PFS pulls the plug on parking lot dump targeted at Skull Valley Goshutes in Utah

Skull Valley Goshute Margene Bullcreek led the fight against the radioactive waste dump targeted at her community. Photo by Gabriela Bulisova.As reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, the Private Fuel Storage (PFS) Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) has given up on itsplans to turn the tiny Skull Valley Goshutes Inidan Reservation in Utah into a parking lot dump (or "centralized interim storage facility") for commercial high-level radioactive waste. At one time, PFS was comprised of more than a dozen nuclear utilities, led by Xcel Energy of Minnesota, with Dairyland Power Co-Op as a front group.

In 2005-2006, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted PFS a construction and operating license, despite objections by traditionals with the Skull Valley band, nearly 500 environmental and environmental justice organizations, as well as the State of Utah. The plan was for 40,000 metric tons of irradiated nuclear fuel to be "temporarily stored" (for 20 to 40 years) in 4,000 dry casks on the reservation. However, as the ultimate plan was to transfer the wastes to the Yucca Mountain dump, when that proposal was cancelled in 2009, this would have meant the wastes would have been stuck indefinitely at Skull Valley.

In 2006 a very unlikely coalition, involving the likes of Mormon political leaders and wilderness advocates, succeeded in creating the first federal wilderness area in Utah in a generation. This created a "moat" around the Skull Valley reservation, blocking the railway needed to directly deliver the waste. And, after lobbying efforts at the top echelons of Republican Party decision making circles by U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) as well as Utah Governor Huntsman, the George W. Bush administration's Department of the Interior refused to approve the lease agreement between PFS and the Skull Valley band, as well as the intermodal transfer facility on Bureau of Land Management property which could have allowed heavy haul trucks to ship the waste containers the final leg of the journey to the reservation.

The Skull Valley Goshutes were first targeted by the nuclear power establishment more than 20 years ago.Altogether, 60-some tribes have been actively targeted for high-level radioactive waste parking lot dumps. All the proposals have been stopped, as through the work of Native American grassroots environmental activists like Grace Thorpe, working in alliance with environmental and environmental justice organizations.

Update on January 7, 2013 by admin

On Jan. 7, the Salt Lake Tribune published a follow-on article about PFS's cancellation, entitled "Money, politics bury plans for Utah fuel-rod cemetery." The article quotes a leader of the broad coalition which opposed the "parking lot dump":

"...Chip Ward remembers an 'amazing' coalition swelled up around the goal of defeating the storage site.

Co-founder of the Healthy Environment Alliance of Utah, he grasped the wariness of Utahns who already had allowed a slew of toxic industries to be established in western Utah — including chemical weapons destruction, bio-weapons testing, a low-level nuclear waste site, a hazardous waste site, a toxic waste incinerator and what was then the nation’s biggest air polluter...

'When you have a really powerful political movement,' Ward said, 'you can look past whatever divides you and what is important is the cause that unites you.'"

NIRS, for one, spearheaded a coalition of nearly 450 organizations nation-wide, which objected to the environmental, or radioactive, racism of the PFS proposal.

25 years ago today, the "Screw Nevada Bill" was passed

Yucca Mountain, as viewed through the frame of a Western Shoshone ceremonial sweat lodge. Photo by Gabriela Bulisova.As reported by the Las Vegas Review Journal, in the wee hours of Dec. 22, 1987, 49 states ganged up on one, singling out Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the sole site in the country for further study as a potential national dump for high-level radioactive waste. Numerous targeted dumpsites in the East had been indefinitely postponed a year or two before, due to widespread public resistance. Deaf Smith County, TX and Hanford, WA were also being considered for the western dumpsite. But TX had 32 U.S. Representatives, WA had a dozen, and NV, just one. TX and WA Representatives also held the powerful House Speaker and Majority Leader slots. On the Senate side, NV had two rookie Senators, regarded at the time as easy to roll. The "raw, naked" political decision was made behind closed doors.

But the science -- Yucca's geological and hydrological unsuitability -- caught up to the proposal. So did Harry Reid's revenge, as he grew in power to become Senate Majority Leader. Led by Western Shoshone spiritual leader Corbin Harney, the Western Shoshone National Council maintained tireless opposition to the dump, joined, over time, by more than 1,000 environmental groups. Then, in 2009, President Obama and his Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, wisely cancelled the dangerous, controversial proposal.

