Senate Energy & Water Appropriations bill would open high-level radioactive waste parking lot dumps, launch large-scale Mobile Chernobyl program

To paraphrase investigative reporter Greg Palast, nuclear power industry lobbyists regard the U.S. Senate as the best that money can buy! They do so regularly, to advance their wish lists and agenda!

What You Can Do:

Please take action. Urge your U.S. Representative, and your two U.S. Senators, to block the opening of the Yucca dump, of one or more parking lot dumps, and the consequent launching of Mobile Chernobyls. (Most or all Members of Congress have Webforms on their Websites, where you can submit written comments. Most Member offices also provide FAX numbers. You can also write letters at the addresses provided at those Websites, and/or call your Members of Congress, via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard, at (202) 224-3121. You can also request in person meetings with your Members of Congress, or their staff, whether in district, or at their Washington, DC office.) Also contact President Obama, and urge the same.

As reported by the New York Times and The Hill, the Energy & Water Appropriations bill (H.R.2028, the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016) passed the U.S. Senate today, by a vote of 90 to 8.

(If anything, the influence of nuclear power lobbyists on such federal institutions as the U.S. Senate has grown even worse than when American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop exposed the corruption in 2010.)

As AP reported: The legislation includes a pilot program to allow storage of nuclear waste at private facilities, such as one proposed in western Texas...

The legislation would fund a pilot program to relocate radioactive waste from shuttered nuclear power plants to a storage site near Midland, Texas. The project would provide a partial solution as lawmakers try to resolve a decades-old dispute over storing nuclear waste at a repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The Yucca site has never opened amid fierce opposition from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other lawmakers.

(Thus, nuclear power industry lobbyists have prevailed in getting what they want included, while emergency relief for Flint, Michigan amidst its drinking water lead poisoning catastrophe was left out. This, despite the best efforts of Michigan's U.S. Senators, Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters (both Democrats), due to a hold placed by U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT). Learn more about Flint's cautionary tale vis-a-vis radioactive waste in Beyond Nuclear's article in Counterpunch, "After Flint, Don't Let Them Nuke the Great Lakes Next!")

A blog by Marc Boom, Associate Director of Government Affairs at Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) warned that "Senate Energy and Water Bill [is] Not as Non-Controversial as Claimed."

Boom blogged:

For example, the bill contains a provision that authorizes a new pilot program to allow the Department of Energy to store nuclear waste at private facilities licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This is an unwise approach to one of the most contentious issues of American politics—nuclear waste—without any of the comprehensive work necessary for a full reform of the nation’s nuclear waste laws. Simply, this provision removes meaningful motivation and impetus for adherence to the long standing principle that the nation’s nuclear waste must be buried in deep geologic repositories, permanently isolated from the human and natural environments. We urge the controversial provision be removed.

In fact, NRDC has led opposition to so-called "centralized" or "consolidated interim storage" un-linked to permament geologic disposal. Way back in 2012 and 2013, NRDC's senior nuclear attorney, Geoff Fettus, testified at U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) Committee hearings on radioactive waste management, about the importance of maintaining that linkage, lest "centralized interim storage" become de facto permanent surface storage, or parking lot dumps.

The ENR Committee Chairman in 2012, Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), got it. De-linking "centralized interim storage" and permanent disposal did not happen on his watch. The risks of "centralized interim storage" becoming de facto permanent parking lot dumps, for lack of a permanent repository, was too great. New Mexico being targeted for so-called "centralized interim storage" -- at Eddy-Lea Counties, in the extreme southeastern corner of the state, near the DOE's Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) -- made that risk all too real to allow to happen.

Alas, such wisdom is not prevailing in the U.S. Senate now, as pro-nuclear U.S. Senators seek to do the bidding of the nuclear power industry's lobbyists.

The Senate version of H.R.2028 is posted online.

Here is the relevant legislative language, related to "consent-based centralized interim storage," extracted from the bill (Section 306).

Also see an overview of the bill's current status.

A congressional summary, posted online, describes Section 306 thus:

(Sec. 306) Authorizes DOE to conduct a pilot program with private sector partners to license, construct, and operate one or more storage facilities to provide interim storage for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Permits the Nuclear Waste Fund to be used for this purpose, subject to appropriations.

That same summary describes Section 311 this way:

(Sec. 311) Permits DOD [sic, should read DOE] to: (1) enter into contracts to store spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste to which DOE holds the title or has a contract to accept title, and (2) enter into new contracts or modify existing contracts to accept title for high-level radioactive waste or spent nuclear fuel.

