PFS pulls the plug on parking lot dump targeted at Skull Valley Goshutes in Utah

Skull Valley Goshute Margene Bullcreek led the fight against the radioactive waste dump targeted at her community. Photo by Gabriela Bulisova.As reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, the Private Fuel Storage (PFS) Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) has given up on its plans to turn the tiny Skull Valley Goshutes Inidan Reservation in Utah into a parking lot dump (or "centralized interim storage facility") for commercial high-level radioactive waste. At one time, PFS was comprised of more than a dozen nuclear utilities, led by Xcel Energy of Minnesota, with Dairyland Power Co-Op as a front group.

In 2005-2006, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted PFS a construction and operating license, despite objections by traditionals with the Skull Valley band, nearly 500 environmental and environmental justice organizations, as well as the State of Utah. The plan was for 40,000 metric tons of irradiated nuclear fuel to be "temporarily stored" (for 20 to 40 years) in 4,000 dry casks on the reservation. However, as the ultimate plan was to transfer the wastes to the Yucca Mountain dump, when that proposal was cancelled in 2009, this would have meant the wastes would have been stuck indefinitely at Skull Valley.

In 2006 a very unlikely coalition, involving the likes of Mormon political leaders and wilderness advocates, succeeded in creating the first federal wilderness area in Utah in a generation. This created a "moat" around the Skull Valley reservation, blocking the railway needed to directly deliver the waste. And, after lobbying efforts at the top echelons of Republican Party decision making circles by U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) as well as Utah Governor Huntsman, the George W. Bush administration's Department of the Interior refused to approve the lease agreement between PFS and the Skull Valley band, as well as the intermodal transfer facility on Bureau of Land Management property which could have allowed heavy haul trucks to ship the waste containers the final leg of the journey to the reservation.

The Skull Valley Goshutes were first targeted by the nuclear power establishment more than 20 years ago.Altogether, 60-some tribes have been actively targeted for high-level radioactive waste parking lot dumps. All the proposals have been stopped, as through the work of Native American grassroots environmental activists like Grace Thorpe, working in alliance with environmental and environmental justice organizations.

Update on January 7, 2013 by admin

On Jan. 7, the Salt Lake Tribune published a follow-on article about PFS's cancellation, entitled "Money, politics bury plans for Utah fuel-rod cemetery." The article quotes a leader of the broad coalition which opposed the "parking lot dump":

"...Chip Ward remembers an 'amazing' coalition swelled up around the goal of defeating the storage site.

Co-founder of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, he grasped the wariness of Utahns who already had allowed a slew of toxic industries to be established in western Utah — including chemical weapons destruction, bio-weapons testing, a low-level nuclear waste site, a hazardous waste site, a toxic waste incinerator and what was then the nation’s biggest air polluter...

'When you have a really powerful political movement,' Ward said, 'you can look past whatever divides you and what is important is the cause that unites you.'"

NIRS, for one, spearheaded a coalition of nearly 450 organizations nation-wide, which objected to the environmental, or radioactive, racism of the PFS proposal.

NRC's Nuke Waste Confidence EIS will delay reactor licenses for at least two years!

The cover of Beyond Nuclear's pamphlet "A Mountain of Radioactive Waste 70 Years High"The five Commissioners who direct the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have just ordered NRC Staff to carry out an expedited, two-year long Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process to revise the agency's Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision (NWCD) and Rule. Critics have charged the NWCD is a confidence game, which for decades has prevented environmental opponents of new reactor construction/operation licenses, as well as old reactor license extensions, from raising high-level radioactive waste generation/storage concerns during NRC licensing proceedings, or even in the federal courts. 

But on June 8th, the U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed with a coalition of state attorneys general (from NY, CT, NJ, and VT) and environmental groups (including BREDL, NRDC, Riverkeeper and SACE) that NRC's Nuclear Waste Confidence violated the National Environmental Policy Act. In effect, the court ruling, which NRC decided not to appeal, ordered the agency to carry out a decades-overdue EIS on the risks of extended (for decades, centuries, or forever) high-level radioactive waste storage at reactor sites, if a permanent repository is never opened.

This means at least a two year delay in any finalization of NRC licensing decisions for new reactors, or license extensions at old reactors, until this EIS process and NWCD revision are completed. However, all other aspects of the NRC licensing proceedings can still be finalized and dispensed with in the meantime, taking NRC rubberstamps of reactor licenses right up to the edge, just shy of finalization. Beyond Nuclear has raised Nuke Waste Con Game contentions in opposition to two proposed new reactors (Fermi 3 in MI, and Grand Gulf 2 in LA), as well as to two old reactor license extensions (Davis-Besse, OH, and Grand Gulf 1, LA). An environmental coalition has raised similar contentions against all three dozen new reactor construction/operation, and old reactor extension, licenses across the U.S.

Disconcertingly, the NRC Commissioners' press release announcing this EIS launch also stated: "The Commission said the staff should draw on the agency’s 'long, rich history' with waste confidence determinations as well as work performed by other agencies, such as environmental assessments, technical studies and reports addressing the impacts of transportation and consolidated storage of spent fuel."

This seems to indicate that the NRC has joined with the likes of President Obama's and Energy Secretary Chu's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future in pushing for "consolidated interim storage" instead of "hardened on-site storage" of high-level radioactive waste. This should come as no surprise, as NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane served on the BRC.

Legislation has already been introduced on Capitol Hill that would launch and fund "consolidated interim storage."U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman will hold a hearing on such legislation on Sept. 12th. Witnesses will include two other members of the BRC -- one of its co-chairmen, General Brent Scrowcroft, and former NRC Chairman Richard Meserve -- as well as Pete Lyons, himself a former NRC Commissioner, and now director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy, mandated to promote nuclear power, and in fact host agency for the BRC. Another witness is the head of Constellation Nuclear, recently acquired by Exelon Nuclear, which would love nothing more than transferring title -- and liability -- for high-level radioactive waste to the American taxpayer, once it begins moving by road, rail, and/or barge, in unprecedented shipment numbers, toward "consolidated interim storage." The final witness is Geoff Fettus, the nuclear attorney at NRDC who helped lead the environmental coalition's victory at the DC Court of Appeals on June 8th. 

Beyond Nuclear has already issued action alerts against the juggernaut revving its engines on Capitol Hill. We have also joined with the likes of Nuclear Energy Information Service, to hold a "Mountain of Radioactive Waste 70 Years High" conference Dec. 1-3 in Chicago. Kevin Kamps will speak about federal legislative threats on the high-level radioactive waste front, and what you can do about them. The grassroots environmental movement has held off the "Mobile Chernobyl" for 20 years, but this may be the most challenging fight yet in 2013. The Nuke Waste Con EIS also means we have to generate large volumes of public comments, so this conference will be a a launching pad for doing so. Please consider attending, and help spread the word!

For more information on "The Mountain of Radioactive Waste 70 Years High," see our pamphlet by that title (the pamphlet's cover is reproduced above, left), as well as the rest of Beyond Nuclear's Radioactive Waste website section.

Saugeen Ojibway Nations challenge the targeting of their traditional territory for a high-level radioactive waste dump

Saugeen First NationThe Saugeen Ojibway Nations (SON, the Chippewas of Saugeen First Nation and the Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation) live on the Lake Huron shoreline of Ontario. Their Communal Lands are just 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from the Bruce Nuclear Complex. With a total of 9 atomic reactors (8 operable, 1 permanently shutdown), as well as "centralized interim storage" (including incineration!) for all of Ontario's 20 atomic reactors' "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes, Bruce is amongst the world's single largest nuclear sites. 

But now a Deep Geologic Repository (DGR) for burying all of Ontario's "low" and "intermediate" level radioactive wastes has been proposed by Ontario Power Generation (OPG), owner of Ontario's 20 atomic reactors. 

As the SON have submitted to the Canadian nuclear establishment, the likelihood that its traditional lands are also targeted for Canada's national HIGH-level radioactive waste dump (for all of Ontario's, Quebec's, and New Brunswick's irradiated nuclear fuel) means that OPG's Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the DGR is illegally deficient, failing to consider the cumulative impacts associated with the potential for this high-level radioactive waste DGR in the immediate vicinity of Bruce.

The Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO), comprised of Canada's nuclear utilities, has been hired by OPG to represent it in the "low"/"intermediate" DGR Environmental Assessment proceeding, and is also in charge of the high-level radioactive waste dump site search in Canada. NWMO has entered into ever deepening stages of consideration for locating Canada's national high-level radioactive waste dump at any of five municipalities surrounding the site of the proposed Bruce DGR, namely: Saugeen Shores, Brockton, Huron-Kinloss, South Bruce and Arran-Elderslie.

"Interim" parking lot dumps for high-level radioactive waste storage could become de facto permanent

National Public Radio's coverage of the publication of the final report by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (BRC) and its recommendations for radioactive waste management briefly mentioned a warning by Beyond Nuclear at the end of its online article: "The anti-nuclear group Beyond Nuclear has weighed in as well, arguing that the interim storage site is a bad idea because it may just become a permanent site." However, Beyond Nuclear was not mentioned in the on air story, while the nuclear establishment, including the BRC co-chairman and Nuclear Energy Institute, were quoted at length.

BRC report continues shameful history of targeting Native American communities for radioactive waste dumps

Grace Thorpe helped stop dozens of radioactive waste dumps targeted at Native American communities by DOE's Nuclear Waste NegotiatorToday's final report by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (BRC) continued the shameful history of the U.S. nuclear establishment, in both government and industry, of targeting Native American communities for radioactive waste dumps. Beyond Nuclear issued a media statement regarding the BRC report today, and an op-ed several days ago. At the very first public meeting of the BRC nearly two years ago, Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps pleaded this environmental injustice be stopped. To the contrary, BRC's final report points to the U.S. Department of Energy's "Nuclear Waste Negotiator" as a model to be followed again now to advance "consolidated interim storage sites" and repositories. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, DOE's Nuclear Waste Negotiator contacted every single federally recognized Native American tribe in the United States, then targeted 60 in particular, focusing in the end on Mescalero Apache, New Mexico. It is a testament to the extraordinary efforts of Native American environmental justice activists like Grace Thorpe that all those proposals were defeated, and the Nuclear Waste Negotiator's program eliminated. The nuclear power  utilities picked up where the Negotiator left off, next targeting Skull Valley Goshutes, Utah -- a struggle that continues. Ironically, President Obama praised Grace Thorpe in his "Women Taking the Lead to Save our Planet" Women's History Month Proclamation on March 3, 2009, for launching "a successful campaign to organize Native Americans to oppose the storage of nuclear waste on their reservations" -- only now to have his own DOE's BRC recommend that the Nuclear Waste Negotiator model be revived,  including to re-target Native American communities for radioactive waste dumps.