Washington Congressional Delegation Urges President-Elect Trump to Prioritize Hanford Cleanup, Worker Health, Tri-Cities’ Safety

“This work is essential to protecting the health and safety of the Tri-Cities community, the Columbia River, Washington state and our nation.”

As posted on the website of the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Democratic News section. U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) is the Ranking Member (Minority/Democrat) on the Committee.

Documentary film "Containment" premieres on PBS on Monday, January 9, 2017 at 10pm Eastern (check local listings)

As part of the Independent Lens documentary film series on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television, the documentary "Containment" (by Peter Galison & Robb Moss) will premiere on many local PBS stations nationwide on Monday night, January 9, 2017, at 10pm Eastern time.

(Be sure to check your local listings, as not all stations will air it.)

The Independent Lens website about "Containment" includes a number of film trailers and short clips you can watch.

Beyond Nuclear was honored and privileged to serve in an advisory role for the film, and is thankful to have had a short interview included.

Others featured in the film include: Fukushima nuclear catastrophe survivors, the director of an independent investigation into the Fukushima catastrophe (Funabashi), and former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan; former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairmen Greg Jaczko and Allison Macfarlane; Rev. Willie Tomlin (whose congregation in Burke County, GA lives in the shadows of the Plant Vogtle atomic reactors, the Savannah River Site nuclear weapons complex, the Barnwell, SC radioactive waste dump, etc.); and such Beyond Nuclear colleagues as Dr. Arjun Makhijani of IEER, Dave Lochbaum of UCS, and Tom Clements of Savannah River Site Watch.

About the Film

How can we contain some of the deadliest, most long-lasting substances ever produced? Toxic remnants from the Cold War remain in millions of gallons of highly radioactive sludge, thousands of acres of radioactive land, tens of thousands of unused hot buildings, and  some slowly spreading deltas of contaminated groundwater. Governments around the world, desperate to protect future generations, have begun imagining society 10,000 years from now in order to create warning monuments that will speak across time to mark waste repositories.

Containment moves from a nuclear weapon facility in South Carolina where toxic swamps have led to radioactive animals, to a deep underground burial site in New Mexico, to Fukushima, Japan, where a triple meltdown occurred after the cooling systems at the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant were interrupted, leaving that city a ghost town. The film is part graphic novel and part observational essay mixed with sci-fi that is more science than fiction, weaving between an uneasy present and an imaginative, troubled distant future, exploring the struggle to keep waste confined over millennia.

Update on March 7, 2016 by admin

Containment: Film Screening and Discussion, with Peter Galison, Robb Moss, and Kate Konschnik

Harvard Law School

A March 7, 2016 discussion with Peter Galison, Robb Moss, and Kate Konschnik following a screening of Galison and Moss's documentary Containment, moderated by Dean Martha Minow. Peter Galison is a filmmaker and Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University. Robb Moss is a filmmaker, professor and chair of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. Kate Konschnik is a Lecturer on Law and the founding Director of Harvard Law School’s Environmental Policy Initiative of the Environmental Law Program.

Radioactive Waste is Good for You, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Rick Perry as Energy Secretary

As Food & Water Watch wrote in an action alert (Worst. Cabinet. Ever. Trump Is Building a Cabinet Full of Corporate Control. Tell Your Senators: Block These Appointments!)

Sign Food & Water Watch's petition!

And sign the FOE petition!

And sign MoveOn.org's petition!

And sign DailyKos's petition!

Rick Perry, former governor of Texas for Energy Secretary — until just days ago, sat on the board of Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). [See Beyond Nuclear website posts on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's and the water protectors' resistance to DAPL.]

But Perry also has a blatant conflict of interest involving the Waste Control Specialists, LLC (WCS) radioactive waste dump in Andrews County, Texas.* WCS's owner, Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons, was a top campaign contributor to Rick Perry -- and numerous other Republican candidates and causes -- over the course of many years, even decades. In return, the administration of Texas Governor Rick Perry approved every permit, expansion, and license WCS applied for, despite the risks to people and environment. Now WCS has applied to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct and operate a de facto permanent parking lot dump for more than half of the commercial irradiated nuclear fuel (high-level radioactive waste) that currently exists from all across the country. Its sole customer would be the U.S. Department of Energy, which Trump has tapped Perry to lead. Taxpayers would pay all the costs, and be burdened with all the liabilities, while WCS -- reported 11 months ago to still be owned and controlled by Harold Simmons' family (he died in late 2013) -- would make billions of dollars.

