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ARTICLE ARCHIVE

Radioactive Waste

No safe, permanent solution has yet been found anywhere in the world - and may never be found - for the nuclear waste problem. In the U.S., the only identified and flawed high-level radioactive waste deep repository site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada has been canceled. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an end to the production of nuclear waste and for securing the existing reactor waste in hardened on-site storage.

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Tuesday
Jan142020

Enviro Close-Up with Karl Grossman: The Threat of Nuclear Waste

Beyond Nuclear board of directors member Karl Grossman is the host of Enviro Close-Up, a television show produced by EnviroVideo for decades. The latest episode, "The Threat of Nuclear Waste," is an interview between Karl and Beyond Nuclear's radioactive waste specialist, Kevin Kamps. The interview focuses on the resistance to proposed high-level radioactive waste dumps targeted at New Mexico, Texas, Nevada, and Ontario's Great Lakes shoreline. Watch the 30 minute program, here.

(Please note a couple of needed corrections. At the 9 minute 58 second mark, Kevin misspoke -- the Ontario Power Generation radioactive waste dumps are targeted at the Lake Huron shoreline, not the Lake Michigan shoreline. And the full name of the Democratic New Mexico Commissioner of Public Lands is Stephanie Garcia Richard. Also, the interview was recorded in September 2019, hence the discussion of Trump's Energy Secretary, Rick Perry. Perry resigned December 1st.)

Wednesday
Jan012020

2019 in review: Another successful year of resistance against dangerously bad nuke waste dump schemes -- but the fight very much goes on!

2019 was another year of concerted resistance to the proposed high-level radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain, on Western Shoshone Indian land in Nevada, as well as against the proposed consolidated interim storage facilities (CISFs) targeted at New Mexico and Texas.
To learn more detail, see our website sections about Yucca and CISFs.
Stopping these dumps means blocking Mobile Chernobyl risks nationwide. See our Waste Transportation website section for more detail.
In that sense, 2019 turning to 2020 marks a decade since the Obama administration cancelled the Yucca dump -- but then its Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future recommended CISFs as an urgent priority. So this is an end of decade story, that will continue for a million+ years into the future -- the hazardous persistence of high-level radioactive waste.
By way of update, the Fiscal Year 2020 (FY2020) Appropriations Act that has zero funding for the Yucca dump, and zero funding for CISFs, which is good news. But also contains some bad news -- $25 million for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to undertake "Integrated Waste Management" -- studies, analyses, and site preparation for export of waste -- so also transport prep -- although not for CISF construction/operation. But thankfully, Section 306 was stricken from the Appropriations Act, which would have otherwise allowed DOE to take title (ownership) to commercial irradiated nuclear fuel, at a consolidated interim storage facility, even in the absence of an operating repository. This would gut the legal challenges -- by Beyond Nuclear, Don't Waste Michigan et al. (a seven group national grassroots environmental coalition), and Sierra Club -- to this current violation of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended (aka current law), as represented by these CISF schemes. So this important precaution in current law -- to avoid a supposedly "interim storage" site from becoming a de facto permanent, surface storage, parking lot dump -- has been protected and preserved, and our side's lawsuits live on to fight another day!
Wednesday
Nov272019

Nuclear Waste Fund Treasury Securities Holdings Grow to $40.9 Billion

Wednesday
Nov272019

11/27/19: Beyond Nuclear on Sputnik International's "Loud & Clear"

https://www.spreaker.com/user/radiosputnik/beyond-nuclear-with-kevin-kamps_78

Hosts Brian Becker and Nicole Roussell are joined by Ian Zabarte, Principal Man of the Western Bands of Shoshone Indians, and Secretary of the Native Community Action Council, as well as Beyond Nuclear's Radioactive Waste Specialist, Kevin Kamps.

A good part of the discussion was about the Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste dump, targeted at Western Shoshone Indian land in Nevada.

Tuesday
Nov262019

The Staggering Timescales Of Nuclear Waste Disposal