Take Action on radioactive waste

A week ago, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (BRC) published its draft report on U.S. high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) management policy in light of President Obama's and Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Chu's wise and praiseworthy decision to cancel the proposed Yucca Mountain dumpsite in Nevada. But incredibly, despite the still unfolding Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, the BRC claims there are no safety, security, or environmental risks associated with the "mountain of waste 70 years high" stored in indoor wet pools and outdoor dry casks at U.S. atomic power plants and nuclear weapons sites. BRC proposes immediate site searches nationwide for one or more "consolidated interim [surface] storage" sites, as well as deep geologic repositories, for "temporarily" storing and permanently disposing of 65,000 metric tons of already accumulated commercial HLRW, more than 10,000 metric tons of DOE (nuclear weapons, Nuclear Navy, and research reactor) HLRW, as well as many tens of thousands of additional tons that the nuclear industry intends to generate in the decades ahead. Either away-from-reactor scheme would launch an unprecedented radioactive waste transport program that would take decades to carry out, just as opening "interim" parking or permanent dump sites would take decades to accomplish. BRC has invited public comments on its draft till October 31st.

 

Write the BRC, urging that hardened on-site storage be instituted as an essential measure, to secure wastes against attacks, safeguard them against accidents, and build dry cask storage well enough so that it will last for the decades into the future that wastes will be stuck at reactor sites regardless of away-from-reactor policy developments. Advise BRC that "centralized interim storage" could become de facto permanent parking lot dumps; it would represent a dangerous radioactive waste shell game, as wastes would have to be moved a second time to permanent disposal sites, doubling transport risks; and it would likely worsen environmental injustice, targeting people of color or low income communities already bearing a disproportionate radioactive burden, such as Native American reservations or Department of Energy nuclear weapons sites. Further, unless we stop making nuclear waste, we will need still more sacrafice zones to store it, making it a problem that will never end. Point out to BRC that learning lessons from "successful" repository programs in Finland and Sweden is risky, as shown by the film "Into Eternity": heaping yet more radioactive risk, in the form of dumpsites, on reactor host communities by offering "financial incentives" (buy offs or bribes) is not basaed on scientific suitability or morality, and does not represent consent by future generations, the protection of which cannnot be assured; the geological site studies are not complete; the price tag is astronomical; and the proposed Scandinavian repositories would serve just a handful of reactors, while U.S. dumpsites would take wastes from 104 still operating, and dozens of permanently closed, nuclear plants. Finally, urge BRC to require that HLRW transportation accident and attack risks -- many thousands of potential Mobile Chernobyls, dirty bombs on wheels, and floating Fukushimas targeted to pass through most states and many metropolitan areas -- be addressed, and not launched onto our roads, rails, and waterways for no good reason.

 

For more background information, see Beyond Nuclear's response to the BRC's draft report.