Regarding funding for "centralized interim storage," the bill reads:

Nuclear Energy

For Department of Energy expenses including the purchase, construction, and acquisition of plant and capital equipment, and other expenses necessary for nuclear energy activities in carrying out the purposes of the Department of Energy Organization Act (42 U.S.C. 7101 et seq.), including the acquisition or condemnation of any real property or any facility or for plant or facility acquisition, construction, or expansion, and the purchase of no more than three emergency service vehicles for replacement only, $1,057,903,000, to remain available until expended: Provided, That of such amount, the Secretary of Energy may obligate up to $10,000,000 under existing authorities, for contracting for the management of used nuclear fuel to which the Secretary holds the title or has a contract to accept title: Provided further, That of such amount, $80,000,000 shall be available until September 30, 2018, for program direction. (emphasis added)

DOE has "standard contracts" to "accept title" to all commercial irradiated nuclear fuel in the U.S. (Incredibly, this includes for the high-level radioactive waste at proposed new reactors, such as Vogtle 3 & 4 in GA, and Summer 2 & 3 in SC, if their increasingly behind schedule and over budget construction projects should ever be completed, and the reactors ever actually operate. Between Election Day 2008 and Inauguration Day 2009 (early Nov. 2008 to mid-Jan. 2009), as the Obama administration was entering office, the George W. Bush DOE hastily -- even sloppily -- signed "standard contracts" with nuclear utilities to take ultimate responsibility for irradiated nuclear fuel to be generated by a large number of proposed new reactors. Most of these proposed new reactors, thankfully, have since been cancelled, so hopefully will never be built, and never generate high-level radioactive waste.)

But in U.S. Senate Energy & Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Lamar Alexander's (R-TN) Report accompanying H.R. 2028, different funding levels are cited:

The Committee recommends $30,000,000 for used nuclear fuel disposition to implement sections 306 and 311. Within this amount, funds are provided for financial and technical assistance associated with a consent-based siting process, including education, technical analyses, and other support to entities considering hosting an interim storage facility; and for incentive payments to entities with signed agreements with eligible jurisdictions. (emphasis added; see summaries and additional information re: Sections 306 and 311, further above)

(See Pages 80-81 of the PDF version of the Report posted online.)

This Senate-passed version of the Energy & Water Appropriations bill now goes to a conference committee with the U.S. House, in order to try to reach a reconciled version. That final bill -- which could be different in significant ways from both the current Senate and House versions -- would then return to each House of Congress for final passage, and then would become law with President Obama's signature.

A most interesting impasse regarding radioactive waste, between the House and Senate, is the demand by U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), and U.S. House Environment and the Economy Subcommittee Chairman John Shimkus (R-IL), that any radioactive waste management program include the Yucca Mountain, Nevada dump.

But Senate Democratic Leader, Harry Reid from Nevada, is adamantly opposed. Reid has led opposition to the Yucca dump since the 1987 "Screw Nevada" bill targeted his state in the first place. In 2010, Reid helped secure the Obama administration's cancellation of the Yucca Mountain Project. Reid has also played the lead role in slashing, or entirely zeroing out, Yucca's budget, for well over a decade, ever since attaining his position as Democratic Leader in the U.S. Senate.

Upton and Shimkus have pledged not to support parking lot dumps, unless the Yucca dump is included. Reid will oppose the Yucca dump with all his might.

(See update posted below.)

Whether the Yucca dump is opened, or one or more regional parking lot dumps (as at Waste Control Specialists, LLC in Andrews County, Texas; Eddy-Lea Counties, near WIPP in New Mexico; other DOE sites, such as Savannah River Site, South Carolina; Native American reservations, yet to be named; or even nuclear power plants, such as Dresden in Morris, Illinois), it would launch unprecedented numbers of shipments of high-level radioactive waste onto the roads, rails, and/or waterways: Mobile Chernobyls, Floating Fukushimas, Dirty Bombs on Wheels.

You can learn more about high-level radioactive waste transporation risks at the following sources:

NIRS Stop Fukushima Freeways! website section;

NIRS Mobile Chernobyl website section;

State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects Nuclear Waste Transportation website section;

Beyond Nuclear Radioactive Waste Transporation website section.

