Resisting environmental racism at Yucca Mountain, Nevada

Corbin Harney (standing), Western Shoshone spiritual leader, and Raymond Yowell, then Western Shoshone Indian Nation chief, at Peace Camp, NV, Oct. 2002, leading protests against nuclear weapons testing, militarism, and radioactive waste dumping at the Nevada Test Site. Photo by Gabriela Bulisova.November 20th marked the end of a rushed, "going-through-the motions" Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (DSEIS) by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), a thinly veiled attempt to revive the cancelled Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste dump in Nevada.

NRC didn't even bother to provide advance notice to the affected Indian tribes downstream from the targeted site, let alone consult with them in a government-to-government manner, as is the agency's legal obligation. But at least NRC is consistent: it didn't provide any funding to the tribes, either, placing an extraordinary burden on the tribal nations to meet the arbitrarily-short deadline. In this regard, NRC's SDEIS public comment proceeding itself was a violation of environmental justice (EJ), not to mention the agency's biased push to bury 70,000 metric tons, or more, of high-level radioactive waste on indigenous land, guaranteed to leak into the precious, even sacred, drinking water supply.

Despite NRC's own EJ violations, the Timbisha Shoshone Tribe and the Native Community Action Council met the deadline, with powerful comments. They thereby continued a tradition of protecting Yucca Mountain, and its groundwater, that dates back not just years or decades, but centuries and millenia, to time immemorial. More.

Where is America’s cyberdefense plan?

The Empire State Building towers over the skyline of a blackout-darkened New York City just before dawn. (George Widman/Associated Press)That is the online title of an op-ed by Ted Koppel appearing in the Washington Post (the hardcopy headline reads "Before the cyber-blackout"). Koppel, best known for hosting the ABC news program “Nightline” from 1980 to 2005, is the author of the new book, Lights Out: A Cyberattack, a Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath.

The op-ed raises the specter of a power outage lasting not hours, or days, but weeks, or months, due to a coordinated cyber-attack on the vulnerable U.S. electricity grid.

But the op-ed does not address what this would mean at the 100 still operating atomic reactors across the country, and even at the numerous atomic reactors permanently shutdown.

Even if operating atomic reactors were able to power down and shutdown safely during a power outage, their thermally hot cores would still have to be cooled for several days, or longer, before cold shutdown was reached, or else risk melting down.

Although high-level radioactive waste storage pools would have a longer fuse -- days or even weeks before boiling would expose irradiated nuclear fuel to air, and risk a catastrophic fire -- the pools are not even required to be connected to emergency diesel generators, as reactors are. More.

St. Louis moms up in arms over nuclear waste fears

Moms and their children carry a child-sized casket filled with petitions for Gov. Nixon demanding that a state of emergency is declared. CBSNews.com As reported by CBS Evening News, concern among residents in neighborhoods of North St. Louis County around the old radioactive waste dump adjacent to a smoldering landfill fire is deepening:

Ed Smith is an environmentalist who's been studying the site. "The folks around the St. Louis metro area need to be paying attention. We're talking about the possibility, if there's a surface fire, for radioactivity leaving the site."

Nuclear Hotseat: SPECIAL – St. Louis Nuclear Nightmare

West Lake Landfll, North St. Louis County, MONuclear Hotseat #227: West Lake Radioactive Waste Fire -- Dr. Caldicott, Bob Alvarez, Dawn Chapman

A full length Nuclear Hotseat SPECIAL on the West Lake Landfill in North St. Louis - a Manhattan Project-era radioactive waste dump - and the encroaching underground fire less than a quarter mile away.

FEATURED INTERVIEWS:

• The history of the West Lake Landfill nuclear waste with Bob Alvarez, who served as senior policy adviser to the Energy Department’s secretary and deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment from 1993 to 1999. He is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and wrote the landmark November, 2013 report: The West Lake Landfill: A Radioactive Legacy of the Nuclear Arms Race.

• The medical consequences faced by those exposed to the West Lake radioactive waste with Dr. Helen Caldicott, arguably the single most articulate and passionate advocate of citizen action to remedy the nuclear and environmental crises in the world.   A medical doctor and former instructor in pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, she co-founded Physicians for Social Responsibility – which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 – and was herself nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling. She is the author of Nuclear Power is Not the Answer.

• What it’s like on the ground in the North St. Louis neighborhoods impacted by the radioactive waste with Dawn Chapman, a mother who lives less than two miles from the West Lake Landfill. She Admins the Facebook West Lake Landfill page.

[LISTEN ONLINE]

CALLS NEEDED -- CONTACT INFORMATION

• President Barack Obama The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Please include your e-mail address Phone Numbers Comments: 202-456-1111 Switchboard: 202-456-1414 TTY/TDD Comments: 202-456-6213 Visitors Office: 202-456-2121 Twitter: @POTUS @POTUSPRESSPOOL
• Senator Roy Blunt United States Senate 260 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 201510 (202) 224-5721 Twitter: @RoyBlunt @RoyBluntMO @RoyBluntPress
• Senator Claire McCaskill United States Senate Hart Senate Office Building, Ste. 506 Washington, D.C. 20510 (202) 224-6154 Twitter: @clairecmc
• Congresswoman Ann Wagner United States House of Representatives 435 Cannon House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 (202) 225-1621 Twitter: @RepAnnWagner
• Congressman William Lacy Clay United States House of Representatives 2418 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 (202) 225-2406 Twitter: @LacyClayMO1
• EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, William Jefferson Clinton Building mail code: 1101A 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, DC 20460 Twitter: @EPAGina

Dump blasts feed concerns about Yucca Mountain

As reported by Keith Rogers of the Las Vegas Review Journal, Richard Bryan (photo, left), chairman of the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects (and former state attorney general, governor, and U.S. senator) has pointed to the Oct. 18-19 explosions and fire at U.S. Ecology's so-called "low-level" radioactive waste dump in Beatty, NV as a cautionary tale about the risks of the proposed Yucca Mountain, NV high-level radioactive waste dump, and the large number of irradiated nuclear fuel shipments it would launch onto the roads, rails and waterways of most states:

Yucca Mountain Project opponent Richard Bryan said Tuesday he was "stunned" when he watched a video of small explosions that followed more powerful ones Oct. 18 at a low-level nuclear waste dump near Beatty.

He said explosions and fire at the now-closed, state-owned landfill at the US Ecology site that shut down a 140-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 95 for nearly 24 hours added to his concerns for federal plans to haul 77,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel assemblies and high-level waste to Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"We've already got kind of a glimmer of what can happen with low-level. ... This stuff is highly dangerous," Bryan, chairman of the Nevada Commission on Nuclear Projects, said following one of 70 press conferences held at cities nationwide on nuclear waste transportation.

The Las Vegas press conference, also featuring Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman and Judy Treichel, executive director of Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, was part of Nuclear Information and Resource Service's "Stop Fukushima Freeways" campaign launch.