Beyond Nuclear has prepared a backgrounder about Perry's blatant conflict of interest with Waste Control Specialists, entitled Radioactive Waste is Good for You, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Rick Perry as Energy Secretary.

(Counterpunch published this article on Monday, Jan. 9th.)

In addition to the Food & Water Watch webform email to your U.S. Senators linked above, you can also phone your U.S. Senators via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Urge them to block former Texas governor Rick Perry's nomination as Energy Secretary. (You can also look up your U.S. Senators' direct phone numbers, fax numbers, webforms to send emails, etc. at this website.)

If you U.S. Senator happens to serve as a member of the Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) Committee, your contacting them is especially critical right now. Rick Perry's nomination could be blocked in the ENR committee, before it ever reaches the full Senate floor. Please take action ASAP!

The schedule for the ENR Committee confirmation hearing for Rick Perry has just been announced: the hearing will take place at 10am Eastern on Thursday, Jan. 19th.

[See also: U.S. Sen. Ed Markey's (D-MA) statement re: President-elect Trump's nomination of former Texas governor Rick Perry as Energy Secretary; Rick Perry, as Energy Secretary, May Be Press to Resume Nuclear Tests; and an article by Jeffrey Lewis, founding publisher of ArmsControlWonk.com,  in Foreign Policy entitled "Not Even Rick Perry Is Stupid Enough to Resume Testing Nuclear Weapons."]

*WCS is the lead "private initiative" for so-called centralized interim storage (de facto permanent parking lot dump) for commercial irradiated nuclear fuel in the U.S., followed by the Eddy-Lea [Counties] Energy Alliance in Hobbs, New Mexico (less than 50 miles from WCS). However, AFCI in Loving County, TX, and Culberson County, TX, are also in the running. Both WCS and AFCI have close connections to Trump's pick for Energy Secretary, former TX governor Rick Perry, representing a blatant conflict of interest and ethical violation.

As reported by the Austin American-Statesman: "Austin attorney Bill Jones, Perry’s former general counsel before Perry appointed him to the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents and then the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission, has been involved in a years-long effort to land an interim storage facility in Texas."

For more information, see these two Austin American-Statesman articles for more information on the AFCI proposal(s): "Will Rick Perry brings high-level radioactive waste to Texas?", January 8, 2017; "Two Austin attorneys seeking radioactive waste deal," August 9, 2014.

Update on January 8, 2017 by admin

As reported by the Washington Post: "Ethics official warns against confirmations before reviews are complete."

Politico has also reported on this story.

Also, see how to join the Trump Resistance Rapid Response Team, beginning on Jan. 9th with resistance to Cabinet nominees like Rick Perry.

Update on January 9, 2017 by admin

MoveOn has sent out the following petition:

Dear MoveOn member,

I'm Jacob Swenson-Lengyel, with People's Action, and I started a petition to the United States Senate, which says:

Do not hold hearings for Donald Trump's nominees until the ethics review process has been completed.

Sign Jacob's petition

Starting tomorrow with Jeff Sessions, the Senate is trying to hurry through congressional hearings for 10 of Donald Trump's controversial Cabinet nominations—before the nominees have gone through the standard ethics review process.¹

The director of the nonpartisan Office of Government Ethics said that this rushed schedule is "of great concern," and that this may leave some of Trump's selections with “potentially unknown or unresolved ethics issues."²

We can't sit back and let the Senate confirm millionaires, billionaires, and politicians influenced heavily by corporate lobbyists without insisting that they undergo standard background and ethics checks.

Click here to add your name to this petition, and then pass it along to your friends.

Thanks!

