Mobile Chernobyl Alert!
Capital Switchboard 202-225-3121 Call now and often!
Mobile Chernobyl, the idea of shipping all of the nation's high-level nuclear waste to a parking lot in Nevada is BACK! Although Congress has been unable to enact such legislation the past four years, the nuclear industry wasted no time this year: on the first day of Session for the 106th Congress, House members Fred Upton (R-MI) and Edolphus Towns (D-NY) introduced a new Mobile Chernobyl bill. This year, it is HR 45.
The new bill is nearly identical to the previous House version of Mobile Chernobyl but has some new funding provisions and new dates-to reflect the atomic industry's previous failures to pass the legislation. The new date for the opening of a centralized storage site for irradiated fuel from nuclear power reactors and the military is 2003, which would trigger the largest nuclear waste shipping campaign in history.
Transport of high-level nuclear waste from reactor sites, ¾ of which are east of the Mississippi River, would impact 43 states, according to studies conducted by the State of Nevada. The legislation would require an ambitious 3,000 metric tons of irradiated fuel a year--or about the total amount that has been moved in the last 30 years, each year for the next 30 years or more. 50 million Americans live within a half mile on either side of the likely train tracks and highways this waste would pass by. This is because normal trade routes-major interstate highways and railroutes--would be used to move the waste. Urban areas should examine whether there is a disproportionate impact on some sectors of the community. For example, highways and railways often are placed in poorer, predominately minority areas.
MOBILE CHERNOBYL IS MOVING FAST. The new Chair of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Water is Joe Barton, R-TX, who has long been a "water boy" for the nuclear industry. He was, for example, the chief sponsor of "one-step" reactor licensing legislation. Barton would like to move the bill out of his subcommittee THIS MONTH - with no hearings.
Barton and his nuclear industry allies are counting on us to fold. They believe that we have fought this effort so long and hard, that we no longer have it in us to fight again. Guess again, Mr. Barton!
National environmental and public interest groups are meeting weekly to launch an all-out offensive on Capital Hill. We have stopped this bill every year since it was first introduced in 1994. We can stop it now, but it requires immediate action from you, your friends and colleagues, your organizations.
First target: demand hearings on this legislation. Since the funding mechanism has changed - and is really complicated - this is the perfect thing to focus on. NO MORE NUCLEAR WELFARE! Even if your U.S. Representative is not on the House Commerce Committee, call his/her office and demand that he/she:
1) OPPOSE HR 45, the Mobile Chernobyl Act
2) Demand new hearings: the bill is not the same and there are new members of Congress
3) Focus on the money issues, the transport issue, and the fact that this is environmental plunder not environmental protection!!!
While hearings might show the fallacy of the nuclear industry's funding schemes-which are intended to put the burden of radioactive waste storage on the taxpayer instead of the industry that created the waste, hearings are not enough.
In fact, in December, 219 environmental groups demanded a complete end to the Yucca Mountain project, for temporary or permanent waste storage, because the science is now clear: Yucca Mountain cannot legally be licensed as a radioactive waste dump-unless the government changes its public health and safety licensing regulations and abandoning any effort to isolate this massive load of radioactivity from the environment.
Here are a couple of other points you might want to make to your elected representatives and senators. The impeachment trial is certainly slowing things down in the Senate, but behind the scenes, the atomic industry's gophers, such as Sens. Frank Murkowski, Larry Craig and Pete Domenici, are readying new legislation there as well.
HR 45, and any Mobile Chernobyl legislation, is one of the worst environmental bills ever. It does not provide a solution for nuclear waste, just a "fix" for the nuclear industry that gets to dump their waste on Native Shoshone lands, while at the same time making it the possession of the tax-payer in perpetuity. The legislation authorizes the Department of Energy to curtail or preempt ALL environmental laws.
HR 45 sets new deadlines that are more unrealistic than the current law's missed deadline of 1998.
Yucca Mountain will not isolate nuclear waste from the environment. Data in the DOE's own "viability assessment" of the proposed Yucca Mountain Repository contradicts any assertion that Yucca Mountain will isolate nuclear waste from the environment. The constant seismic activity in the area has fractured the soft rock of Yucca Mountain, allowing rain to travel through the proposed repository site. The same fractures will allow radioactive gases to escape as the waste decays.
A recent study of the funding of the Yucca Mountain Project shows that there will be about a 50% shortfall in total project funds. By law the funding for this project comes from the customers of nuclear power, and the original concept was that they should pay the full bill. A proportional 10% to be paid by taxpayers via the military budgets would cover the cost of military waste that would go to the same site (10% of the total waste). The fund is paid for monthly with the electric bill of those who get nuclear power, but at the current rate, this fund will deliver $28.1 Billion. The total projected cost of the program with centralized storage is $53.9 Billion. This means that taxpayers would end up more than $25 billion in liability if these conservative projections are met-and every year the cost projections go higher....
Our job is clear. We must stop HR 45 and all related legislation, and we must begin now.
First, call your Congressmember at 202-224-3121 and demand that he/she actively oppose this bill. Point out the effect transportation of high-level atomic waste could have on your state.
Second, write your Congressmember-even if you called. Surveys of Congressmembers clearly indicate that handwritten (or typed) letters from citizens of the district or state are the single most effective means of reaching your Congressmember. Faxes, e-mails, phone calls are all ok, but nothing is as effective as a letter in your own words.
Third, organize your community, encourage more letters, phone calls, faxes, e-mails. The latest public opinion polls we have available show that some 67% of the public opposes Mobile Chernobyl, but only about 1/3 of the public even knows about it. Moreover, the more people learn about it, according to the polls, the more likely they are to oppose it. That means we all have to get out and educate and organize, because if we can educate just 1/3 more of the public the battle will be over-we will win hands down. Let NIRS know what organizing and educational materials you need, we'll get them to you. You can also continue to collect signatures on the Don't Waste America petitions, although we hope you'll use those primarily as an educational tool, and encourage people to write their own letters. Try setting up tables at public locations with a few sample letters to Congress, focusing on your local situation, and urge people to use these samples to write their own letters. Op-eds, letters to the editor, press releases-it's time to start them all up again.
It is not too late to get resolutions against the legislation passed at municipal and county levels. A resolution against HR 45 on the basis of the transport of nuclear waste or any other issue is a very LOUD letter to your U.S. Rep. Contact us if you need help with that.
It's time to stop Mobile Chernobyl once and for all. It's time to stop Yucca Mountain once and for all. Together, we WILL prevail.
Michael Mariotte
Mary Olson
NIRS
202-328-0002
http://www.nirs.org
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