Jennifer M. Granholm's official portrait was unveiled in the state Capitol where it will hang in the Gallery of the Governors. The portrait features the governor amid symbols that tell the story of her administration's efforts to diversify Michigan's economy, educate and train its citizens, and protect them in tough economic times during the two-terms she served as Michigan's 47th governor.In an article entitled "Granholm backs wind and solar in Biden bid to decarbonize electricity" by Rachel Frazin in THE HILL, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm (photo, left) was quoted as saying:
Asked about alternatives to a controversial nuclear waste repository in Nevada called Yucca Mountain, Granholm said that the department was “moving forward” to developing an approach to find a consent-based interim storage facility.
“The possible steps...include requests for information, engaging with stakeholders and tribal governments, establishing a funding mechanism for interested communities, organizations, maybe tribal governments to explore the concept,” she said, adding that the department hopes to announce next steps “in the coming months.”
It is very disconcerting that Secretary Granholm would use the word "tribal" twice in a short quote re: consolidated interim storage facilities (CISFs) for highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel.
It harkens back decades at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), when a patronizing "Nuclear Waste Negotiator," David Leroy, of environmentally racist, colonialist mindset, suggested out loud that Native Americans would make the ideal "host" for high-level radioactive wastes, given their ancient cultures of environmental stewarship.
As documented in a backgrounder by NIRS and Public Citizen entitled "Radioactive Racism: The History of Targeting Native American Communities with High-Level Atomic Waste Dumps," U.S. Nuclear Waste Negotiator Leroy wrote to all several hundred federally recognized tribal nations in the country, offering funding in exchange for consideration of "hosting" commercial irradiated nuclear fuel.
60 Native American tribal council governments responded to him with interest.
One, the Prairie Island Indian Community in Minnesota, cleverly used the funds to undertake research showing that their reservation in the middle of the Mississippi River, prone to regular, sometimes severe, flooding, is not only unsuitable for a CISF, but also unsuitable for the two atomic reactors that were built there without their consent, as well as unsuitable for the "overflow" irradiated nuclear fuel dry casks stored on-site.
At the Sauk and Fox Reservation in Oklahoma, tribal member Grace Thorpe led the resistance to the CISF scheme. Within a short period of time, a special recall election had ousted the tribal council members who had initiated negotiations with the Nuclear Waste Negotiator. Grace Thorpe went on to found the National Environmental Coalition of Native Americans (NECONA), as well as to serve on the board of directors of NIRS.
When asked what motivated her to oppose CISFs targeting her own and other Native American communities, Thorpe responded that she had been deployed to Nagasaki, Japan after the atomic bombing, as a member of the Women's Auxiliary Corps in World War II. Thorpe was a Bronze Star recipient.
U.S. Nuclear Waste Negotiator Leroy focused on 13 reservation communities in particular. However, through the good work of Thorpe, NIRS, and others across the country, the U.S. Nuclear Waste Negotiator position at DOE was defunded and eliminated, without the establishment of a signle CISF on any Indigenous reservation.
The nuclear power industry itself picked up the reins where the U.S. Nuclear Waste Negotiator left off, however.
A consortium of a dozen or more nuclear power utility companies, led by Northern States Power (NSP) of the Twin Cities in MN (now called Xcel Energy), the same company that built two reactors at Prairie Island against the tribe's will, first tried to establish a CISF at the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation in southern New Mexico. However, the scheme was stopped by traditionals led by Rufina Marie Laws and Joe Geronimo.
After defeat at Mescalero, NSP's Private Fuel Storage, LLC (PFS) consortium targeted the tiny Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in western Utah. The resistance to the CISF was led by Margene Bullcreek and Sammy Blackbear. As at Mescalero, PFS was fended off at Skull Valley, despite the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) rubber-stamping the construction and operating license. Honor the Earth, Indigenous Environmental Network, and a Native American led environmental justice movement spanning the U.S. made a huge difference.
Even though no high-level radioactive waste was ever delivered to and stored at Mescalero or Skull Valley, the wounds inflicted on the communities still persist today, even decades later.
Granholm also mentioned "establishing a funding mechanism for interested communities, organizations, maybe tribal governments to explore the concept...”. As mentioned above, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, first the U.S. Nuclear Waste Negotiator offered financial incentives to tribal governments to consider hosting high-level radioactive waste -- the further into the process tribal councils were willing to go, the larger the monetary payments would become.
When the Obama administration's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (BRC) -- comprised of 15 exclusively pro-nuclear panelists -- published its Final Report in January 2012, the BRC did recommend CISFs as a "Plan B" to the "unworkable" Yucca Mountain, Nevada permanent dump-site scheme. Yucca itself is located on Western Shoshone land.
The BRC also recommended "consent-based siting," for both CISFs as well as permanent repositories. However, when the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing to consider legislation to enact the BRC's recommendations, Republicans -- including James Risch of Idaho -- cynically scoffed that "consent-based siting" merely meant monetary incentives.
But as Keith Lewis, environmental director of the Serpent River First Nation in Ontario, put it in the book This Is My Homeland, "There is nothing moral about bribing a starving man with money." He was speaking about the decades (1948 to 1996) of uranium mining and milling that have so ravaged his region ever after -- including, ironically enough, so badly contaminating traditional foods, such as moose, that they are no longer safe to eat.