Although $11 billion of ratepayer and taxpayer money had already been wasted, another $90 billion would have been wasted if the project had gone forward. If the dumpsite had opened, many thousands of high-level radioactive waste trucks, trains, and barges would have travelled through most states, past the homes of tens of millions of Americans, at risk of severe accidents or intentional attacks unleashing disastrous amounts of radioactivity into metro areas. And if wastes had been buried at Yucca, it would have eventually leaked into the environment (beginning within centuries or at most thousands of years), dooming the region downwind and downstream as a nuclear sacrifice area.

Dec. 21st marked the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

Update on December 23, 2012 by admin

Judy Treichel, executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force, has published an op-ed in the Las Vegas Sun entitled "Winning the Yucca battle -- 25 years later."

30 years ago today, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was passed

As the U.S. Congress currently debates (or rather, does't debate) the infamous "Fiscal Cliff," it took the country off a bottomless cliff 30 years ago today, by passing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. The NWPA shifted liability for highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel, from the utilities which generated it (and profited mightily thereby), to the American people: first, ratepayers have paid tens of billions of dollars in nuclear generated electricity surcharges, into the Nuclear Waste Fund; then, when that still falls short of the price tag, taxpayers will be left holding the bag for the rest. 

As written by John D'Agata in his 2010 book About a Mountain:

"...On November 22, 1982, Senator James McClure [Republican from Idaho], the ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, introduced a bill that was written by the American Nuclear Energy Council [now called the Nuclear Energy Institute] calling for the disposal of nuclear waste...He pushed his bill through committee in an hour and a half, then sent it to the floor for an expedited vote.

It arrived there on the evening of December 21, just hours before the Senate recessed for Christmas break.

Within thirteen minutes, and without a single minute of debate, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was voted into law.

'I would like the meet the Senator,' said one observer that night, 'who call tell us what he thinks is even in this bill.'" (page 35)

President Ronald Reagan then signed the NWPA into law early the next year. That "expedicted vote," Reagan's stroke of the pen in the Oval Office, and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) rushed signing of contracts to "take out the garbage," represented an unprecedented subsidy for the nuclear power industry. The American taxpayer currently forks over $500 million per year in damages to nuclear utilities for failing to begin disposing of irradiated nuclear fuel in a deep geologic repository in 1998. That liability grew worse, when George W. Bush's DOE signed yet more contracts -- for proposed new reactors -- in the waning weeks, days, and even hours of the administration (between the day Barack Obama was elected president, and two days after he was sworn into office, DOE hastily signed 21 proposed new reactors' worth of new waste disposal contracts).

Actually, there was some fairness and balance to the NWPA. It established a science-based approach in the search for a suitable site for deep geologic disposal. It also contained some sense of regional equity, in that the first repository, likely out West, could only be loaded with 63,000 metric tons of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel (and another 7,000 tons of DOE jurisdiction wastes, mostly from the nuclear weapons complex), at least until a second repository was opened, this time in the East (75% of the commercial reactors in the U.S. are east of the Mississippi -- an imaginary line drawn down the middle of the country would reveal that 90% of reactors are in the eastern half).

However, the original approach was quickly abandoned. In 1987, over the objections of the Silver State and its rookie Senator, Harry Reid, the "Screw Nevada Bill" was passed. It did away with the science-based comparison of multiple potential repository sites, singling out Yucca Mountain as the only site in the country for further consideration. This, despite the fact that by the early 1980s, as documented by Dr. Arjun Makhijani of IEER, DOE had already documented that Yucca had fatal geological flaws. All told, $11 billion of ratepayer and taxpayer money was wasted at Yucca, although the project price tag, if the project had proceeded, would have approached $100 billion.

Reid devoted his political career to stopping the dump. The population of Las Vegas, less than 100 miles from Yucca, grew by unimaginable leaps and bounds. Altogether, over time, a thousand environmental groups joined the chorus opposing the dump, and the Western Shoshone National Council pressed its treaty rights to defend its sacred land against such radioactive abuse. To his credit, in 2009-2010, President Obama wisely cancelled the Yucca Mountain Project, fulfilling a campaign pledge to Nevadans.

