Resisting environmental racism at Yucca Mountain, Nevada

Corbin Harney (standing), Western Shoshone spiritual leader, and Raymond Yowell, then Western Shoshone Indian Nation chief, at Peace Camp, NV, Oct. 2002, leading protests against nuclear weapons testing, militarism, and radioactive waste dumping at the Nevada Test Site. Photo by Gabriela Bulisova.November 20th marked the end of a rushed, "going-through-the motions" Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (DSEIS) by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a thinly veiled attempt to revive the cancelled Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste dump in Nevada.

NRC didn't even bother to provide advance notice to the affected Indian tribes downstream from the targeted site, let alone consult with them in a government-to-government manner, as is the agency's legal obligation. But at least NRC is consistent: it didn't provide any funding to the tribes, either, placing an extraordinary burden on the tribal nations to meet the arbitrarily-short deadline. In this regard, NRC's SDEIS public comment proceeding itself was a violation of environmental justice (EJ), not to mention the agency's biased push to bury 70,000 metric tons, or more, of high-level radioactive waste on indigenous land, guaranteed to leak into the precious, even sacred, drinking water supply.

Despite NRC's own EJ violations, the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe and the Native Community Action Council met the deadline, with powerful comments. They thereby continued a tradition of protecting Yucca Mountain, and its groundwater, that dates back not just years or decades, but centuries and millenia, to time immemorial. More.

"Uranium? Leave It In the Ground!" film showing & discussion, Nov. 16

Sticker designed by Yuko Tonohira of S.A.N.S., as is the Nov. 16th event flier

URANIUM? LEAVE IT IN THE GROUND!
-A Film Screening & Discussion About Uranium Mining-

Sunday November 16
7:00PM-9:00PM
@ Busboys & Poets (5th & K)
1025 5th St. NW Washington, DC 20001
Metro: Gallery Place/Chinatown

Join the discussion with experts and activists fighting the Nuclear Fuel Chain from Cradle to Grave. What can we learn from the history and what is at stake with uranium at this moment?

Film: The River That Harms
(Dir. Colleen Keane, 45 mins, 1987, United States)
This film documents the largest radioactive waste spill in U.S. history - a national tragedy that occurred on Diné (Navajo) lands that received little attention. With the sound of a thunderclap, 94 million gallons of radioactive waste broke through a United Nuclear Corporation storage dam in 1979 and poured into New Mexico’s Puerco River, the main water supply for the Diné people and a tributary of the major source of water for Los Angeles, California. To the Diné people, this event impacted their lands, their health and their economy and sends a prophetic warning for all humanity.

Co-sponsored by: Beyond Nuclear, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Diné No Nukes, S.A.N.S., and Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Link to PDF of Nov. 16th event flier, designed by Yuko Tonohira of S.A.N.S.

Mayor, environmentalists declare victory of people power over nuclear power

Sarnia Mayor Mike BradleyAs reported by the Sarnia Observer, the Mayor of Sarnia, Ontario, Canada, Mike Bradley (photo, left), has declared victory in a years-long campaign to block the shipment of radioactive steam generators, by boat on the Great Lakes, from Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Kincardine, Ontario, across the Pacific, to Sweden. 

“It's a real testament to citizen power,” said Bradley, who has been a vocal critic of the move, along with a growing list of Ontario mayors, coalition groups, environmental activists, and U.S. Senators. “We're fighting a very large and powerful organization.”

First Nations, including the Mohawks, as well as hundreds of municipalities in Quebec representing millions of citizens along the targeted shipment route, made the difference for the resistance.

Kay Cumbow, the nuclear power watchdog in Michigan who first discovered the risky shipping scheme through her research, then warned and activated others, has said "Thanks to everyone who wrote letters, signed petitions and helped get the word out about the dangers of this scheme that would have put the Great Lakes at risk, endangered workers as well as communities enroute, and would have put radioactive materials into the global recycled metal supply."

Maude Barlow, national chairwoman of the Council of Canadians, was quoted by the Ottawa Citizen: "This is a huge victory for communities around the Great Lakes...The Great Lakes belong to everyone and communities have a right to say 'no' to any projects that will harm them."

As indicated by Mayor Bradley in a separate Sarnia Observer article, the next big fight against "nuclear madness" brewing at Bruce involves proposals by Ontario Power Generation, the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization, and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to bury all of Ontario's so-called "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes -- from 20 atomic reactors across the province -- within a mile of the Lake Huron shoreline. Several communities near Bruce, largely populated by Bruce nuclear workers and in effect company towns, have also volunteered to be considered for a national Canadian high-level radioactive waste dump (for 22 reactors). Ojibwe First Nations, whose land the Bruce Nuclear site is built upon, have expressed grave concerns about the proposed DUDs.

PFS pulls the plug on parking lot dump targeted at Skull Valley Goshutes in Utah

Skull Valley Goshute Margene Bullcreek has led the fight against the radioactive waste dump targeted at her community. Photo by Gabriela Bulisova.As reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, the Private Fuel Storage (PFS) Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) has given up on itsplans to turn the tiny Skull Valley Goshutes Inidan Reservation in Utah into a parking lot dump (or "centralized interim storage facility") for commercial high-level radioactive waste. At one time, PFS was comprised of more than a dozen nuclear utilities, led by Xcel Energy of Minnesota, with Dairyland Power Co-Op as a front group.