—Jacob Swenson-Lengyel

Sources:

1. "Cabinet confirmation hearings: What to expect this week," CBS News, January 9, 2017
http://act.moveon.org/go/7453?t=4&akid=176021.8526217.H0X8iB

2. "Ethics office: Trump nominees' hearings schedule 'of great concern,'" Politico, January 7, 2017
http://act.moveon.org/go/7454?t=6&akid=176021.8526217.H0X8iB

You're receiving this petition because we thought it might interest you. It was created on MoveOn.org, where anyone can start their own online petitions. You can start your own petition here.

Update on January 16, 2017 by admin

Huffington Post published an article, "8 Reasons to Worry about Rick Perry Running the Department of Energy." One of them concerns the Waste Control Specialists radioactive waste dump, including its expansion to store high-level radioactive waste from across the country. An article in the Austin American-Statesman, "Will Rick Perry bring high-leve nuclear waste to Texas?" is cited.

Update on January 17, 2017 by admin

See this reference provided by Food & Water Watch:

Corporate States of America: Industry Ties to Trump's Cabinet Nominations, Food & Water Watch, January 6, 2017.

Another way to oppose Rick Perry's confirmation as Energy Secretary is by signing Food & Water Watch's petition.

WIPP claims to be back in business, nearly three years after severe radioactive contamination of underground facility, and environmental release impacting workers

As reported by the Carlsbad, New Mexico Current-Argus and the Albuquerque Journal, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) has emplaced the first trans-uranic (TRU) -- plutonium-contaminated nuclear weapons-related -- waste in nearly three years.

The Journal article reports:

“What they are doing is very risky,” said Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque, a longtime WIPP watchdog group. “There still is a lot of contamination in the underground. Workers have to use protective equipment, which makes it slow and more likely to have problems.”

In February 2014, WIPP suffered two disasters in just several days. The first was an underground haul truck fire, that sent a couple dozen workers to the emergency room with smoke inhalation. One worker suffered permanent disability.

The second disaster (which took place on Valentine's Day, 2014) involved an underground barrel burst, which contaminated a large part of the underground WIPP facility with TRU, and even resulted in radioactive releases to the atmosphere, which then fell out downwind in the surface environment. Another couple dozen workers above ground suffered internal alpha particle inhalation, significantly increasing their risk for lung cancer in the future.

Estimates for the recovery from the barrel burst range from $1 billion (L.A. Times) to $2 billion (a recent DOE admission). Federal taxpayers will be forced to pay for this.

Recent problems at WIPP include the collapse of ceilings in the underground mine, caused by lack of maintenance due to the complications of protecting workers in full body suits and respirators, given the serious contamination. One of many recent collapses happened near workers.

The rush to restart WIPP emplacement operations, despite the risks, is likely due to the end of the Obama administration, on Jan. 20th. Energy Secretary Moniz, who will attend an ironic VIP ribbon cutting ceremony at WIPP next Monday (WIPP began operations in 1999!), would likely relish being able to say WIPP restarted on his watch.

WIPP is the first and only deep geologic repository for radioactive waste disposal in the U.S., and so is held up as a poster child of success, as the U.S. Department of Energy and rest of the nuclear industry seek DGRs (or DUDs, for Deep Underground Dumps) for such other waste streams as highly radioactive commercial irradiated nuclear fuel.

Coalition defends legal challenge against unprecedented high-risk truck shipments of highly radioactive liquid waste

Attorneys Terry Lodge of Toledo, OH, and Diane Curran of Washington, D.C., legal counsel for an environmental coalition that includes Beyond Nuclear, have filed a Reply Memorandum to the D.C. Circuit Court in defense of a lawsuit against unprecedented truck shipments of highly radioactive liquid waste (also referred to by the U.S. Department of Energy, obscurely, as irradiated target material, or, even more obscurely, as HEUNL, short for highly enriched uranyl nitrate liquid).

The 100 to 150 high-risk truck shipments would travel more than a thousand miles, from Chalk River Nuclear Lab, Ontario, Canada, to Savannah River Site, South Carolina, U.S.A.

See the PLAINTIFFS' REPLY MEMORANDUM, here.

And see the related PLAINTIFFS' MOTION TO SUPPLEMENT THE RECORD, here.

More.