Obama's "Plan B" (recommendations published in January 2012 by the so-called Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, a panel of 15 members, which his Energy Secretary Steven Chu had appointed) calls for prioritizing and expediting "consolidated interim storage" -- shipping commercial wastes by truck, train, and barge to such targeted "centralized, temporary" locations as the Skull Valley Goshutes Indian Reservation in Utah, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, the Savannah River Site nuclear weapons complex in South Carolina, Exelon's Dresden nuclear power plant just west of Chicago, etc.

Rather than rushing into this unnecessarily risky radioactive waste shell game on the roads, rails, and waterways of most states, a coalition of 200 environmental groups has called for hardened on-site storage for the wastes which already exist. And a growing movement is calling for a cessation of generation: "STOP MAKING IT!" As Beyond Nuclear board member, Dr. Judith Johnsrud, has put it, radioactive waste is "trans-solutional." Humankind may very well be unable to solve the problem. The only real solution for radioactive waste is to not make it in the first place.

Submit public comments to NRC on Nuke Waste Con Game environmental scoping before Jan. 2, 2013!

SUGGESTED ENVIRONMENTAL SCOPING TALKING POINTS WITH WHICH TO MAKE PUBLIC COMMENT ON NRC’S “NUCLEAR WASTE CONFIDENCE” (before NRC's Jan. 2, 2013 deadline)

Please use the suggested process and substance points below to fashion your own for submission to NRC.

Environmental scoping comments can be submitted electronically to www.regulations.gov, using Docket ID NRC-2012-0246 (despite repeated demands, NRC has yet to provide a simple email address for the submission of comments!). Comments can also be snail mailed to: Cindy Bladey, Chief; Rules, Announcements, and Directives Branch; Office of Administration; Mail Stop: TWB-05-B01M; U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Washington, D.C. 20555-0001. Comments can also be faxed to Cindy Bladey/NRC, at (301) 492-3446. Comments are currently due by Jan. 2, 2013, although repeated demands for an extension to this absurdly short deadline have been made.

PROCESS POINTS

NRC’s Oct. 26, 2012 Federal Register Notice announcing the public comment opportunity on its scoping proceeding in the lead up to a court-ordered Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on its Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision and Rule is legally deficient. It does not clearly describe the proposed federal action, nor the preferred alternative(s). Due to those fatal legal flaws, the Federal Register Notice must be withdrawn, corrected, and re-issued. In the meantime, this proceeding must be suspended by NRC, and the allotted time for public comments must be re-started from the beginning. (For more information, click on this link.)

The time frame for making public comment (October 26, 2012 to January 2, 2013) is absurdly short. A six-month time period for making public comments is more reasonable. The public comment deadline should be significantly extended.

A single in-person hearing (Nov. 14^th at NRC HQ in Rockville, MD), and a mere handful of webinars, is far from enough. In-person public comment meetings should be held in every nuclear power plant community, supplemented each time with the remote webinar/teleconference participation option for those unable to attend in person . At the bare minimum, in-person public comment meetings should be held in each region of the country.

Also, NRC should stop rushing this environmental impact statement process. Just last year, NRC staff estimated it would take 7 years to do a quality job on an EIS. But now, NRC is rushing the entire process in just 2 years. NRC should extend comment deadlines, and hold public comment periods in every atomic reactor community, to do a comprehensive, high quality EIS.

SUBSTANCE POINTS

No more NRC licenses enabling atomic reactors to generate high-level radioactive waste.

Urge NRC to include in its EIS scope the preferred alternative of the agency not approving any more new reactor combined Construction and Operating License Applications (COLA), nor approving any more old reactor 20-year license extensions. That way, no more high-level radioactive waste, for which there is no solution after 70 years of splitting atoms, will be generated. In short, STOP MAKING IT! The only safe, sound solution for high-level radioactive waste is to not make it (or, in NRC's case, allow it to be made) in the first place!

For wastes that already exist, urge NRC to require Hardened On-Site Storage.

For wastes that already exist, urge NRC to include Hardened On-Site Storage (HOSS, a phrase coined by Dr. Arjun Makhijani of IEER in 2002) as the preferred alternative. High-level radioactive waste must be transferred out of water pools, at risk of catastrophic radioactivity releases in the event of a loss of cooling and consequent radioactive waste inferno. But on-site dry cask storage must be significantly upgraded. Dry casks must be designed and fabricated well, with full quality assurance. They must be designed to withstand terrorist attack (as by camouflage, fortifications, and adequate spacing in between casks), to safeguard against accidents, and to prevent radioactivity leakage into the environment for the decades or centuries the wastes will be stuck at the reactor sites. (In 2003, Dr. Gordon Edwards of IRSS published a report, commissioned by Citizens Awareness Network, entitled "Robust Storage." See the executive summary of this report, including an illustration of a "robust storage" design for dry casks, by clicking this link. Also see the Statement of Principles for Safeguarding Nuclear Waste at Reactors, signed by nearly 200 environmental organizations.)

