Thursday
Apr232020
Speak out against Mobile Chernobyls in your community! Sample script for contacting your Members of Congress to urge they demand public comment meetings in your state/district re: NRC Draft EIS on Holtec's nuke waste Consolidated Interim Storage Facility
Please help us secure in-person public comment meetings, by urging both your U.S. Senators, and your U.S. Representative, to demand one from NRC in your state/congressional district, once safe to do so. At the same time, urge your Congress Members to demand NRC keep the public comment period open indefinitely, and to only start the 199-day public countdown clock once the pandemic emergency is over, and in-person public comment meetings are once again safe to hold.
You can call your U.S. Congress Members' D.C. offices via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. You can also email, webform, fax, and/or snail mail your request to your Congress Members' D.C. and/or in-state/district offices (see links below). Here is a sample script you can use as is, or feel free to edit it:
"Dear Senator/Representative X, please contact NRC [U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission] and demand that a Holtec CISF DEIS [Consolidated Interim Storage Facility Draft Environmental Impact Statement] public comment in-person meeting be held in our state/district, once safe to do so. Also demand that the public comment period be kept open indefinitely, and that a 199-day public comment period countdown clock commence only after it is safe to once again hold in-person public comment meetings, such as after a safe, effective, universally accessible COVID-19 vaccine is developed. Given the high risks of high-level radioactive waste trains, trucks, and barges, and the fact that Holtec's CISF would ship and store 2.5 times the High-Level Radioactive Waste (HLRW) volume as the Yucca Mountain dump scheme in Nevada, targeted at Western Shoshone land (173,600 metric tons, versus 70,000 MT), it is only proper that NRC hold an equal number of in-person meetings along transport routes, and an equally long comment period, as did DOE [U.S. Department of Energy] on Yucca 20 years ago, at the DEIS stage. As it stands, NRC's still too short 180-day comment period ends on Sept. 22nd. Five in-person meetings were to have been held, all in the unwilling 'host state' of New Mexico. But now NRC has reneged even on this promise, and will hold only webinar/call-in meetings, prioritizing Holtec's demands over the public's and the NM congressional delegation's, in its drive to ram through this public comment period amidst a highly contagious, deadly pandemic emergency. Given the accident and attack risks of Mobile Chernobyls, Dirty Bombs on Wheels, and Floating Fukushimas, and even the 'incident-free' Mobile X-ray Machines That Can't Be Turned Off risks of 'routine' shipments, adequate time, and numbers of in-person meetings across the U.S., for public comment, are vitally needed. And given the environmental justice burden that high-level radioactive waste shipments would represent -- as attested to by none other than Mustafa Ali, former head of EJ at US EPA, on Democracy Now! last September -- in-person public comment meetings must be held in transport corridor communities nationwide, including in our state. Please demand this of NRC, on behalf of your constituents."
Please spread the word! Working together, we can win the two-dozen, in-person public comment meetings, in a dozen states outside NM, that we are due, based on the hard-won DOE/Yucca precedent set 20 years ago! Congressional demands, per above, will make all the difference! Thank you for taking action!
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