Bloomberg News: "Trump Advisers Eye Reviving Nevada Yucca Nuclear Waste Dump"

Political cartoon by Tom EngelhardtThe President-Elect Donald J. Trump parade of bad nuclear ideas has already begun. Bloomberg News reports that "Trump advisors eye reviving Nevada nuclear waste dump."

Over the past 30 years, since the "Screw Nevada bill" of 1987 was initially rammed through Congress, more than a thousand environmental, environmental justice, and public interest groups, representing every state in the union, have successfully staved off the proposal to open a national high-level radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, located on Western Shoshone Indian land.

In 2009-2010, President Obama declared the Yucca dump "unworkable" -- although scientifically unsuitable and environmentally unjust would have been better -- and wisely cancelled the project. U.S. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), long-serving U.S. Senate Democratic Leader, devoted his career to de-funding and blocking the Yucca dump.

But both Obama and Reid are leaving office in January. The likes of U.S. Reps. Fred Upton (R-MI) and John Shimkus (R-IL), on the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee, have long sought to revive the Yucca dump, on behalf of the lobbyists from the nuclear power industry. Now the President-Elect Trump administration seems amenable to "screwing Nevada," all over again, despite the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future's clear recommendation that radioactive waste dump siting must be "consent-based."

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Radioactive Russian roulette on the highways: Unprecedented truck shipments of highly radioactive liquid wastes

Investigative reporter Frank Fraboni of ABC 13 News/WLOS in Western North Carolina has filed the following reports, regarding unprecedented shipments of highly radioactive liquid waste from Chalk River Nuclear Lab, Ontario, Canada to Savannah River Site, South Carolina, U.S.A. -- potentially through Asheville, North Carolina, the setting for these reports:

Special Report (Part 1): Opponents say 'mobile Chernobyl' threatens North Carolina mountains (featuring Mary Olson of Nuclear Information and Resource Service -- Southeast, based in Asheville, NC);

Special Report (Part 2): Trucking uranium through the mountains (featuing Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear).

Beyond Nuclear on Radio EcoShock re: Mobile Chernobyls & parking lot dumps

Host Alex Smith of Radio EcoShock interviewed Beyond Nuclear's Radioactive Waste Specialist, Kevin Kamps, re: the proposal for so-called "centralized interim storage" of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel at Waste Control Specialists, LLC (WCS) in Andrews County, Texas. Listen to the interview from the 32:00 minute to 52:15 minute mark in the recording.

(Please note this correction: The plutonium-contaminated waste barrel burst at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico occurred on Valentine's Day, 2014, not 2012.)

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Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds Energy Education: Nuclear Power Is Not "Green Energy": It Is a Fount of Atomic Waste

Arnie GundersenArnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer at Fairewinds Energy Education, has published an article at Truthout: "Nuclear Power Is Not 'Green Energy': It Is a Fount of Atomic Waste."

Gundersen serves as expert witness for Beyond Nuclear, in both its resistance to the Fermi 3 proposed new reactor in Michigan (re: Quality Assurance), as well as its resistance to a 20-year license extension at Davis-Besse, Ohio (re: steam generator replacements).

OH agrees to let FirstEnergy Nuclear impose $132.5 million a year surcharge on its 1.9 million customers

"Burning money" graphic art by Gene Case, Avening AngelsTom Henry of the Toledo Blade has Tweeted out his column on the ratepayer-funded bailout, now approved by the State of Ohio -- to the tune of $132.5 million per year -- of FirstEnergy Nuclear's dangerously age-degraded Davis-Besse atomic reactor on the Lake Erie shore. Beyond Nuclear has led opposition to Davis-Besse's 2017-2037 license extension since 2010. Davis-Besse has had more close calls with catastrophe than any other U.S. reactor, and -- FirstEnergy admits -- has had a severely cracked (and ever worsening) concrete containment, which could well fail to contain catastrophic amounts of hazardous radioactivity in the event of a meltdown.

Beyond Nuclear has also worked alongside Sierra Club, Ohio Environmental Council, Environmental Defense Fund, AARP, Public Citizen, ratepayer advocacy groups, and many others, to oppose requests from FirstEnergy to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) for ratepayer-funded bailouts of $4 to 8 billion (yes, with a B). FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) ultimately put the kabosh on this larger attempted ratepayer robbery, but the State of Ohio has just blessed the burdening of its own citizens to the tune of $132.5 million/year, nonetheless.