What You Can Do:

Please take action. Urge your U.S. Representative, and your two U.S. Senators, to block the opening of the Yucca dump, of one or more parking lot dumps, and the consequent launching of Mobile Chernobyls. (Most Members of Congress have Webforms on their Websites, where you can submit written comments. Most Member offices also provide FAX numbers. You can also write letters at the addresses provided at those Websites, and/or call your Members of Congress, via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard, at (202) 224-3121. You can also request in person meetings with your Congress Members, both back home in district, or at their Washington DC office) Also contact President Obama, and urge the same.

Update on May 24, 2016 by admin

On May 24th, Marc Boom of NRDC blogged about Upton's and Shimkus's scheme to keep the Yucca dump on life support, on the U.S. House side of the Energy and Water Appropriations bill.

WCS de facto permanent parking lot dump in west TX for high-level radioactive waste would launch unprecedented numbers of Mobile Chernobyls

The opening of a de facto permanent parking lot dump for high-level radioactive waste in west TX would launch unprecedented numbers of Mobile Chernobyl shipments onto the roads, rails, and waterways.(What can you do to resist parking lot dumps, Yucca Mountain, and Mobile Chernobyls?

Contact your U.S. Represenative and your U.S. Senators, and urge them to oppose centralized interim storage, the permanent dumpsite at Yucca in Nevada, as well as the accompanying high-risk shipments of irradiated nuclear fuel that would be launched on roads, rails, and waterways. In addition to contacting your Congress Members via the links above, you can also phone their Washington, D.C. offices via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.)

As reported in a blog by Mark Lombard, Director of the Division of Spent Fuel Management at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Waste Control Specialists, LLC (WCS) in Andrews County, Texas -- on the border with New Mexico -- filed an application to construct and operate a so-called "centralized interim storage" site for high-level radioactive waste on April 28th. The application was filed two days after the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe.

Most inappropriately, NRC has been colluding with industry to open centralized interim storage for high-level radioactive waste. NRC is supposed to protect public health, safety, and the environment. As the country's nuclear safety regulatory agency, NRC is not supposed to promote nuclear power, or the agenda of the industry.

Yet, at its Division of Spent Fuel Management RegCon (Regulatory Conference) late last year, NRC's Tony Hsia, Acting Director of the Division of Spent Fuel Management, in his closing remarks, concluded the two-day symposium with no less than a rally cry. He passionately called for industry and NRC (as well as DOE, and other nuclear establishment players) to work together ("[If we] all work together, we can make it [centralized interim storage] happen!"), to open parking lot dumps, such as at Waste Control Specialists, LLC in Andrews County, TX, or Holtec's proposal in Eddy-Lea Counties near WIPP in NM. This was objectionable, and clearly revealed NRC's improper bias in favor of these risky industry proposals.

The Japanese Parliament concluded that the root cause of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe was collusion between regulator, industry, and government officials. It was the reason the three reactors, that melted down and exploded, were so very vulnerable to the earthquake and tsunami that struck them on 3/11/11. Such dangerous collusion exists in spades in the U.S., as on radioactive waste, as between NRC, industry, DOE, and even the White House and Congress.

If opened, the WCS "de facto permanent parking lot dump," as we call it, would result in unprecedented numbers of shipments of irradiated nuclear fuel, by road, rail, and waterway, through most states. Critics have dubbed these truck, train, and barge transports "Mobile Chernobyls," as well as "Floating Fukushimas," and "Dirty Bombs on Wheels." They would pass through major metropolitan areas, as well as past -- or even on -- vital drinking water supplies, agricultural areas, etc.

(See NIRS' "Stop Fukushima Freeways" website section for more information, as well as Beyond Nuclear's congressional testimony on Mobile Chernobyl risks.)

The SEED Coalition and Public Citizen issued a press release opposing the WCS parking lot dump. The groups also released transport maps (see above, left) showing likley routes for irradiated nuclear fuel shipments from across the country, to west Texas. They've also released a fact sheet, and have a website.

As NRC's Lombard mentioned at the end of his blog: Incidentally, we are expecting an application for a second centralized interim storage facility Nov. 30. This one, to be filed by Holtec International, will be for a site in New Mexico. We’ll follow the same process in reviewing that application.

That de facto permanent parking lot dump would be near the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP), near Carlsbad, NM. Trans-uranic (TRU) military wastes are buried at WIPP in a salt formation. In Feb. 2014, in the space of just several days, WIPP experienced both an underground fire, as well as an underground burial barrel burst that resulted in airborne radioactive contamination that fell out over a wide area into the downwind surface environment.

