Nuclear Waste Sites

The Proposed Yucca Mt. High-Level Waste Repository, just west of the Nevada Test Site, is the only option being studied for disposal of 70,000 tons of irradiated fuel rods from commercial and naval reactors. It lies on treaty lands of the Western Shoshone in the third most active earthquake zone in the U.S..

Each scientific study done has shown more clearly why Yucca Mt. is a hopeless site for the isolation of high-level radiation from the biosphere, but the government response has been to repeatedly lower the standards.

Transporting fuel rods safely to the site from all over the U.S. is not possible under present conditions. Containers that could stop all radiation emissions would have walls twelve feet thick and be impossible to move. Highway systems were designed to link major metropolitan areas, and routes would pass within one half mile of over 50 million Americans

.Even if the impossible happened and no accident were to occur during the 100,000 or so truckloads crisscrossing the country, emissions would continuously and cumulatively affect other drivers, children in school crosswalks, local residents and shipment handlers.

As the Yucca Mt. proposal has dragged on for years, attempts have been made to site interim Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS) facilities on Indian Reservations. In a remarkable new form of ‘complimentary’ racism, the federal government has suggested that Native Americans, because of their spiritual connection with the Earth, are the logical caretakers of the nation’s most toxic substances.

Yucca Mountain, sacred to Western Shoshone and Paiute Nations

The Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in Utah, already seriously contaminated by military enterprises and unable to attract other development, is currently considering MRS with a private consortium of nuclear utility corporations. Numerous other Native Nations have considered and refused. However, Goshute tribal officials are finally being investigated for gross mismanagement of preliminary funds, and tribal members are battling for new leadership.

The economic and political interests shaping U.S. nuclear waste policy serve only the corporations who operate nuclear utilities and manufacture weapons. These corporations want the stuff out of the way, at government expense, so they can continue making profits with business as usual. They want no liability.

Every three-year old knows that when the sink is overflowing, you turn off the tap before asking Mom to bring the mop. Globally, nuclear power produces less energy than renewable sources, and the U.S. nuclear arsenal is killing Americans faster than anyone else. Ironically, the DOE is planning a solar powered ventilation system for Yucca Mountain, so they are at least aware that such an option exists.

Our physical and economic well-being is not served by hasty and uncertain solutions. Most independent experts agree that the safest interim solution is to immediately stop making more waste; to contain and monitor nuclear wastes as close as safely possible to their sites of origin (not in the middle of the Mississippi or on major fault lines); and to redirect funds toward reasonable long-term solutions and renewable sources of energy. The Bush/Cheney Energy Policy does none of the above.