The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), a network of organizations and leaders seeking a nuclear-free future that safeguards our communities and environment, has filed comments with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), regarding its "Consent-Based Siting" proceeding for opening centralized interim storage sites and permanent burial sites for high-level radioactive waste and irradiated nuclear fuel.
Beyond Nuclear has been a member organzation of the ANA network, since Beyond Nuclear was founded in 2007. ANA is a coalition of some three-dozen watchdog groups, many from communities living in the shadows of DOE nuclear weapons complex facilities. Some of those facilities -- such as Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) -- are already permanent burial dumps for radioactive wastes (in WIPP's case, plutonium contaminated wastes from the weapons complex).
The WIPP area -- Eddy and Lea counties, New Mexico -- is also being targeted for consolidated interim storage for commercial irradiated nuclear fuel (a.k.a. a de facto permanent parking lot dump). ANA member groups CCNS (Concerned Citzens for Nuclear Safety), Nuclear Watch New Mexico, and SRIC (Southwest Research and Information Center) watch-dog nuclear issues in New Mexico; SRIC has watch-dogged WIPP specifically for decades.
Waste Control Specialists, LLC (WCS) in Andrews County, West Texas, just across the border from New Mexico, is also targeted for a parking lot dump. WCS is already a national dumpsite for a large variety of so-called "low" level radioactive wastes. It is located directly adjacent to, or even above, the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides vital irrigation and drinking water to numerous states on the Great Plains, from Texas to South Dakota. Because of this, several Texas state environmental officials resigned in protest over the original opening of this risky dump.
Numerous other DOE nuclear weapons complex sites may also be on the target list for parking lot dumps, including the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. SRS has long "served" as a "long-term" storage site for highly radioactive wastes, some of which are being permanently abandoned in underground storage tanks, which is almost guaranteed to cause radioactive ruin of the Savannah River, and perhaps even the Tuscaloosa Aquifer, over time. A number of ANA member groups watch-dog SRS, including: Georgia WAND (Women's Action for New Directions); Nuclear Watch South; and SRS Watch.
The situation is very similar at Idaho National Lab (INL), putting at dire risk the Snake River, and the Snake River Aquifer. The Snake River Alliance is the ANA member group that has long watch-dogged INL.
HEAL (Healthy Environment Alliance) Utah led -- along with traditional Skull Valley Goshutes tribal members Margene Bullcreek and Sammy Blackbear -- the successful grassroots environmental justice effort to fend off a parking lot dump for commercial high-level radioactive waste, targeted at the tiny Indian reservation west of Salt Lake City, a decade ago.
Yet other ANA member groups have been forced to deal with actual dumping of radioactive wastes, or the attempted dumping of such waste, without their consent. This includes PRESS (Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety and Security), targeted for a centralized interim storage site and reprocessing facility under the George W. Bush administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership a decade ago.
It also includes Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, central to the effort to fend off a "Monitored Retrievable Storage" (MRS) site for commercial irradiated nuclear fuel in decades past.
It also includes Heart of America Northwest, and Hanford Challenge, which watch-dog the worst radioactively contaminated site in the Western Hemisphere, the Hanford Nuclear (Weapons) Reservation, which "hosts" many millions of gallons of high-level radioactive liquid wastes, in leaking storage tanks.
And still other ANA member groups, such as PSR (Physicians for Social Responsibility) Kansas City, PeaceWorks Kansas City, and Rocky Mountain Peace & Justice Center, given their geographic location along major "Mobile Chernobyl" shipping routes for high-level radioactive waste transports, have played vital roles in calling attention to, and fending off any unnecessary rush into, those risks, for a long time.
This listing, unfortunately, is far from exhaustive.