Rep. Greg Walden, top Republican on powerful House panel, says he will retire

As reported by the Washington Post.

Walden (R-OR) is Ranking Republican on the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee. The politically powerful committee has jurisdiction over commercial irradiated nuclear fuel policy, such as the Yucca Mountain dump targeted at Western Shoshone Indian land in Nevada, and Consolidated Interim Storage Facilities (currently targeted at the Permian Basin in New Mexico and Texas).

Walden has long led the advocacy for such dangerously bad nuclear power industry schemes.

Politico has also reported on this story:

• Politico - Greg Walden to retire in latest sign of GOP doubts about retaking House - By John Bresnahan, Melanie Zanona and Ally Mutnick

PG&E high-voltage power line broke near origin of massive California fire that forced thousands of evacuations

As reported by the Washington Post. If confirmed, this would be the third major wildfire in California in just the past couple years caused by Pacific Gas & Electric, including the most deadly in state history, at Paradise last year, that killed 85 people.

As the article reports:

As the wildfire torched Sonoma, and others spread in San Bernardino, Los Angeles County and elsewhere, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) railed against all three of the state’s investor-owned power companies, including PG&E, which has already been forced into bankruptcy in the face of billions of dollars in liability claims stemming from previous fires.

“I must confess, it is infuriating beyond words,” Newsom said, accusing the utilities of neglecting their infrastructure and leaving the state vulnerable to fires sparked by outmoded power lines.

His statements echoed those he made two weeks earlier, when PG&E shut off power to nearly a million customers.

“It’s more than just climate change, and it is climate change, but it’s more than that,” Newsom said. “As it relates to PG&E, it’s about dog-eat-dog capitalism meeting climate change, it’s about corporate greed meeting climate change, it’s about decades of mismanagement.”

Newsom sent a letter Thursday to the CEOs of San Diego Gas & Electric Company, Edison International and PG&E demanding better communication about when the utilities would implement precautionary power shut-offs.

“The only consistency has been inconsistency,” he wrote.

PG&E's twin-reactor Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in Avila Beach near San Luis Obispo is supposed to shut down for good by 2025, per an agreement hammered out between the nuclear utility, environmental groups Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, and the nuclear power plant's labor unions. However, even then, the high-level radioactive waste stored on-site will likely remain for years, if not decades.

PG&E also owns the Humboldt Bay atomic reactor in Eureka, CA, where high-level radioactive waste is similarly stranded.

Southern California Edison owns the permanently closed triple reactor San Onofre nuclear power plant in San Clemente, where irradiated nuclear fuel is likewise stranded.

And Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) owns the long-shuttered (by popular vote in direct response to the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe) Rancho Seco atomic reactor in Herald, CA, with highly radioactive waste stored on-site with nowhere to go.

Rep. Elijah Cummings lies in state Thursday at U.S. Capitol

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings (Democrat-Baltimore, MD), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and ReformAs reported by the Washington Post.

As chairman of the powerful U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Cummings (Democrat-Baltimore, Maryland, photo left) not only co-led the current impeachment inquiry. He also spearheaded an investigation into the Trump administration's greed-driven end run around Congressional safeguards, attempting to provide nuclear weapons proliferation capable technology and know how to the murderous, genocidal Saudi Arabian regime.

Even in the minority in 2016-2017, as Ranking Democrat on the committee, Cummings also led congressional efforts seeking justice and accountability in the aftermath of the Flint drinking water catastrophe. Michigan Radio paid tribute to Cummings' leadership on Flint, when news broke of his passing on. (See Beyond Nuclear's article, "After Flint, Don't NUKE the Great Lakes Next!", about the Canadian proposal to bury vast quantities of hazardous radioactive waste on the Lake Huron shoreline. The relatively pristine waters of Lake Huron, once again, are the source of drinking water for Flint, after the disastrous decision to switch to the Flint River, which caused the lead poisoning catastrophe.)

Cummings was a national champion for social, racial, and environmental justice. His passing represents a huge loss for our country. But his memory, legacy, and example will shine on, as an inspiration for current and future generations.

Update on October 26, 2019 by admin

See this posthumously published op-ed by Cummings.

