Atomic reactors? Electricity is but the fleeting byproduct; the actual product is forever deadly high-level radioactive waste!

At the first anti-nuclear power event Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps ever attended, in March 1993, Michael Keegan of Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes and Don't Waste Michigan pointed out that "Electricity is but the fleeting byproduct from atomic reactors. The actual product is forever deadly radioactive waste."

An environmental coalition of nearly three dozen groups, including Beyond Nuclear and Don't Waste Michigan, has said just as much to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission regarding its "Nuclear Waste Confidence" Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement. So too has Beyond Nuclear directly itself.

A key conclusion of such public comments? The costs, liabilities, and risks of generating, storing, and "disposing of" high-level radioactive wastes mean that NRC approving license extensions at old reactors is a non-starter, as should have been revealed by the "hard look" required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) during NRC's court-ordered EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) undertaking.

The image to the left is the cover of the Beyond Nuclear pamphlet published for the Dec. 2, 2012 conference held at the U. of Chicago entitled "A Mountain of Radioactive Waste 70 Years High." Sponsored by Beyond Nuclear, FOE, and NEIS, it marked the 70th year, to the day, since Enrico Fermi fired up the first self-sustaining chain reaction in an atomic reactor, creating the world's first high-level radioactive waste, as part of the Manhattan Project's race to create atomic weapons, culminating in the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in August, 1945.