Beyond Nuclear public comment #5, re: NRC Holtec/ELEA CISF DEIS, Docket ID NRC-2018-0052 -- re: simply assuming Yucca Mountain, Nevada on Western Shoshone land, is false, indefensible, and a violation of treaty obligations (that is, illegal)

Submitted via: <holtec-cisfeis@nrc.gov>

Dear NRC Staff,

Holtec and NRC assume that the Yucca Mountain dump in Nevada, targeting Western Shoshone Indian land, will open, allowing re-export of irradiated nuclear fuel from New Mexico to Nevada for permanent disposal. It's how Holtec and NRC attempt to justify calling the CISF "interim" or temporary. But the Yucca dump should not, and will not, happen, for a long list of reasons. This includes the Yucca dump's illegality (it would violate the Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863, signed by the U.S. government with the Western Shoshone Indians), as well as the environmental injustice of opening the national high-level radioactive waste dump in the same state that "hosted" (unwillingly) full-scale nuclear weapons testing for several decades on end (1951 to 1992), resulting in disastrous radioactive fallout and health damage downwind. But it also includes Yucca's flagrant scientific unsuitability, as well as the fact that more than a thousand environmental groups have been actively opposing the scheme for 33 years. (A partial listing of the large number of these groups are listed below.) And it also includes that fact that the State of Nevada, and the Western Shoshone, have expressed their non-consent to the Yucca Mountain dump for several long decades now.

Holtec and NRC are entirely unjustified in assuming the Yucca dump will open someday, or year, or decade, or century. In fact, NRC's doing so reveals its bias in the Yucca Mountain licensing proceeding, in which it is supposed to be a neutral safety regulator, only sitting in judgment of the Yucca site's capability of meeting regulations, not advocating for its opening even in the face of its clear unsuitability. For this reason, there is a very high risk that the Holtec CISF in New Mexico will become de facto permanent surface storage, a parking lot dump, risking catastrophic releases of hazardous radioactivity directly into the environment when containers ultimately fail over a long enough period of time, due to loss of institutional control.

Partial listing of organizations opposed to the Yucca Mountain, NV dump proposal scheme:

(As posted on-line here: <http://archives.nirs.us/radwaste/yucca/yuccaopponentslist.htm>)

These comments are submitted on behalf of Beyond Nuclear's members and supporters in New Mexico, and across the country along impacted transport routes.

Please acknowledge receipt of these comments. Thank you.