Holtec International is infamous for major quality assurance violations in the design and manufacture of containers that would be used to ship irradiated nuclear fuel to a parking lot dump, as well as containers that would be used to store the high-level radioactive waste there.

Industry whistleblower Oscar Shirani questioned the structural integrity of the Holtec casks sitting still, let alone speeding 60 mph -- or faster -- down the rails. He was supported in his concerns by NRC dry cask storage inspector, Dr. Ross Landsman, who, on a WTTW PBS t.v. interview, compared the risk-taking by industry and NRC to the kind of behavior that led to "Space Shuttles hitting the ground."

The fire at WIPP in early Feb. 2014 sent numerous workers to the emergency room with smoke inhalation. One was permanently disabled by the accident.

The barrel burst a few days later resulted in around two-dozen workers at the surface suffering ultra-hazardous inhalation doses of trans-uranic radiation (alpha-particle emitting plutonium), putting them at significantly increased risk of contracting latent lung cancer. WIPP has been shut since this Valentine's Day, 2014 accident. DOE has estimated it will cost around $500 million to recover from the burst of a single barrel. The Los Angeles Times estimates it will cost a billion dollars. DOE hopes to re-open WIPP yet this year.

For its part, WCS already dumps all categories of so-called "low" level radioactive waste either immediately adjacent to, or even directly above, the Ogallala Aquifer. That aquifer provides vital drinking and irrigation water for a large number of Great Plains states, between Texas and South Dakota.

As yet another example of WCS's out of control risk taking, the dumpsite accepted 100+ barrels packed with the same volatile mix that burst in the WIPP underground, at its surface storage and trench disposal site in west TX. Those barrels have now baked in several summer season suns, at very high temperatures, risking another barrel burst -- this time on the surface of the land, rather than in an underground repository. If a barrel bursts at WCS, the radioactive release directly to the environment would be much worse than what took place 2,000-feet underground at WIPP in Feb. 2014 (which nonetheless resulted in contamination escaping the underground, via ventilation shafts, up into the biosphere).

Lombard wrote in his blog cited above that: We expect the review process to take us about three years, assuming WCS provides us with good information in a timely way during our review.

Thus, depending on NRC's sufficiency review, the agency could rubber-stamp the WCS construction and operating license sometime around 2020. This would jive with DOE's stated goal of opening a "pilot" consolidated interim storage site by 2021, for commercial irradiated fuel from so-called "orphaned" or "stranded" sites, and then a full-scale parking lot dump by 2024.

This push by industry and NRC to open parking lot dumps comes at the very same time that a U.S. Senate energy and water appropriations bill -- sponsored by Sens. Alexander (R-TN) and Feinstein (D-CA) -- would authorize the transfer of title and liability for the irradiated nuclear fuel, from the nuclear utiliities which generated and profited from the high-level radioactive waste, to the U.S. taxpayer.

(In 2013 U.S. Senate legislation that Sens. Alexander (R-TN) and Feinstein (D-CA) also had a major hand in, a preference was stated that the pilot and full-scale parking lot dumps could happen at the same location. They even stated the preference that a permanent geologic repository also be established on the same site, if possible.)

The U.S. House has resisted supporting parking lot dumps -- but only because Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) and Environment and the Economy Subcommittee Chairman John Shimkus (R-IL) want the Yucca Mountain, NV permanent dump-site as part of the industry-wish-list package too.

(Regarding Yucca, NRC has just completed its long-delayed final supplement to the environmental impact statement (EIS), something U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland ruled was "the doing of a useless thing." As they have done repeatedly when earlier volumes of the supplemental EIS have been published by NRC, Upton and Shimkus can be expected to trumpet this latest report as proof positive that Yucca is a suitable radioactive waste burial site. However, they have consistently failed to mention another thing that NRC has reported -- DOE lacks clear title to the land and water rights at the site, an insurmountable hurdle to proceeding with the dump, given the State of Nevada's adamant opposition to being "screwed." The most common name for the 1987 amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, that singled out Nevada for being dumped on at Yucca, is "the Screw Nevada bill." Even President Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future cited "the Screw Nevada bill" in its Jan. 2012 Final Report.)

Meanwhile, DOE continues its "Consent-Based Siting" dog and pony shows around the country. The most recent meeting was held in Sacramento, CA on Chernobyl's 30th anniversary, April 26, 2016.