Radioactive racism is not progressive! Urge your Congress Members to oppose dangerously bad high-level nuke waste dumps!

 

Even though "Nevada Is Not a Radioactive Wasteland!" (see photo, left, showing Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps, and Native Community Action Council's Ian Zabarte, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in 2018 at the "Zero Hour" youth climate rally), U.S. House bill H.R. 2699, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, was nonetheless recently rammed through the Environment and Climate Subcommittee on a voice vote, without so much as a peep of opposition. (See Oct. 1st Western Shoshone letter to U.S. House, opposing H.R. 2699, here.) Democrats hold the majority in the U.S. House, and thus are in charge of this subcommittee. Subcommittee Democrats include several members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. But H.R. 2699 would rush the opening of the Yucca Mountain dump in Nevada, targeting Western Shoshone Indian land, where decades of nuclear weapons testing already caused fallout of hazardous radioactivity over a very large region. It would even significantly increase the amount of high-level radioactive waste that could be buried there, thus increasing the number of Mobile Chernobyl and Floating Fukushima shipments, by truck, train, and/or barge, through most states, scores of major urban centers, and the vast majority of U.S. congressional districts, bound for the dump (see 2017 documents here for road and rail route maps). The Timbisha Band of Western Shoshone in Death Valley are directly downstream of Yucca, and would suffer the very worst contamination consequences from the leaking dump. H.R. 2699 would also authorize the U.S. Department of Energy to take ownership of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel at private, consolidated interim storage facilities (CISF). This radical change to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended, would risk "interim" becoming de facto permanent surface storage, meaning loss of institutional control over time would guarantee large-scale releases of hazardous radioactivity directly into the environment.   

The current targets for CISFs are two sites in the Permian Basin, just 39 miles apart across the New Mexico/Texas border, in a Hispanic region not far from the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation (itself previously targeted for a CISF). New Mexico ranks towards the bottom of states on numerous major socio-economic indicators (even though some 40% of gargantuan U.S. nuclear weapons complex spending takes place within its borders!), and already suffers from intense fossil fuel and nuclear industry pollution. Just this week, a report found that shockingly high percentages of Navajo/Diné women and infants tested positive for uranium exposure; even though mining in the Four Corners (including on Pueblo Indian land) largely ended decades ago, cleanup of contamination at countless sites has gone largely to entirely undone. A U.S. Senate field hearing in Albuquerque just addressed this environmental injustice, and also the unacknowledged and uncompensated suffering of the Tularosa Basin Downwinders, victims and survivors of the "Trinity" open air plutonium bomb detonation on July 16, 1945 in New Mexico, the world's first atomic test blast. To now target New Mexico with high-level radioactive waste de facto permanent surface storage dumps adds insult to injury. The two CISFs would hold 213,600 metric tons of nuclear power waste, more than three times the amount currently targeted at Yucca (70,000 MT). As the former head of Environmental Justice at the U.S. EPA, Mustafa Ali, said on Democracy Now! on September 5, the countless high risk shipments themselves, bound for such dumps, would burden low income, people of color communities, along transport routes across the country, with yet another major environmental injustice.

 

Despite all this inherent environmental racism, H.R. 2699's identical predecessor bill last year, H.R. 3053, passed the U.S. House floor by a whopping 340 to 72 vote on May 10, 2018. (Luckily, the U.S. Senate did not take up H.R. 3053 last year, so the bill died. However, the Republican majority U.S. Senate has already taken up a discussion draft of legislation very similar or even identical to H.R. 2699 this year, in the Environment and Public Works Committee. This makes our action to stop it dead in its tracks all the more vital, because another blowout vote in favor of H.R. 2699 on the House floor this year or next, could tee up consideration of identical legislation in the U.S. Senate, bringing it that much closer to President Donald J. Trump's desk, and enactment!) Inexplicably, nearly half the members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) voted in favor of this radioactively racist bill! But it goes without saying that environmental injustice is not a progressive value! Of course, such a bad vote is unacceptable, even if Congress Members do not belong to the CPC. Please contact your U.S. Representative, and both your U.S. Senators. You can be patched through to your Congress Members' D.C. offices via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Urge your Congress Members to oppose H.R. 2699, now headed to the full U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee. Also urge them to oppose any funding in Fiscal Year 2020 for either the Yucca dump, or for CISFs. And urge them to oppose S. 1234, the Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2019, which also advocates for non-consent based siting of the dump in Nevada, and greases the skids for CISFs in New Mexico and Texas. Urge your Congress Members to support the Nevada congressional delegation's Nuclear Waste Informed Consent Act of 2019 (S. 649), as well as to advocate for the very long overdue, common sense interim alternative of Hardened On-Site Storage (HOSS). 