In 2005-2006, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted PFS a construction and operating license, despite objections by traditionals with the Skull Valley band, nearly 500 environmental and environmental justice organizations, as well as the State of Utah. The plan was for 40,000 metric tons of irradiated nuclear fuel to be "temporarily stored" (for 20 to 40 years) in 4,000 dry casks on the reservation. However, as the ultimate plan was to transfer the wastes to the Yucca Mountain dump, when that proposal was cancelled in 2009, this would have meant the wastes would have been stuck indefinitely at Skull Valley.

In 2006 a very unlikely coalition, involving the likes of Mormon political leaders and wilderness advocates, succeeded in creating the first federal wilderness area in Utah in a generation. This created a "moat" around the Skull Valley reservation, blocking the railway needed to directly deliver the waste. And, after lobbying efforts at the top echelons of Republican Party decision making circles by U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) as well as Utah Governor Huntsman, the George W. Bush administration's Department of the Interior refused to approve the lease agreement between PFS and the Skull Valley band, as well as the intermodal transfer facility on Bureau of Land Management property which could have allowed heavy haul trucks to ship the waste containers the final leg of the journey to the reservation.

The Skull Valley Goshutes were first targeted by the nuclear power establishment more than 20 years ago.Altogether, 60-some tribes have been actively targeted for high-level radioactive waste parking lot dumps. All the proposals have been stopped, as through the work of Native American grassroots environmental activists like Grace Thorpe, working in alliance with environmental and environmental justice organizations.

Update on January 7, 2013 by admin

On Jan. 7, the Salt Lake Tribune published a follow-on article about PFS's cancellation, entitled "Money, politics bury plans for Utah fuel-rod cemetery." The article quotes a leader of the broad coalition which opposed the "parking lot dump":

"...Chip Ward remembers an 'amazing' coalition swelled up around the goal of defeating the storage site.

Co-founder of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, he grasped the wariness of Utahns who already had allowed a slew of toxic industries to be established in western Utah — including chemical weapons destruction, bio-weapons testing, a low-level nuclear waste site, a hazardous waste site, a toxic waste incinerator and what was then the nation’s biggest air polluter...

'When you have a really powerful political movement,' Ward said, 'you can look past whatever divides you and what is important is the cause that unites you.'"

NIRS, for one, spearheaded a coalition of nearly 450 organizations nation-wide, which objected to the environmental, or radioactive, racism of the PFS proposal.

25 years ago today, the "Screw Nevada Bill" was passed

Yucca Mountain, as viewed through the frame of a Western Shoshone ceremonial sweat lodge. Photo by Gabriela Bulisova.As reported by the Las Vegas Review Journal, in the wee hours of Dec. 22, 1987, 49 states ganged up on one, singling out Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the sole site in the country for further study as a potential national dump for high-level radioactive waste. Numerous targeted dumpsites in the East had been indefinitely postponed a year or two before, due to widespread public resistance. Deaf Smith County, TX and Hanford, WA were also being considered for the western dumpsite. But TX had 32 U.S. Representatives, WA had a dozen, and NV, just one. TX and WA Representatives also held the powerful House Speaker and Majority Leader slots. On the Senate side, NV had two rookie Senators, regarded at the time as easy to roll. The "raw, naked" political decision was made behind closed doors.

But the science -- Yucca's geological and hydrological unsuitability -- caught up to the proposal. So did Harry Reid's revenge, as he grew in power to become Senate Majority Leader. Led by Western Shoshone spiritual leader Corbin Harney, the Western Shoshone National Council maintained tireless opposition to the dump, joined, over time, by more than 1,000 environmental groups. Then, in 2009, President Obama and his Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, wisely cancelled the dangerous, controversial proposal.

Nuclear industry, U.S. congressional, and U.S. Department of Energy, Environmental Projection Agency, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission promotion of the Yucca Mountain dump over decades actively ignored the "peace and friendship" Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863, which recognized Yucca Mountain as Western Shoshone Indian land.

Although $11 billion of ratepayer and taxpayer money had already been wasted, another $90 billion would have been wasted if the project had gone forward. If the dumpsite had opened, many thousands of high-level radioactive waste trucks, trains, and barges would have travelled through most states, past the homes of tens of millions of Americans, at risk of severe accidents or intentional attacks unleashing disastrous amounts of radioactivity into metro areas. And if wastes had been buried at Yucca, it would have eventually leaked into the environment (beginning within centuries or at most thousands of years), dooming the region downwind and downstream as a nuclear sacrifice area.

Dec. 21st marked the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Such laws, transferring title and liability from the nuclear utilities which generated the wastes -- in order to make a profit -- onto ratepayers and taxpayers, represent an unprecedented, large-scale, and open-ended subsidy.

Update on December 23, 2012 by admin

Judy Treichel, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, has published an op-ed in the Las Vegas Sun entitled "Winning the Yucca battle -- 25 years later."