In dangerous collusion with WCS, NRC sets breakneck schedule for rubber-stamping high-level radioactive waste parking lot dump
Maps showing the national and TX-specific routes for commerical irradiated nuclear fuel railway shipments to WCS.On Jan. 26, 2017, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced "NRC to Review WCS Application, Announces Hearing Opportunity and Meetings on Scope of Environmental Review."
(Actual federal register links, now posted:
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2017-01-30/pdf/2017-01966.pdf
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2017-01-30/pdf/2017-01973.pdf
Also see the WCS application and review website at NRC's website.)
The NRC will accept public comments on the Waste Control Specialists, LLC (WCS) "centralized interim storage" site (de facto permanent parking lot dump) only until March 13, 2017.
In-person meetings will be held in Hobbs, New Mexico on Feb. 13; in Andrews, Texas on Feb. 15; and at NRC's HQ in Rockville, MD after that (supposedly the week after the NM & TX meetings, but the exact date/time has not yet been announced).
NRC has stated:
The NRC’s Jan. 26 letter to WCS sets a schedule for its safety and environmental reviews, with a target of making a licensing decision by the third quarter of fiscal year 2019, assuming WCS provides high-quality responses, on schedule, to any NRC requests for additional information. The public will have 60 days from publication of a notice of docketing in the Federal Register,which will appear shortly, to submit requests for a hearing and petition to intervene in the licensing proceeding for the proposed facility. Details on how to submit those requests and petitions will be in the Federal Register notice. (Emphasis added)
A national coalition of environmental, environmental justice (EJ), public interest and other groups is gearing up to challenge this WCS parking lot dump, just as a national coalition opposed the Private Fuel Storage, LLC (PFS) "centralized interim storage" parking lot dump. PFS was very actively targeted -- by the nuclear power industry and its rubber-stamp friends at NRC -- at the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in Utah, from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. Despite NRC's rubber-stamp approval of the radioactively racist PFS dump, it was nonetheless stopped by the national coalition (including 437 EJ groups), led by Native Americans, including anti-dump traditional members of the Skull Valley Goshute Indian community, namely Margene Bullcreek and Sammy Blackbear. (More info. on the PFS fight is posted at the NIRS website.)
Having dodged that radioactive bullet, here comes another one (more like a radioactive cannon ball, or even nuclear attack!).
As with the Yucca dump targeted at Western Shoshone Indian land in Nevada (see Beyond Nuclear coverage; see NIRS coverage), so too is WCS an environmental injustice, radioactive racism: Andrews County, Texas is 40% Hispanic/Latin American, with a significant percentage of residents living in poverty. Neighboring communities just across the New Mexico state line (WCS is right on the border, and in fact New Mexico is downstream) have similar demographics.
And yes, as with Yucca, and PFS, WCS raises the specter of Mobile Chernobyls, Fukushima Freeways, Dirty Bombs on Wheels, and Floating Fukushimas (see NIRS coverage; see Beyond Nuclear coverage). Just as with Yucca's "When it comes to radioactive waste transportation, we all live in Nevada," so too with WCS -- "When it comes to radioactive waste transportation, we all live in Andrews, Texas." (See rail route maps, above left; click here for a larger, more legible version of the route map. See also the national railway shipping routes map WCS included in its license application Environmental Report.)
WCS is supposed to be "mostly rail" -- which can also mean many barges (26 reactors in the U.S. lack direct rail access, meaning barges on surface waters -- the Great Lakes, rivers, seacosts -- could be used to haul the 100+ ton, rail-sized casks to the nearest rail head). Backgrounders (including more details on the high risks) on these various barge routes (including maps) were originally written for the Yucca dump scheme; however, WCS could just as well involve such barges:
- NIRS factsheets on barge shipments of deadly high-level radioactive waste on waterways by state (September 28, 2004):
- MD - Chesapeake Bay
- VA - James River
- DE - Delaware Bay
- NJ, NY, CT - Waters Surrounding New York City
- MA - Cape Cod Bay, Massachusetts Bay, and Boston Harbor
- IL, MI, WI - Lake Michigan
- LA, MS - Mississippi River
- TN, AL - Tennessee River
- NE, KS, MO - Missouri River
- CA - California Coast
- FL - Florida’s Atlantic Coastline
- MD - Chesapeake Bay
However, with something as simple as a rushed NRC rubber-stamp amendment, WCS could apply for, and quickly get, permission to truck in smaller-sized, "Legal Weight Truck" (LWT) casks to WCS -- something we'll also have to carefully guard against vigilantly.
For more info. on the risks of "centralized interim storage" (de facto permanent parking lot dumps), see Beyond Nuclear's relevant website section.
As with Yucca, PFS, etc., it will take a determined national grassroots movement effort to stop WCS from becoming a national parking lot dump, and launching unprecedented numbers of Mobile Chernobyls. As Karen Hadden of SEED Coalition has said, this is the fight of a lifetime. [See Karen's action alert from Jan. 31, 2017.] As the saying from the Civil Rights Movement put it, if you see a good fight, jump in!
Our first major deadline is NRC's breakneck rushed deadline of mid-March for public comments on the WCS parking lot dump environmental scoping, precursor to NRC's Draft Environmental Impact Statement. (Which we will also have to comment on down the road.) Beyond Nuclear, and other groups, will circulate sample talking points in the near future, which you can use to write your own to submit to NRC. Stayed tuned!
