Environmental coalition members from the Crabshell Alliance, Sierra Club Nuclear-Free Campaign, NIRS, PSR, NEIS, and Public Citizen "just say NO!" at the NRC HQ nuke waste con game GEIS public comment meeting on 11/14/13 in Rockville, MD. Photo credit David Martin and Erica Grey.Wallace L. Taylor, an attorney based in Cedar Rapids, IA, has filed a Friend of the Court brief on behalf of the Sierra Club, in support of environmental petitioners in the New York v. NRC II federal court case.The nation's largest grassroots environmental organization, with over 600,000 members, the Sierra Club has a very active, and growing, Nuclear-Free Campaign nationwide.
For high-level radioactive wastes that already exist, Taylor called for Hardened On-Site Storage -- a position shared by hundreds of environmental groups, representing all 50 states.
Taylor stated "one way to address the environmental impacts of the continued storage of radioactive waste is to stop making radioactive waste."
He called for present and future electricity needs to be met not by nuclear power nor fossil fuels, but rather efficiency and renewables. He cited numerous technical studies, including Dr. Arjun Makhijani of IEER's 2007 book Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, that show this alternative is quite reasonable.
Having called for the court to require NRC to take a hard look under NEPA at the mitigative value of NRC not licensing any more new reactors, nor extending licenses at old reactors, and even revoking licenses at existing reactors, Taylor concluded his Friend of the Court brief:
The storage and disposal of radioactive nuclear waste from spent nuclear fuel is a long-term problem posing grave risks to public health and the environment for which there is no solution. One alternative to this conundrum -- the Sierra Club believes it is the most important alternative -- is to stop producing any more radioactive waste. For the reasons stated above, NEPA [the National Environmental Policy Act] and common sense require that the GEIS [Generic Environmental Impact Statement] analyze this alternative.
Because this alternative has not been evaluated, the decision of the NRC in adopting the Continued Storage Rule should be reversed and remanded.