As an environmental coalition put it in a press release, Goals of U.S. Department of Energy Meeting in Sacramento April 26 would Trigger Largest Nuclear Shipping Campaign in History: California Cities Would be Fukushima Freeways.

The coalition also released a map showing likely irradiated nuclear fuel shipping routes through CA, should the WCS parking lot dump in TX open. In addition, the coalition published a map showing likely national impacts of the WCS proposal.

Another map shows the national impacts of the Yucca Mountain, NV dumpsite, in terms of shipping high-level radioactive waste in large numbers through most states.

See the previous Beyond Nuclear website post about the U.S. Senate effort to open a parking lot dump, as well as DOE's "Consent-Based Siting" dog and pony shows being held across the country. (The next one will be held May 24th in Denver, CO.)

And see Beyond Nuclear's Radioactive Waste website section for more background information, as well as ways you can take action.

We've stopped such dumps before, and must do so again now.

To its shame, a decade ago the "Nuclear Racism Commission" rubber-stamped a license for centralized interim storage of 40,000 tons of irradiated nuclear fuel, on the tiny Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in west UT. NRC did so, despite 437 environmental justice organizations urging the agency not to do so. Fortunately, that parking lot dump was blocked from ever opening, despite NRC's flippant rubber-stamp approval. (See the NIRS website sub-section, for more information.)

What can you do to resist parking lot dumps, Yucca Mountain, and Mobile Chernobyls?

Contact your U.S. Represenative and your U.S. Senators, and urge them to oppose centralized interim storage, the permanent dumpsite at Yucca in Nevada, as well as the accompanying high-risk shipments of irradiated nuclear fuel that would be launched on roads, rails, and waterways. In addition to contacting your Congress Members via the links above, you can also phone their Washington, D.C. offices via the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

Four down, five to go: DOE "Consent-Based Siting" meetings

Four down: Washington, D.C., Jan. 20; Chicago, March 29; Atlanta, April 11; Sacramento, April 26 (Chernobyl+30 years).

Five to go:

• Denver, Colorado on May 24, 2016 at the Embassy Suites Denver - Stapleton. Please register here to attend the Denver meeting in person or view the event online.
• Boston, Massachusetts on June 2, 2016 at the Hyatt Regency Boston. Please register here to attend the Boston meeting in person or view the event online.
• Tempe, AZ on June 23, 2016 at the Marriott Phoenix Tempe at the Buttes. Please register here to attend the Tempe meeting in person or view the event online.
• Boise, ID on July 14, 2016 at Boise Centre. Please register here to attend the Boise meeting in person or view the event online.
• Minneapolis, MN on July 21, 2016 at the Hilton Minneapolis. Please register here to attend the Minneapolis meeting in person or view the event online.

Speak now (before the July 31 deadline for public comments), or forever hold your peace, regarding Mobile Chernobyls through a town near you...de facto permanent parking lot dumps for high-level radioactive waste...and permanent burial dumps for high-level radioactive waste on scientifically unsuitable, socially unacceptable locations!

Goals of U.S. Department of Energy Meeting in Sacramento April 26 would Trigger Largest Nuclear Shipping Campaign in History: California Cities Would be Fukushima Freeways

As an environmental coalition put it in a press release, Goals of U.S. Department of Energy Meeting in Sacramento April 26 would Trigger Largest Nuclear Shipping Campaign in History: California Cities Would be Fukushima Freeways.

The coalition also released a map showing likely irradiated nuclear fuel shipping routes through CA, should the WCS parking lot dump in TX open. In addition, the coalition published a map showing likely national impacts of the WCS proposal.

Transcript and video from April 26th DOE "Consent-Based Siting" public meeting in Sacramento, CA

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) sent the following to public participants in its unfortunately timed Sacramento, CA "Consent-Based Siting" public meeting (April 26th was the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe):

Thank you for your participation in the recent consent-based siting meeting hosted by the Department of Energy in Sacramento.  The meeting transcript and video are available on our website and meeting notes from the small group discussion summaries will follow.

Feel free to provide feedback about our meetings by sending us an email, and stay involved by replying to the Invitation for Public Comment in the Federal Register.  As always, visit our website for the latest consent-based siting news and information. 

-The Department of Energy Consent-based Siting Team

consentbasedsiting@hq.doe.gov

Update on April 26, 2016 by admin

As stated by a concerned citizen who participated in one of these DOE dog and pony shows, regarding the video/transcript posted above:

It's an opportunity to see the propaganda being spread by the DOE and John Kotek specifically.