[Here are links to sample comments, now posted, with more to follow:
Sample comments you can use to write your own:
Public comments previously submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for a proceeding re: Private Initiatives to carry out centralized interim storage can now also be used -- "recycled," so to speak! -- to prepare comments to NRC re: WCS's scheme (the comments to DOE were due Jan. 27, 2017)]
Another big showdown will be at the public meetings themselves, breakneck rushed by NRC for mid-Feb. in West Texas and Southeast New Mexico.
A coalition of groups will also, undoubtedly, be officially intervening against the WCS license, in NRC's rubber-stamp/kangaroo court Atomic Safety (sic) and Licensing Board proceeding, on a large number of health, safety, and environmental contentions. Public intervenors have until the end of March to file, or forever hold their peace.
Shame on NRC for its obvious collusion, as with the breakneck deadlines, designed to overcome and overwhelm (largely volunteer) public resistance. In 2012, the Japanese Parliament concluded that just such collusion -- between regulatory agency, nuclear power industry, and elected officials -- was the root cause of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. Such collusion exists in spades, re: the WCS parking lot dump -- involving NRC and DOE, WCS and the nuclear power industry, and TX politicians (including former governor Rick Perry, now poised to become Trump's Energy Secretary, despite his blatant conflict of interest, not to mention the huge costs, risks, and liabilities this would mean for U.S. taxpayers). Such collusion is how radioactive catastrophes happen, and these various "public servants" (serving the public up for dinner, that is, to WCS and the nuclear power industry!) are all too willing to play this high-risk game of radioactive Russian roulette.
[By the way, there is still time to take action against Perry's confirmation as Energy Secretary. Contact both your U.S. Senators, and urge they vote against Perry's confirmation! Do so ASAP, the Senate floor vote could happen any day now! Here is Beyond Nuclear's action alert from a week ago:
A particularly egregious example of the corrupting influence of the revolving door between "public service" (government) and industry is John Kotek:
The very person who ran DOE’s “consent-based siting” proceeding, declared WCS itself “consent-based,” rejected the need to get consent from transport corridor communities, and very narrowly construed the definition of “consent” – DOE’s acting assistant secretary in the Office of Nuclear Energy since July 2015, John Kotek — has now shown his true colors. Kotek will now serve at the nuclear power industry’s lobbying and PR HQ in Washington, D.C. – the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) — as vice president for policy development and public affairs.
In fact, Kotek "served" as staff director at President Obama's and Energy Secretary Chu's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future. The bad faith, the collusion, and the high-speed revolving doors and rubber stamps, in the nuclear power/radioactive waste governmental-industrial complex, is embodied in people like John Kotek.
Making NRC's breakneck schedule and high-speed collusion all the more ironic is how long commercial irradiated nuclear fuel remains hazardous: a million years, EPA was forced to admit in 2008, under federal court order, hard won by an environmental coalition in the Yucca Mountain fight. In fact, even a million years is an underestimate, when you consider Iodine-129, as but one example: I-129, an artificial radioactive poison, has a half-life of 15.7 million years, so will remain hazardous (to children, and other living things) for 157 to 314 million years!
Of course, "centralized interim storage" de-linked or un-connected from permanent geologic disposal, as WCS is, makes no sense. It merely multiplies transport risks, as the wastes would have to be moved again in the future, to the permanent dump-site. In fact, that permanent dump-site could well be right back in the same direction from which the wastes came in the first place. This would create a high-stakes game of radioactive musical chairs, or radioactive hot potato, on the roads, rails, and/or waterways!
This nearly happened at PFS in UT. The PFS scheme called for "interim" storage, for 20-40 years, until the Yucca Mountain dump opened in Nevada. But President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu wisely canceled the scientifically unsuitable, non-consent-based, environmentally unjust/radioactively racist (targeted at Western Shoshone Nation sacred treaty lands) site in 2009-2010. "Plan B" at PFS, if Yucca was not available, was simply to "return to sender."
Maine Yankee is a startling case in point. 50+ giant rail-sized containers of high-level radioactive waste would have been shipped from Wiscasset, ME, through many states, 2,500 miles out to Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in Utah. Only to be shipped back to ME. 5,000 miles of round-trip Mobile Chernobyl risks, accomplishing absolutely nothing in the end!
Given such absurdities, the risks of a de facto permanent parking lot dump are all the greater. Once wastes are "consolidated" or "centralized" in one congressional district, good luck ever moving them out, ever again. Right now, the U.S. Representative for Andrews County, TX is blinded by dollar signs, and thinks a parking lot dump at WCS is a good idea. But if a future U.S. Rep. for that district thinks it's high time to move the wastes, as to a permanent dump-site, that would make for an uphill battle. It would be one U.S. Rep. versus 434 others, who would likely be just fine with it staying in West Texas, so long as it doesn't travel through, or get buried permanently in, their congressional district!
As you can see, we need all the help we can get, to stop all this nuclear madness, to borrow a phrase from our founding president, Helen Caldicott. Please help us! Please spread the word! See you on the front lines of the fight for environmental justice, in the battle for a nuclear-free future! Thanks!
January 26, 2017