Urgent citizen resistance needed against Mobile Chernobyl bill

This rail route past the Capitol Dome in Washington, D.C. would be used to ship high-level radioactive waste to the Southwest for "interim storage" and/or permanent dumping.They're back. On September 26, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Environment and Climate, by voice vote, approved H.R. 2699, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, sponsored by U.S. Representatives Jerry McNerney (D-CA) and John Shimkus (R-IL). That is, not one peep of opposition, not a single question expressing concern, was uttered, not even by several Democratic members on the subcommittee who courageously and wisely voted against an earlier incarnation of this same legislation, H.R. 3053, just last year. Last year's version was ultimately passed on the House floor on May 10, 2018 by a whopping 340 to 72 vote; thankfully, though, the bill was stopped dead in its tracks, when the U.S. Senate did not act upon it. However, this year, the Republican majority U.S. Senate has already taken up its own "Discussion Draft" version of H.R. 2699 (and there is other dangerously bad nuclear waste legislation before the U.S. Senate right now as well, such as S. 1234, the Nuclear Waste Administration Act, sponsored by U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).). H.R. 2699 would speed the opening of the Yucca dump, by gutting its Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing proceeding. It would also significantly increase the quantity of irradiated nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste that could be dumped there, from 70,000 metric tons to 110,000 MT. And it would authorize the U.S. Department of Energy to take ownership of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel even at consolidated interim storage facilities (CISFs), de-linked from development of a permanent repository, thus risking de facto permanent, surface storage, "parking lot dumps." With loss of institutional control over long enough time periods, failed containers at CISFs would release catastrophic amounts of hazardous radioactivity directly into the environment. 

More than a thousand environmental, environmental justice, and anti-nuclear groups, along with the State of Nevada, its congressional delegation, the Western Shoshone Indian Nation, and other allies, have fended off such "Screw Nevada" attacks for a generation. So too have countless hundreds of grassroots organizations successfully blocked CISFs (previously called Monitored Retrievable Storage sites, Away-from-Reactor Storage, etc.), such as those targeted at scores of Native American reservations, like the Skull Valley Goshutes in Utah, time and time again over the course of decades. These little celebrated, grassroots victories, very hard won against all odds, have spared the country thousands, to tens of thousands, of high risk, irradiated nuclear fuel shipments, by truck, train, and/or barge, through scores of major urban population centers (including Washington, D.C. -- see photo, above). Whether bound for Yucca, or for Holtec International/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance's 173,600 MT CISF in New Mexico, and/or Interim Storage Partners' 40,000 MT CISF at Waste Control Specialists, Texas, the Floating Fukushimas, Dirty Bombs on Wheels, and Mobile X-ray Machines That Can't Be Turned Off, would continue not for years, but decades. As the vast majority of U.S. congressional districts would be directly crossed by such shipments, you would think Congress would put the brakes on. But the nuclear industry's very large-scale campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures have blinded many with radioactive dollar signs. 

We must now rise to the challenge of H.R. 2699. Please contact your U.S. Representative, and both your U.S. Senators. Given that Members of the U.S. House are back in their home districts for the next ten days, this would be an excellent opportunity to get together with other concerned friends, colleagues, and neighbors of yours, to even request a face-to-face meeting with your U.S. Representative, to discuss these issues. You can phone your Congress Members' schedulers in their D.C. offices via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Urge them to oppose funding for the Yucca dump, and to oppose funding for CISFs, in Fiscal Year 2020 Appropriations. And urge them to oppose H.R. 2699, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019. To learn more about this bill, go here.