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News :: Miscellaneous |
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DOE Trying To "Fix" Yucca Mountain Nuke Storage Site |
Current rating: 0 |
by NIRS
(No verified email address) |
03 Dec 2001
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NIRS Action Alert, December 3, 2001
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) changes its own rules in the middle of the game
Public comments due Dec. 14th on Final Yucca Mountain Siting Guidelines |
BACKGROUND:
On Nov. 14th, DOE published its Final Yucca Mountain Siting Guidelines, one of its last "mile stones" in its effort to steam roll through the opening of the first permanent burial site for high-level nuclear waste in the world. These counteract DOE's previous repository siting guidelines, which had been on the books since 1984. Why such a big change at the last minute of the twenty-year old DOE Yucca Mountain Project "site characterization" process? Because the Nevada site cannot live up to DOE's own original rules!
In 1997, it was discovered that Yucca Mountain violated DOE's own site suitability guidelines. A "disqualifying condition" for proposed repositories was that if water moved through a site and into the accessible environment in less than a thousand years, that site must be disqualified from any further consideration. Groundwater discovered by DOE scientists at the level of the proposed dump deep within Yucca contained elevated levels of the radioactive element Chlorine-36. The only explanation for Cl-36's presence 1,000 feet beneath the surface was that hydrogen bomb tests in the Pacific had radioactively activated seawater, which then blew across the ocean and fell as rain on Yucca Mountain. Given that rainwater has penetrated so deeply into Yucca in just decades means that it's probable it would reach the underlying aquifer and come back to the surface through wells and springs downstream in less than one thousand years.
NIRS and over 200 safe energy, public interest and environmental groups petitioned the Secretary of Energy in 1998 to disqualify Yucca based on this specific DOE disqualifying condition. In response, DOE instead proposed in 1999 to simply change the rules by removing any such individual "disqualifiers." DOE's Nov. 15th publication marks the finalization of this rule change. Weakening the standards to fit the unsuitable site has been the tradition from the beginning at Yucca Mountain.
WHAT YOU CAN DO!
DOE's changes to the siting guidelines have been so egregious that the State of Nevada, adamantly opposed to the dump, has already threatened to challenge them in federal court in the very near future. Federal judges must recognize that the public has exhausted all "administrative remedies," by time and time again submitting official comments to DOE that the Yucca site must be disqualified.
See the sample letter below, and submit your comments to DOE by the Dec. 14th deadline. If you can, host a letter writing party at your home (don't forget the holiday cookies!) or set up an info table on your campus (Final exams? What final exams?). Get your family and friends to submit comments too! Thus far, perhaps more than 15,000 comments opposing Yucca Mountain have been presented to DOE in the last two years alone! Let's bury them even deeper in opposition!
SAMPLE LETTER
Carol Hanlon
U.S. Department of Energy
Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Office (M/S #025)
P.O. Box 364629
North Las Vegas, Nevada 89036-8629
E-mail: YMP_SR (at) ymp.gov
Fax: 1-800-967-0739
Dear Ms. Hanlon:
I strongly urge DOE Secretary Abraham to disqualify Yucca Mountain from any further consideration as the U.S. high-level atomic waste dump. Revising its own 17-year-old repository siting guidelines at the last second of the site characterization process amount to changing the rules in the middle of the game. The repeated weakening of the standards to fit the unsuitability of the site cannot be called "sound science". DOE has shifted away from the original concept of geologic containment: isolation of deadly radioactivity from the biosphere for the duration of its hazard. DOE's utter reliance on engineered barriers, and eventual dilution and dispersal of radioactive poisons in a currently-used drinking water supply, show that burying irradiated fuel rods and high-level waste at Yucca Mountain, Nevada would result in an environmental catastrophe.
How can Secretary Abraham recommend Yucca Mountain in the next few months when site suitability studies that DOE has promised to provide the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will not be completed until 2003 at the earliest? How can he close the final round of public comments when DOE has not responded to well over 11,000 previous public comments, nor published its final Environmental Impact Statement? How can Secretary Abraham give his thumbs up to Yucca when DOE has never adequately addressed transporting tens of thousands of high-level atomic waste trucks and trains through 45 States past the homes of 50 million Americans? Whatever happened to Secretary Abraham's previously stated concern for meaningful public participation in, and the very best emergency response preparedness for, nuclear materials shipments when he was a U.S. Senator from Michigan? Does he intend to recommend Yucca to the President without having dealt with the terrorist threats that 9/11 showed to be a very real danger? How can Secretary Abraham do other than suspend site recommendation activities until a new law firm can be found to recreate years worth of work by Winston and Strawn that is tainted by blatantly unethical conflict of interest as it lobbied on behalf of the pro-Yucca Nuclear Energy Institute while simultaneously preparing DOE's license application to NRC?
The public simply cannot have any faith in such a fatally flawed and woefully incomplete process. The Yucca Mountain Project should be terminated once and for all, and DOE redirected to seeking real answers to our country's nuclear waste dilemma.
Sincerely,
Your name, organization if any, and address
[It's very important to "cc" your U.S. Senators and Representative, because the votes in Congress to override the State of Nevada's veto of the impending DOE and Presidential site recommendation decisions may be only months off at this point. Because mail delivery to Capitol Hill is still very uncertain due to the anthrax scare, please fax your letters to the Capitol Hill offices, or mail your letters to the home district offices. For such addresses and fax numbers, call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 244-3121, or visit www.house.gov and www.senate.gov, or call NIRS.] |
See also:
http://www.nirs.org/
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