International
Beyond Nuclear has added a new division -- Beyond Nuclear International. Articles covering international nuclear news -- on nuclear power, nuclear weapons and every aspect of the uranium fuel chain -- can now mainly be found on that site. However, we will continue to provide some breaking news on these pages as it arises.
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Several activisists protesting the planned Jaitapur reactors near Mumbai, India, that will displace five villages, are on the run after bail was denied and local police slapped several charges of violent protest and attempt to murder against them. Local activists have approached the supreme court on their behalf but the activists, including a priest, fishermen and mango farmers and a tailor, remain on the run.
The U.S. Department of Transportation's Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has pledged to seven U.S. Senators that it intends to fully comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) before approving a Canadian radioactive steam generator shipment through U.S. territorial waters on the Great Lakes. PHMSA's Administrator, Cynthia L. Quarterman, wrote to U.S. Senator Russ Feingold on November 8, 2010. Feingold led the effort, that included six other Democratic Senators from Great Lakes states (Durbin from IL, Levin and Stabenow from MI, Casey from PA, and Schumer and Gillibrand from NY), to question and express concerns about the proposed shipment of 16 radioactive steam generators from the Bruce nuclear power plant on the Lake Huron shoreline of Ontario, via Lakes Huron, St. Clair, Erie, and Ontario and the rivers and waterways that connect them, across the Atlantic Ocean, to Sweden for "recycling" into consumer products. While PHMSA's pledge to comply with NEPA is welcome, the broad international environmental coalition opposing this shipment and the "recycling" of radioactive waste continues to call for a careful and comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement to be performed, rather than a lesser Environmental Assessment and "Finding of No Significant Impact" (FONSI) rubberstamp. In addition, the PHMSA letter to Sen. Feingold listed 17 instances of "[radioactive] nuclear power plant large components [having] been transported in U.S. waters" -- although some of these shipments were previously known to the public, some of them were not, including a 2001 radioactive steam generator shipment on Lake Michigan from Kewaunee nuclear power plant in northern Wisconsin to Memphis, TN.
Protests in Maharashtra province near Mumbai, India, are escalating in an effort to stop plans by French nuclear giant, Areva, to build two 2,500 megawatt nuclear reactors there (four are ultimately planned for the site). Citing the destruction of their livelihood, contamination of their land and people, and the unacceptable burden of radioactive waste, locals around the Jataipur site have been marching, protesting and getting arrested. Even some local congressional leaders are leaning toward opposing the plant. The 938 hectares of land required to set up the nuclear plant will come mainly from the five villages of Madban, Niveli, Mithgavane, Karel and Ansure on the Konkan coast. Of this, 700 hectares will be needed for the plant alone, while another 200 hectares will be needed for support infrastructure. Villagers claim that they were not told why the land was acquired in the first three villages. Please suport this important fight. If you are on Facebook, consider becoming a friend of No Nuke Kokan.
The Owens Sound, Ontario Sun Times reports that Bruce Power has decided to postpone its proposed shipment of 16 school bus sized, 100 ton radioactive steam generators until the spring. This represents a huge grassroots environmental victory. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission had planned to simply rubberstamp the risky proposal several months ago, until a groundswell of resistance in the U.S., Canada, and numerous Native American First Nations put the brakes on! See Beyond Nuclear's Canada website section for more detailed information.
Final passage into law of license extensions, till as late as 2034, at 17 German atomic reactors, has been accomplished with the signature of Germany's largely symbolic figurehead president, Christian Wulff. But this has sparked legal objections by Social Democratic Party controlled state governments, which charge it is an unconstitional undermining of a national consensus to close all of the country's atomic reactors by 2022 at the latest. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's overturning of the Nuclear Consensus phase out plan has led to mass protests this year -- over 120,000 people forming a 75 mile long human chain between two nuclear power plants last April; 100,000 protestors in Berlin in September; and in November, 50,000 protestors blocking a radioactive waste train and trucks targeted at Gorleben, Germany's centralized interim storage site for high-level radioactive waste, and formerly proposed permanent dumpsite.
January 24, 2011