User profile: leenaree

While Europe and Japan are reprocessing spent fuel, this process creates a higher volume of waste in liquid form. There have been numerous leaks of this waste which are contaminating fishing stocks in Scandinavia. There are pockets of unexplained cancers in the vicinities of the plants. Mayak in Russia had been the site of some of the most egregious pollution of river systems, and in Rokkasho there have been deaths.

Repeal the NWPA, reimburse the nuclear power companies for their outlay into the Nuclear Waste Fund, accept on-site storage as the workable medium-term solution, change NRC rules to allow communities to veto relicensing and new licensing based on local opposition to on-site storage, and focus funding on technology that will neutralize the radioactivity without creating equally toxic waste streams.

Yucca Mountain is a failure. So why throw any more money at it? The Obama Administration is showing political courage in finally starting to put an end to it.

Spent fuel can be stored on-site at the plants. Even the Nuclear Energy Institute agrees that such storage is safe, and has a long track record. It is already a given that spent fuel must remain on-site for at least 5 years in cooling pools before cooling enough to enable movement to another form of storage. Assemblies are moved to the pools only every 18 months or so. Those nuclear operators who are running out of space in the pools have already chosen to build Hardened On-Site Storage. A benefit to this storage is it allows them to keep possession of the spent fuel, in case it becomes a "valuable resource" for reprocessing, to use the words of the Heritage Foundation. The reality of cooling pools flies in the face of the argument that spent fuel must be removed because its presence represents a terrorist threat.

There is no scientific consensus on the suitability of Yucca Mountain. In the past, within the window of time when radioactivity levels will still be dangerous, Yucca Mountain was volcanically active. There are many fault lines in the area, and there have been numerous small quakes, including one in the past few years that seriously damaged a building that is part of the project complex. Water filtration data was falsified (see email scandal of 2 years ago), and the NRC has not yet even finalized the model they will use. As recently as a year ago, comment was still being sought on the study model to use. The technology (titanium drip shields) that would protect the waste packages from water filtration has not been invented, and neither have the robots that are hypothesized to be necessary to install them. This is immature, incomplete technology being cobbled together to address deadly poisons.

Nevada is not the only state opposing Yucca Mountain. I live in Utah, and have no desire to see my community endangered by the shipments over rail lines and I-80 through downtown Salt Lake City of spent fuel assemblies in containers that have failed multiple QA tests. (see testimony of whistle-blower Oscar Shirani) If these containers were to be breached, they would release Cesium-137, the radionuclide that caused widespread cancers in the Ukraine-Belarus area after Chernobyl, and that still appears in sheep in the UK and Scandinavia in dangerous quantities more than 20 years later.

We don't need to do anything with it, except remove all of the equipment, remediate the site, and give it back to the Western Shoshone, from whom it was summarily stolen. This land has historically been used (and still is used) by the Western Shoshone for gathering medicinal plants and for religious ceremonies. The US was directed by the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in March 2006 to "cease, desist and freeze" all US activities on Western Shoshone Treaty Land. This includes the Nevada Test Site, Yucca Mountain, and the mining licenses granted to private companies on Western Shoshone land. This land is protected under the treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863, which was never rescinded or amended by either party. If treaties and international agreements are the highest law in the land according to our own constitution, this land should be restored to the Western Shoshone immediately. It was never the US's to use for any purpose.

Mr Seidler of the NEI should check his facts. While the shipment by rail of low-level nuclear waste is nothing new, shipment of spent-fuel, or high-level waste from US nuclear plants IS something new. It has never been done before. The waste is stored on site, either in the cooling pools, or when cool enough, in dry cask storage. There are several accidents per year in the shipment of low-level waste. Here is Utah, we hear about these all the time, since we play host to the EnergySolutions low-level dump in Clive. We have shipments of radioactive water that are spilled, trains filled with debris of decommissioned nuclear power plants that derail, and no one knows how to report, let alone handle the accident. Where's the evidence that that DOE or its subcontractors would handle this much-hotter, more dangerous waste in a more responsible manner? Approximately 70% of this high-level waste will travel through Utah, and you can bet we're concerned.