that the process of developing, licensing, and setting environmental and oversight standards for the proposed repository has been, and continues to be, rigged or weakened to ensure that the site can be licensed, rather than provide for safety over the length of time that the waste remains dangerous to public health and the environment.
This bill was largely changed for the worse in committee. The bill now sets us on path to go forward in the next few years with a consolidated storage proposal before working out the details of a comprehensive legislative path to solve the nuclear waste problem and, frankly, creates an overwhelming risk that an interim storage site in New Mexico, Utah, or even Texas (although the Texas site just requested that its license application be held in abeyance) will be the de facto final resting place for nuclear waste.
This will not work. It is likely those states will, in some form or another, resist being selected as the dumping ground for the nation’s nuclear waste without a meaningful consent based process and regulatory authority that garners both public acceptance and a scientifically defensible solution. Further, and also just as damning, it sets up yet another attempt to ship the waste to Yucca Mountain irrespective of its certain likelihood of failing the regulatory process, or seek to revive the licensed Private Fuel Storage site that has been strongly opposed in Utah or even open up New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) facility for spent nuclear fuel disposal despite strong opposition and contrary to 25 years of federal law. The latter site also was designed and intended for nuclear waste with trace levels of plutonium, not spent fuel (and we note, a site that has already seen an accident dispersing plutonium throughout the underground and into the environment, contaminating 22 workers, and thus the site was functionally inoperable for years). All of this runs precisely counter to the core admonition of the previous administration’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (“BRC”) that “consent” come first.
The waste will not be going anywhere for years and it should be incumbent on Congress to fix problems in a meaningful fashion, not attempt an expedient solution that is destined to fail, again.
Our concerns, many of which were detailed above or in earlier letters, remain. We would be pleased to work with any representative on a feasible, constructive path forward, but this legislation would put the nation’s nuclear waste storage policy on the wrong track yet again and we urge you to reject it. Thank you for your consideration of our views.
Sincerely,
350Kishwaukee
350NYC
Alliance for a Green Economy
Alliance for Environmental Strategies
Alliance to Halt Fermi 3
Baltimore Nonviolence Center
Basin and Range Watch
Bellefonte Efficiency & Sustainability Team; Mothers Against TN River Radiation
Beyond Nuclear
California Communities Against Toxics
Cape Downwinders
Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility
Citizen Action New Mexico
Citizen Power
Citizens Awareness Network
Citizens’ Environmental Coalition
Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping
Citizens’ Resistance at Fermi 2 (CRAFT)
Clean Water Action
Coalition for a Nuclear Free Great Lakes
Code Pink: Women for Peace
Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety
Concerned Citizens for SNEC Safety
Consumers Health Freedom Coalition
Council on Intelligent Energy & Conservation Policy
Crabshell Alliance
CT Coalition Against Millstone
Don’t Waste Arizona
Don’t Waste Michigan
Ecological Options Network (EON)
Energía Mía
Energy Justice Network
Environmental Defense Institute
Environmental Working Group
Fairmont, MN Peace Group
Food & Water Watch
Frack Free Illinois
Franciscans for Justice
Friends of the Earth
Georgia Women's Action for New Directions (Georgia WAND)
Grandmothers Mothers and More for Energy Safety
Great Basin Resource Watch
Great Lakes Environmental Alliance
Green State Solutions, Iowa
Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action
Hip Hop Caucus
Hudson River Sloop Clearwater
Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition
Indigenous Rights Center
Indivisible South Bay Los Angeles
Kawartha lakes land trust
League of Conservation Voters
League of Women Voters of the United States
LEPOCO Peace Center
Los Alamos Study Group
Mankato Area Environmentalists
Merrimack Valley People for Peace
Michigan Safe Energy Future, Kalamazoo MI Chapter
Michigan Safe Energy Future, Shoreline Chapter
Michigan Stop the Nuclear Bombs Campaign
Milwaukee Riverkeeper
Missouri Coalition for the Environment
Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment
Native Community Action Council
Natural Resources Defense Council
Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force
New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution
No More Fukushimas
No Nukes NW
North American Climate, Conservation and Environment (NACCE)
North American Water Office
Northwest Environmental Advocates
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Nuclear Energy Information Service
Nuclear Free World Committee; Dallas Peace and Justice Center
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
Nuclear Issues Study Group
Nuclear Watch New Mexico
Nuclear Watch South
Nukefree.org
Nukewatch
On Behalf of Planet Earth
OurRevolution Ocala
Partnership for Earth Spirituality
Peace Action
Peace Action of Michigan
Physicians for Social Responsibility
Physicians for Social Responsibility – Chesapeake
Physicians for Social Responsibility – Kansas City
Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles
Physicians for Social Responsibility – Oregon
Physicians for Social Responsibility – San Francisco Bay Area Chapter
Pilgrim Legislative Advisory Coalition PLAC
Pilgrim Watch
Planet Cents
Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety and Security (PRESS)
Proposition One Committee
Public Citizen
Public Health and Sustainable Energy (PHASE)
Public Watchdogs
Rachel Carson Council
Radiation and Public Health Project
Radiation Truth
Redwood Alliance
Residents Organized for a Safe Environment
Riverkeeper
ROAR (Religious Organizations Along the River)
Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center
Safe Utility Meters Alliance NW (SUMA-NW)
San Clemente Green
San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace
San Onofre Safety
Save The River / Upper St. Lawrence Riverkeeper
Seacoast Anti-Pollution League
Sierra Club
Snake River Alliance
Southern Alliance for Clean Energy
Southwest Research and Information Center
Stand Up/Save Lives Campaign
Straits Area Concerned Citizens for Peace, Justice and the Environment (SACCPJE)
SUN DAY Campaign
Support and Education for Radiation Victims (SERV)
Sustainable Energy & Economic Development (SEED) Coalition
Task Force on Nuclear Power, Oregon and Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility
Tennessee Environmental Council
Tewa Women United
Texas River Revival
The Colorado Coalition for Prevention of Nuclear War
The Lands Council
The Nuclear Resister
The Peace Farm
Thomas Merton Center
Three Mile Island Alert
Toledo Coalition for Safe Energy
Touching Earth Sangha
Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment)
Uranium Watch
Ursuline Sisters of Tildonk, U.S. Province
UUFHC (Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Harford County)
Vermont Citizens Action Network
Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance
Veterans For Peace Golden Rule Project
Veterans For Peace Chapter 74
Western States Legal Foundation
West Valley Neighborhoods Coalition
Youth Arts New York