Nuclear waste in Trump's hands?

Action alert from Allison Fisher, Public Citizen:

A private, for-profit company with ties to the Trump administration is trying to take over our nation’s stockpile of highly radioactive nuclear waste.

Tell government officials: Do NOT hand over responsibility for storing nuclear waste to a private, for-profit company.

Take action now.

Let’s play connect-the-dots:

• A private, for-profit company called Waste Control Specialists wants to be entrusted with storing our country’s extremely hazardous nuclear waste.

• The company can’t launch this potentially disastrous privatization scheme without approval from the U.S. Department of Energy and Congress.

• Donald Trump’s pick to run the Department of Energy is former Texas governor and repeat Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry.

• Perry — infamously — advocated eliminating the Department of Energy altogether (once he remembered its name) during a presidential debate.

• When he was governor, Perry signed legislation for a similar scheme with Waste Control Specialists in Texas.

• The owner of Waste Control Specialists at the time was one of Perry's biggest funders, with more than $1.3 million in campaign contributions.

Do you trust a private, for-profit company to never cut corners while handling highly radioactive nuclear waste for decades to come?

Join Public Citizen in urging the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reject this unbelievably dangerous proposal.

Thanks for taking a stand against the Trump Regime.

Onward,

Allison Fisher
Public Citizen’s Climate and Energy Program

NIRS: Tell the NRC: NO Deadly Nuclear Waste Transport Across the US!!!

The text of the NIRS action alert:

Dear Friend,

Thousands of shipments of deadly, cancer-causing, high-level radioactive waste could be transported on trains, trucks, and barges through major cities in your state, and across the country, if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licenses an uneccessary nuclear waste dump in West Texas. 

The clock is ticking for public input!

Waste Control Specialists (WCS), in Andrews County, Texas, is seeking to expand its existing hazardous waste site to include high-level radioactive waste from nuclear power plants across the country. If approved, 40,000 tons of irradiated fuel rods from nuclear reactors around the country could be transported through major cities and farmlands to be stored for 40 years or longer on a concrete pad, creating a de facto permanent disposal facility at a site that has not been designed or evaluated for permanent isolation. 

We need your comments in opposition to the Waste Control Specialists (WCS) Consolidated "Interim" Storage waste dump site in West Texas now!

Tell the NRC we don't want WCS's high-level radioactive waste transport!

Do It Now!

The communities near WCS are largely Latino and lack the resources to fight off a national radioactive waste dump. WCS's unprecedented, illegal high-level radioactive Consolidated "Interim" Storage dump would be near the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides vital drinking and irrigation water to much of the Central United States. 

The NRC must conduct safety and environmental reviews before it decides whether to approve the dump application. Hundreds of Texas and New Mexico residents turned out last week to tell the NRC they don’t want a radioactive dump and nuclear waste shipments in their communities—now we all need to make our voices heard.

Public comments wll be accepted through March 13th [the deadline has now been extended to April 28th] . Now is the time to make our voices heard loud and clear: No Consolidated "Interim" Storage Waste Dumps!

After decades of trying to force-feed the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear dump down the throats of Nevadans and the Western Shoshone Nation, nuclear proponents now want to endanger us all by transporting high-level waste across our country to targeted communities in West Texas.

The NRC has given no consideration to the rights of future generations who will inevitably be affected, and the communities today who will be affected most!

The NRC and the nuclear industry are eager to volunteer communities to take the waste absolving the industry of responsibility for managing the waste it creates before there is a proven solution for its long-term isolation. However, those who live near the site do not consent! 

Submit your comments now!

And thanks for all you do!

Tim Judson
Executive Director

NRC WCS public comment meetings in s.e. NM, w. TX

On Feb. 13 in Hobbs, NM, and Feb. 15 in Andrews, TX, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) held public comment meetings re: Waste Control Specialists' application to construct and operate a centralized interim storage facility for high-level radioactive waste in West TX, on on the NM state line.

Beyond Nuclear joined with other opponents to the proposal, including NIRS, Public Citizen's TX Office, and SEED coalition, as well as concerned local residents, to speak out.

