"The Danger of Nuclear Escalation"

In an episode entitled "The Danger of Nuclear Escalation," Margaret Harrington, host of "Nuclear-Free Future Conversation" on CCTV in Burlington, Vermont, interviewed Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps about the related risks of nuclear power and nuclear weapons, on the eve of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference. The NPT review is held once every five years at the United Nations in New York City, drawing thousands of anti-nuclear weapons and power activists from around the world to shadow conferences, including large numbers of Japanese citizens, including Hibakusha, survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in 1945. Margaret and Kevin discussed the fatal flaw at the heart of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the prospects for nuclear abolition.

UCS warns MOX program could take a century to complete, at a cost of over $100 billion!

In a press release, the Union of Concerned Scientists has brought to light a U.S. Department of Energy contractor's warning that the Mixed Oxide Plutonium-Uranium (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility, under construction at the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in South Carolina, could cost taxpayers more than $100 billion, and may not be functional till Fiscal Year 2100, a century after the construction project began!

UCS also emphasizes that the DOE contractor report reaffirms that immobilization -- the mixing of the excess weapons-grade plutonium back into the high-level radioactive waste from which it came in the first place -- and disposal as radioactive waste, would be quicker and cheaper than the MOX option.

Nix MOX activists have called for immobilization as the more sensible option for two decades, but their pleas have fallen on deaf ears in both Democratic and Republican administrations, as well as Congresses.

In addition to the astronomical costs, MOX undermines U.S. non-proliferation efforts. It sets a bad example for other countries to follow, of plutonium reprocessing that could easily lead to nuclear weapons proliferation.

"Fresh Call for Total Removal of Nuclear Waste in Bridgeton"

Kevin Killeen of KMOX/CBS St. Louis has interviewed Beyond Nuclear board member Kay Drey regarding the radioactive contamination of the West Lake Landfill:

Eighty-two-year-old Kay Drey says people – and politicians – are forgetting that this is a regional threat to our drinking water.

“…This is in the Missouri River floodplain,” she says. “And the Missouri River is what North St. Louis County drinks and then it flows into the Mississippi River, which is what the city of St. Louis drinks.”

She says there’s been so much noise about landfill odor and controlling the underground fire that people have lost site of the endgame – getting the federal government to dig up the nuclear waste and haul it away from St. Louis County.

Drey says the Missouri Congressional Delegation has become so cozy with Ameren campaign money that it’s afraid to speak out against nuclear waste.

Drey wants voters to demand Congress transfer jurisdiction of the landfill from the EPA to the Army Corps of Engineers so that it can be dug up, hauled off and cleaned up.

“We have to remove these wastes,” she says. “They are effecting the water we drink and the air we breathe, and they are going to effect St. Louis until they are removed and isolated and taken away.”

In March 2015, Beyond Nuclear board member Kay Drey and colleagues in St. Louis published a pamphlet entitled "Remove the radioactive wastes NOW! Protect Metro St. Louis' water and air from West Lake Landfill's radioactive contamination!" It includes a map, showing that the radioactive wastes at West Lake Landfill are upstream of the drinking water intakes for North County and the City of St. Louis, on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. The pamphlet urges readers to "Please go to www.moenviron.org to sign a letter asking U.S. Senators Claire McCaskill and Roy Blunt and Congress members William Lacy Clay and Ann Wagner to work to transfer responsibility for West Lake’s radioactive wastes to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers."

"Tool of the Nuclear Establishment -- The New York Times"

Investigative journalist and Beyond Nuclear board member, Karl GrossmanMatt Wald, the New York Times' decades-long nuclear power reporter, recently retired from the newspaper. The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), the nuclear power industry's lobbying and PR HQ in Washington, D.C., has just announced that Wald will join its ranks on April 13th, as senior director of policy analysis and strategic planning.

In light of this, we re-post Beyond Nuclear board member, and investigative journalist, Karl Grossman's article "Tool of the Nuclear Establishment -- The New York Times," originally published two weeks after the beginning of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. (See Karl's photo, left.)

"Remove the radioactive wastes NOW! Protect Metro St. Louis' water and air from West Lake Landfill's radioactive contamination!"

On March 4, 2015, Beyond Nuclear board member Kay Drey and colleagues in St. Louis published a pamphlet entitled "Remove the radioactive wastes NOW! Protect Metro St. Louis' water and air from West Lake Landfill's radioactive contamination!"

It includes a map, showing that the radioactive wastes at West Lake Landfill are upstream of the drinking water intakes for North County and the City of St. Louis, on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers.

The pamphlet urges readers to:

"Please go to www.moenviron.org to sign a letter asking U.S. Senators Claire McCaskill and Roy Blunt and Congress members William Lacy Clay and Ann Wagner to work to transfer responsibility for West Lake’s radioactive wastes to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers."

Update on July 17, 2015 by admin

On July 17, 2015, Sens. McCaskill and Blunt, as well as Reps. Clay and Wagner, did write the U.S. Department of Energy, urging the West Lake Landfill be redesignated as a FUSRAP site, and its radiological clean-up places under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers