Radioactive wastes are at risk of accidents, attacks, and leaks. Please urge the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future to recommend to Congress, the Energy Secretary, and the President hardened on-site storage as a vital interim measure of homeland security and public health and environmental protection.
Please take action. Cut and paste the sample "BRC public comment" below into an email, and email it in to: brc@nuclear.energy.gov. Be sure to sign it with a full contact address. Feel free to change it however you see fit, by adding your own thoughts and concerns. Thanks!
BRC public comment:
Dear Members of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future,
High-level radioactive wastes are at risk of accidents, attacks, and leaks. In your final report due out by January 29, 2012, please recommend to Congress, the Energy Secretary, and the President that hardened on-site storage be required as a vital interim measure of homeland security and public health, safety, and environmental protection.
The on-going Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in Japan has dramatically shown the risks of storing highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel in indoor water pools. Pool cooling water circulation systems were damaged or destroyed by the ravages of the earthquake, tsunami, reactor meltdowns, and explosions that began on March 11th. For months now, desperate and dangerous efforts to cool the high-level radioactive wastes have continued, including failed helicopter water drops, and refilling the pools from afar with fire engines, riot control water cannons, and other ad hoc pumps. The thermally hot wastes have then boiled the water away, forcing these efforts to be repeated. If the pools boil dry, the wastes could catch fire and unleash catastrophic amounts of hazardous radioactivity directly into the environment, to blow downwind, flow downstream, and contaminate the food chain over a vast region.
The same could happen all of a sudden if a large after-shock topples the listing Unit 4, or causes the bottom to drop out of the Unit 4 high-level radioactive waste storage pool, which is being shored up with steel jacks.
Such boil down or drain down accidents could happen here. So too could a terrorist attack. A number of pools at commercial atomic reactors have already sprung leaks in the U.S., releasing hazardous radioactivity into soil, ground- and surface waters, including Indian Point, NY; Connecticut Yankee; Hatch, GA; and Salem, NJ. Many individual pools in the U.S. hold more waste than all 4 units at Fukushima Daiichi put together, including at the identically designed (General Electric Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactors) Vermont Yankee, Oyster Creek in NJ, Ferm 2 in MI, etc.!
For a decade, hundreds of environmental groups have been calling for hardened on-site storage, as an interim alternative to pool risks, as well as to current “overflow parking,” outdoor dry casks at reactor sites, themselves vulnerable to accidents, attacks, and eventual leaks.
In your final report due out before January 29, 2012, I strongly urge you to recommend hardened on-site storage as a vital matter of homeland security, as well as public health, safety, and environmental protection.
Sincerely,