Thankfully, Energy Secretary Granholm did mention "consent-based siting" above.
She also responded in the affirmative, when U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto asked if she supported the Nevada congressional delegation's proposed Nuclear Waste Informed Consent Act.
Other Biden administration cabinet secretaries and appointees, during their confirmation hearings, also indicated that Nevada's wishes would be honored, and Yucca Mountain will no longer be considered for a high-level radioactive waste dump-site.
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) also opposes any restoration of funding for the Yucca dump. The same is almost certainly true of U.S. House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), a longtime Yucca dump opponent.
In fact, the Yucca Mountain Project has received no federal funding since Fiscal Year 2010, when the Obama/Biden administration first stopped requesting a budget for it. Although the Trump administration tried to fund the dump, congressional opposition -- led by senior Democrat Dina Titus and the rest of the NV delegation -- blocked it on Capitol Hill. The Obama/Biden administration also -- unsuccessfully -- attempted to withdraw the DOE's license application to construct and operate the repository at Yucca. But the lack of any funding has meant even the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing proceeding ground to a halt many years ago.
While the Yucca dump seems clearly off the table, for the time being anyway, the prospects for CISFs remain much less clear.
NRC's licensing proceedings for both the Interim Storage Partners (ISP) CISF at Waste Control Specialists in Andrews County, West Texas, and the Holtec International/Eddy Lea Energy Alliance CISF in Southeastern New Mexico, are quickly drawing to a close. NRC staff's Final Safety Evaluation Report and Final Environmental Impact Statement re: ISP are scheduled to be published by July 2021. That tees up the final licensing decision by the NRC Commissioners -- they could act right away, or take their sweet time. The NRC Commissioners, like the NRC staff and Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, have made short shrift of more than 100 contentions -- legal and technical objections -- brought by a broad coalition of opponents, including Beyond Nuclear.
Holtec/ELEA's CISF was actually 6-8 weeks ahead of ISP's licensing proceeding. But Holtec has failed to adequately or promptly answer NRC staff Requests for Additional Information, throwing some doubt about the timing for Holtec's final licensing decision.
NRC Commission support for the Texas and New Mexico CISFs has come even from both Democrats currently on the Commission -- Jeff Baran and Christopher Hanson. In fact, Hanson -- Biden's appointed NRC Chairman -- previously worked for many years on Capitol Hill as a senior staffer for U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), who as chair or ranking member on the Energy & Water Appropriations Subcommittee, has promoted, and funded CIS at DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy for many years now. In fact, Hanson worked at the pro-nuclear Office of Nuclear Energy before becoming Feinstein's senior staffer. (The Office of Nuclear Energy also hosted the BRC from 2010 to 2012, by the way.)
So does Energy Secretary Granholm's response to the reporter's question mean that the Biden administration is not interested in proceeding with the currently targeted CISF schemes?
That would be a good thing -- as DOE taking title (ownership) of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel at an interim site, in the absence of an open and operating permanent geologic repository, would violate the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended. This is the heart of Beyond Nuclear's legal challenge against both CISFs, currently being held in abeyance -- till NRC's final licensing decisions -- at the second highest court in the land, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
As Energy Secretary Granholm has consistently expressed support for "consent-based siting," the New Mexico and Texas CISFs should be blocked -- both governors have expressed opposition to both CISFs, located just 40 miles from each other across the TX/NM border. In addition, a growing groundswell of state legislators, U.S. congress members, and residents in both states, and people throughout the country, have expressed strong opposition.
But the Biden administration, including the Energy Secretary and NRC Chairman, have expressed strong support for environmental justice (EJ). As New Mexico is a majority minority state -- a Latinx and Indigenous majority -- the CISFs should be non-starters (ISP at WCS, TX is just 0.37 miles from the NM state line, and upstream from NM). In addition NM, and TX, already bear a very large pollution burden, from fossil fuel extraction in the Permian Basin, and from a large concentration of nuclear and radioactive waste facilities in the area, as well. For EJ reasons alone, both these CISFs should be stopped.
The EJ burden along the impacted transportation routes nationwide is another reason the CISFs should be stopped. By definition, CISFs double transport risks, for no good reason whatsoever.
Certainly targeting Native American reservations for CISFs is an EJ non-starter, as explained above. This makes Energy Secretary Granholm's mention of "tribal governments" as potential CISF hosts very alarming, and a contradiction of the Biden administration's stated position in support of EJ.
Yet another reason for the Biden administration to oppose the TX and NM CISFs is that they assume Yucca Mountain as the permanent geologic repository -- it is how they stand by their claim that the CISFs are "interim." NRC also assumes Yucca as the final dump-site -- which not only violates the Biden administration's EJ policy (Nevada has already suffered from more than a thousand full-scale nuclear weapons "test" detonations, and consequent hazardous radioactive fallout and contamination), but also would violate the U.S. Constitution (by violating the "peace and friendship" Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863 with the Western Shoshone Nation), and also contradicts the Biden administration's stated policy position that it supports Nevada's right to not consent to the Yucca dump, and to have that non-consent respected by the federal government.