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NEWS & LETTERS,
January-February 2002
Nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain
Energy Secretary Spencer
Abraham's Jan. 11 recommendation to bury 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste
at Yucca Mountain, Nev., was a long-expected counter-blow against the anti-nuke
movement. The reaction of Native Americans, greens, Nevadans and others was
immediate—not only denouncing the decision as driven by "politics, not
science," but announcing that the ongoing campaign of protests, lawsuits,
lobbying and public education will be stepped up. The 1982 law that started the
slide toward Yucca was originally a concession won by the anti-nuke movement, a
concession that became a lifeline for an industry that had suffered a nearly
fatal blow with the 1979 partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island in
Pennsylvania. Since then, not a single nuclear power plant has been ordered in
the U.S., and all those ordered since 1974 have been cancelled. If Yucca goes forward, the
nuclear industry hopes to find new life. The industry projects that new nuclear
plants may be built as soon as 2006, and 40-year-old plants, though already
decaying from the stress of constant radiation, may gain 20-year extensions on
their expiring licenses. Without a permanent or interim repository, 103 reactors
are running out of storage space for their highly radioactive waste. Up to 1979, few things fueled
the movement more than the series of disasters resulting from the slipshod
handling of radioactive waste—from a truckload of liquid waste that dripped
across 1,000 miles of highway from Michigan to Nevada, to the 430,000 gallons of
acidic toxic-radioactive stew that have leaked into the ground at Hanford,
Wash., and are heading for the Columbia River. The promise of "permanent
disposal" of high-level nuclear waste was supposed to lull all into
forgetting that the nuclear complex threatens millions of lives every day. As
time went on, all of Congress was feeling the heat from people livid at the idea
of having the deadly waste forced on them, and the decision was made to gang up
on Nevada. An elaborate process was
followed to lend the illusion of Yucca Mountain being blessed by the high
priests of science, but problems were repeatedly found with the site. Each time,
the government just lowered the standards. Even today, while Abraham declares
the site "scientifically sound," the government's own General
Accounting Office report states that 293 issues have not been resolved.
Most seriously, it is altogether too likely that wastes would escape into
drinking water used in Nevada and California. While Abraham trotted out
terrorism as a reason for opening Yucca Mountain, the only real protection
against nuclear materials—whether in terrorist attacks, or accidents, or the
routine exposure that happens every day to workers and neighbors—is to shut
down the entire industry, which has proven so well its incompatibility with
human life. As long as nuclear power plants
keep operating, they will continue to store spent fuel until it is
"cool" enough to handle, so Abraham's "terrorism" excuse is
a lie. What he proposes involves 50,000 new potential accidents or
targets—50,000 truckloads and trainloads of radioactive waste that would
travel a cumulative 50 to 100 million miles, some through cities such as
Chicago, St. Louis and Memphis. Some 52 million people live within a half mile
of these routes, and it is to these 52 million that the movement will turn as
the fight continues. —Franklin Dmitryev |
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