The risks of pool fires must be considered in this EIS. The precarious situation at Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4 --where a 7.0 earthquake could cause the complete collapse of the reactor building -- risks 135 tons of irradiated fuel catching fire, and releasing ten times the radioactive cesium-137 as was released by the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, directly into the environment. This would dwarf the radioactivity released thus far by the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe. But pools at most U.S. atomic reactors contain several times more high-level radioactive waste than does Fukushima Daiichi Unit 4, meaning the potential catastrophes downwind, downstream, up the food chain, and down the generations would be even worse here in the event of a pool fire, whether caused by a sudden drain down (due to an earthquake, heavy load drop, terrorist attack, etc.) or a slower motion boil down (due to loss of off-site electricity, whether due to a natural disaster such as a hurricane, an intentional attack, a reactor accident causing abandonment of the nuclear power plant site, etc.).

Radioactivity leaks from storage pools – into soil, groundwater, and surface waters – should also be included in the EIS scope. After all, leaks from pools have already occurred at more than a half-dozen nuclear sites across the U.S., such as from Indian Point into groundwater which then flows into the Hudson River, not far upstream from New York City.

Both industry and NRC whistleblowers have identified major quality assurance violations with current U.S. dry cask storage design and fabrication. These QA violations must be corrected for dry cask storage systems before they can be considered for use in Hardened On-Site Storage.

The many problems that have occurred over the years and decades with dry cask storage – from explosions, to leaks, to design and fabrication flaws, as well as security vulnerabilities -- must be included in the EIS scope, and preferred alternatives identified, such as HOSS.

Seismic risks to dry cask storage – such as Palisades’ violation of NRC earthquake safety regulations, as well as the damage done to North Anna’s dry cask storage by the August 23, 2011 earthquake – must also be included in the EIS.

For more background information, as well as additional ideas for talking points, please click on this link.

Prepared on December 4, 2012 by Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Watchdog, Beyond Nuclear,kevin@beyondnuclear.org, (240) 462-3216, www.beyondnuclear.org. 

Update on December 5, 2012 by admin

See S&P Global/Platts coverage -- an article by Elaine Hiruro entitled "Nuclear foe says no-reactor option should be top choice in NRC waste rule" -- published on Dec. 5, 2012.

200 participants mark the tragic observance of "A Mountain of Radioactive Waste 70 Years High" in Chicago, Dec. 1-3

Photo of Henry Moore Sculpture to Nuclear Power, by Blanche H. SchroerThe event sponsored by Beyond Nuclear, Friends of the Earth, and Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS), and co-sponsored by UChicago Climate Action Network and International House at the University of Chicago, attracted 200 participants, from across the U.S., as well as Brazil, Canada, Germany, Japan, and a number of Native American First Nations. "A Mountain of Radioactive Waste 70 Years High: Ending the Nuclear Age" marked the tragic observance of Enrico Fermi creating the first nuclear chain reaction, in the world's first atomic reactor, and generating the world's first high-level radioactive reactor wastes, at the University of Chicago at 3:25 PM local time, December 2, 1942, as an early milestone on the Manhattan Project's journey of death that culminated, less than three years later, with the atomic test blast "Trinity" in New Mexico, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

The gathering featured: two solid days of powerful conference presentations; the Chicago premiere of the documentary film "Atomic States of America"; a memorial observance at the Henry Moore Sculpture to Nuclear Power (held at the exact moment of the 70th year, on the very spot where the chain reaction was conducted; see photo, above left), and a fact-finding trip to Red Gate Woods, a forest preserve 25 miles from the downtown Chicago Loop, which represents the world's first radioactive waste dump.

NEIS is posting YouTube video links to various segments of the gathering at its website, as they become available.

Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps was also featured on a WBEZ (Chicago NPR) interview on "Worldview" (between minutes 19:30 to 33:33 of the program).