Some of our coverage (thanks to Karen Hadden of SEED Coalition for assembling it): 

San Antonio Express-News:

http://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/Waste-Control-Specialists-is-under-review-to-10908883.php

CBS 7:

http://www.cbs7.com/content/news/Residents-get-vocal-about-a-proposed-radioactive-waste-disposal-plant-413918713.html

ABC 2:

http://www.yourbasin.com/news/public-forum-split-over-nuclear-facility/657342905

KWES NewsWest 9:

http://www.newswest9.com/story/34517596/andrews-community-speak-up-about-possible-high-level-nuclear-waste-site

Midland Reporter Telegram - 

http://www.mrt.com/business/oil/article/WCS-Environmental-study-amid-application-process-10596327.php

Midland Reporter Telegram - about the NRC meeting in Andrews on Feb. 15th:

http://www.mrt.com/business/oil/article/Speakers-encourage-NRC-to-rethink-waste-storage-10936482.php

E&E News:

http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060050510

Public comments opposing de facto permanent parking lot dump at WCS, TX needed by March 13!

Please note: The March 13th deadline has been extended till April 28th! However, it is still important to get public comments rolling into NRC ASAP. If you have time, please comment more than once -- addressing multiple of the many facets of this issue!

Public comments are needed in opposition to Waste Control Specialists (WCS) in West Texas, which seeks to open a de facto permanent parking lot dump for up to half the commercial high-level radioactive waste in the U.S., upstream of the Ogallala Aquifer, vital drinking and irrigation water supply for numerous High Plains states, from Texas to South Dakota.

The region around WCS has a high proportion of low income, Latin American residents, and is already heavily burdened with nuclear activities (radioactive waste dumping, uranium enrichment, etc.) and dirty fossil fuel industries (widespread, heavily polluting oil extraction and natural gas fracking). WCS would launch unprecedented numbers of high-risk irradiated nuclear fuel train (and even barge) shipments through many states.

Sample comments you can use to write your own:

(Beyond Nuclear sample comments on a variety of inter-related subject matter)

Mobile Chernobyl Shipping Risks (see here for WCS's own map, from its construction and operating licence application to NRC, showing the main line railways nation-wide that would be used to transport irradiated nuclear fuel from atomic reactors to West TX; see here for another map, made by SEED Coalition, which includes some Interstate highway routing that could also be used, if NRC were to rubber-stamp a license amendment by WCS to allow Legal Weight Truck shipments);

Risks of Routine or Incident-Free Shipments Nonetheless Being Like Mobile X-ray Machines That Can't Be Turned Off, and Risks of Externally Contaminated Shipments;

Risks of De Facto Permanent Parking Lot Dump at WCS; 

Risks of Loss of Institutional Control if De Facto Permanent Parking Lot Dumps are Abandoned, Containers Fail, and Release Catastrophic Amounts of Hazardous Radioactivity into the Environment;

Why Are These Risks Being Taken?;

SEED Coalition & Public Citizen's Texas Office have prepared sample comments you can use to write your own for submission to NRC by the March 13, 2017 deadline;

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);

Link to instructions on HOW (snail mail, email, as well as online web form) to submit your public comments to NRC by the March 13 deadline [per note above, the deadline has been extended till April 28th]

Please see entries below on Beyond Nuclear's Centralized Interim Storage website section, for more information.

Instructions on HOW to submit public comments to NRC re: WCS, TX centralized interim storage, by March 13 deadline

[Please note: The deadline for public comments has been extended, from March 13th, to April 28th. However, it is important for public comments to be rolling into NRC ASAP. Please consider submitting multiple comments, regarding the various aspects of this multi-faceted risk!]

HOW to submit your public comments:

Per the NRC's Jan. 30, 2017 Federal Register Notice:

You may submit scoping comments by the following methods:

• Email your comments directly to: <WCS_CISF_EIS@nrc.gov>. Comments can be submitted as text in the email(s) itself; any supporting documents can be direclty attached to the email(s). [Although not included in the Federal Register Notice, this email option was communicated to Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps on Feb. 13, 2017 at the Hobbs, NM public meeting by James Park, NRC staff Environmental Review point of contact for this proceeding.]

• Federal Rulemaking Web site: Go to http://www.regulations.gov and search for Docket ID NRC–2016–0231. (Click here to be directly linked to the site.) Comments can be submitted via the webform; supporting documents can be attached.

[Address questions about NRC dockets to Carol Gallagher; telephone: 301–415–3463; email: Carol.Gallagher@nrc.gov.]

• Mail comments to: Cindy Bladey, Office of Administration, Mail Stop: OWFN–12–H08, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555–0001.

Per the note above, comments had been due by March 13, 2017, to ensure consideration, but the deadline has been extended till April 28th. Please comment ASAP, however, and please comment more than once. The quality and the quantity of comments do matter!