Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Specialist at Beyond Nuclear, issued a statement today. It begins:
“Yesterday, Beyond Nuclear joined a coalition of 50 national, regional, and local grassroots environmental groups, in a letter calling on members of the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee to oppose H.R. 3053, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2017, as dangerously misguided. This letter is part of a decades-long campaign, by over a thousand environmental groups from all 50 states, in opposition to the Yucca Mountain, Nevada high-level radioactive waste dump scheme. This environmental coalition remains as vigilant and determined as ever.
“Yucca Mountain has repeatedly failed the test to serve as a high-level radioactive waste burial dump for the past several decades, and still does.
“First and foremost, Yucca Mountain is located on Western Shoshone Indian land, as recognized by the United States government when it signed the ‘peace and friendship’ Treaty of Ruby Valley in 1863. Thus, the Yucca dump scheme is illegal and unconstitutional. Treaties are the highest law of the land, equal in stature to the Constitution itself. It would be like the U.S. trying to force the burial of its radioactive wastes onto Canada or Mexico, against their sovereign will. As with nuclear weapons testing at the adjacent Nevada Test Site, the Western Shoshone have made clear for decades, they do not consent to this dump on their land.
“In fact, the Native Community Action Council (NCAC) has achieved official party status by establishing standing in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing proceeding for the Yucca dump. NCAC’s contentions assert that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) does not hold title to the land or water at Yucca Mountain. This belongs to the Western Shoshone Indian Nation. Read the full press release.