Screw Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas?! U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee approves dangerously bad nuke waste bill

Screw Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas?! U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee approves dangerously bad nuke waste bill

 

 

H.R. 2699, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, was passed by the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee on Wed., Nov. 20, by voice vote.

That is, there is no roll call record as to how each U.S. Representative voted.

Voice votes are usually applied only to non-controversial matters, such as naming a post office. This dangerously bad high-level radioactive waste legislation should be among the most controversial bills Congress addresses.

H.R. 2699 aims to open one or more dumps in the Southwest -- so-called consolidated interim storage facilities (CISFs), targeted at New Mexico and/or Texas, as well as a permanent burial dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, on Western Shoshone Indian land. If any one of these dumps open, large-scale shipments of high-risk irradiated nuclear fuel, by road, rail, and/or waterway, would travel through most states, past the homes of millions of Americans.

Considering their targeting for the nuke waste dumps, this bill could be called the Screw Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas bill.

But when it comes to the high-risk transportation impacts, we all live in Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas!

See the self-congratulatory press release by the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee chairman, Frank Pallone Jr. (Democrat-New Jersey), here.  

What can you do? Contact your U.S. Representative, and urge opposition to this dangerously bad bill, H.R. 2699!

You can also contact both your U.S. Senators. Urge them to oppose H.R. 2699, and its Senate companion bill.

Unlike the last congressional session, the U.S. Senate has already taken up H.R. 2699.

The Senate has not assigned a bill number for the legislation, but on May 1, 2019, S._______, a Discussion Draft of the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, was taken up by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's chairman, John Barrasso (Republican-WY).

You can also reach your Congress Members' D.C. offices by calling the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121.

Please take urgent action, and spread the word!

Learn more about the latest on H.R. 2699, here. And learn more about centralized storage, Yucca Mountain, and waste transportation, at our website.

[Regarding the photo, above right, the rail route shown would be used to transport high-level radioactive waste, past the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., bound for dump-sites out West, if H.R. 2699 becomes law. So not only would Mobile Chernobyls pass by the work place of Members of Congress, they would also pass through the congressional districts of 75% of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives, in the context of those bound for Western Shoshone Indian land at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. (Shipments bound for CISFs in NM and/or TX would follow similar to identical routes, especially that far east of the Southwestern U.S.) That is, Mobile Chernobyls would pass through 330 of 435 U.S. Reps.' districts, bound for Yucca Mountain, as documented by the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects. See the 2017 documents below:

2017 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

• Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects - Representative Transportation Routes to Yucca Mountain and Transportation Impacts (Cask Shipments by State) - Fred Dilger PhD
• Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects - Cities Potentially Affected by Shipments to Yucca Mountain (pdf-2.45M)
• Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects - States Potentially Affected by Shipments to Yucca Mountain with Congressional Districts (pdf-7.05M)
• Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects - Congressional Districts Potentially Affected by Shipments to Yucca Mountain - 115th Congress (pdf-882K)]