The Dangers of Transporting Nuclear Waste/Stop Environmentally Unjust Nuclear Dumps

Video presentation recorded on July 8, 2020, published on Sept. 7, 2020, on "The Dangers of Transporting High-Level Radioactive Waste." Beyond Nuclear's radioactive waste specialist, Kevin Kamps, presents from the beginning to the 22 minute mark in the recording, followed by Tim Judson, Ex. Dir. of NIRS.

A big focus was the transport risk associated with consolidated interim storage facilities (de facto permanent, surface storage, parking lots dumps) for irradiated nuclear fuel, targeted at New Mexico and Texas, but also the permanent dump-site targeted at Western Shoshone land at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Catherine Skopic was a lead organizer of the event, and the Manhattan Sierra Club Chapter a primary sponsor.

View the recording here.

Environment TV (ETV) provided this write up:

This video is an excerpt from a ZOOM event entitled: STOP ENVIRONMENTALLY UNJUST NUCLEAR DUMPS.

To view the full version go to: @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RwuG... which is on the You Tube Channel: PeaceActionNewYorkSt and they have given ETV permission to edit their event for our various communications platforms.

This excerpt was edited for the Westchester public access TV station of Altice, for our sister show, Environmental News and Views with Host/producer Marilyn Elie.

The original event had this program:

Speakers;

KAREN CAMPBLIN - NAACP Environment & Climate Justice Committee Chair

LEONA MORGAN - Dine, Navajo Organizer; Co-Founder, Nuclear Issues Study Group

KEVIN KAMPS - Beyond Nuclear; Nuclear Waste Watchdog

ROSE GARDNER - Alliance for Environmental Strategies, New Mexico

Support Speakers:

MICHEL LEE, Esq. - Sr. Analyst, Promoting Health and Sustainable Energy (PHASE)

MARI INOUE, Esq. - Co-Founder, Manhattan Project for A Nuclear-Free World

TIM JUDSON - Executive Director, Nuclear Information Resource Service (NIRS)

Our Goals:

1. Inform organizations/individuals about the proposed nuclear landfills & nuclear dumps

2. Inspire people to submit comments to NRC before [Sept. 22, Oct., and Nov. 3 deadlines]; write letters to editors

3. We Can Stop This - encourage actions to prevent the EJ violation of nuclear landfills & dumps

View the recording here.

A message from the most bombed nation on earth

Ian Zabarte speaking at a press conference at a Nuclear Forum event he organized at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas in 2016.More than 900 nuclear tests were conducted on Shoshone territory in the US. Residents still live with the consequences.

A videotaped interview with, and written column by, Ian Zabarte, Principal Man of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians, published by Al Jazeera.

Learn more about the Western Shoshone, nuclear weapons testing on their land, high-level radioactive waste dumping targeted at their land, and more, at the Native Community Action Council website. Ian Zabarte serves as NCAC secretary.

Nevada is winning the war, but Yucca Mountain is not dead

Robert HalsteadOp-ed column by Bob Halstead, published in the Las Vegas Sun, who recently retired as executive director after many decades of service with the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

Congressman John Lewis's votes against environmentally unjust radioactive waste dumps

As the Honorable U.S. Representative John Robert Lewis (Democrat-Georgia-5th) was laid to rest in power yesterday, it is fitting to remember his good environmental justice votes against radioactively racist high-level radioactive waste dumps in the past.

On May 10, 2018, Congressman Lewis voted against H.R. 3053, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2018. He was one of only 72 U.S. Reps. to vote against the bill on the House floor; 340 U.S. Reps. voted for it.  H.R. 3053 would have greased the skids for the opening of the permanent repository for highly radioactive wastes at Yucca Mountain, Nevada -- Western Shoshone land. In addition, it would have authorized so-called consolidated interim storage facilities targeted at a majority Hispanic region of the New Mexico/Texas borderlands, not far from the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation. Fortunately, the U.S. Senate never took up the legislation that session, so it did not become law. (Learn more about the House floor vote, and the legislation, here.)

However, a nearly identical bill, H.R. 2699, the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 2019, did pass subcommittee and full committee on the U.S. House side last year. Although it has not (yet) gone to the House floor for an up or down vote, it has been taken up on the Senate side (S. 2917). We must remain vigilant and resist its passage into law. (Learn more, here.)

And on May 8, 2002, Congressman Lewis voted against Joint Resolution 87, the override of Nevada's veto against the Yucca Mountain dump. (See the NIRS press release from that day, here.) Only 117 U.S. Reps. voted against the override; 306 voted in favor of it. The U.S. Senate followed suit, voting 60 to 39 to override Nevada's veto on July 9, 2002. Despite this, the Yucca Mountain dump has been staved off, led by the resistance of the Western Shoshone and a thousand environmental groups, as well as the efforts of the State of Nevada and its U.S. Congressional delegation. The Obama administration cancelled the Yucca Mountain dump early on; efforts to revive it since have not succeeded, but eternal vigilance is required.

Also, as Mustafa Ali, former head of EJ at US EPA, and now serving at the National Wildlife Federation, pointed out on Democracy Now! in early September 2019, the high-level radioactive waste shipments to such dumps in the Southwest, whether by road, rail, or waterway, would themselves be a large EJ burden on people of color and/or low income communities.

As the nation honors the iconic life and work of Congressman John Lewis, we express our thanks for his environmental justice votes in 2002 and 2018, in resistance to high-level radioactive waste dumps targeted at people of color communities, and the large-scale, high-risk Mobile Chernobyl shipping campaign the opening of any one of these dumps would launch.

Half of Oklahoma Is “Indian Country.” What If All Native Treaties Were Upheld?

As reported by The Intercept.

The Nevada National Security Site (formerly known as the Nevada Test Site), where the U.S. and U.K. governments "test" detonated more than 900 full-scale nuclear weapons between 1951 and 1992 (and sub-critical nuclear weapons testing have continued there since), as well as the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste dump, are located on Western Shoshone land. The U.S. government acknowledged this when it signed the "peace and friendship" Treaty of Ruby Valley with the Western Shoshoe in 1863. Treaties are the highest law of the land, equal in stature to the U.S. Constituition itself. The U.S. government's genocidal radioactive racism is not only illegal, it is unconstitutional. For more information, see: <http://www.nativecommunityactioncouncil.org/>.