In Solidarity with the Rocky Flats 20th Anniversary Reunion: Stop Mobile Chernobyl
Mobile Chernobyl is the popular name for nuclear industry-serving legislation pending in Congress that would send tens of thousands of high-level nuclear waste shipments across the US over the next 30 years. Also known as the Nuclear waste Policy Act of 1997 (S 104 — though it may get a new number soon), the bill would redirect nuclear waste policy. It would put up a parking lot dump next to a site in Nevada called Yucca Mountain that should already be disqualified as a nuclear waste disposal site. All environmental laws would be seriously curtailed or waved from the program. There would be unrealistic deadlines imposed on the system. Inherently dangerous activities like moving nuclear waste should not be done in a hurry. (More info at www.nirs.org)
The commercial nuclear power industry, the generator of most of this waste, wants to dump it on the taxpayers. They are facing competition from a deregulated utility market. These bills give the waste to the public, letting utilities off the hook, before we have a permanent waste "solution."
All in all, what you get is the radiological equivalent of 2.3 atom bombs (the persistent radiation released by a blast) sitting in containers rated for 100 years on a parking lot. And an unstable one at that! There have been 624 quakes over 2.5 on the Richter scale within a 50 mile radius of Yucca Mountain between 1987 and 1997. This is not a "solution."
And on the way to Yucca, the nuclear waste will travel through 43 states, through the front yards of 50 million Americans who live within a half-mile on either side of the projected transport routes. In Colorado, I-70 would carry more than 2,300 truck shipments through Metropolitan Denver and west. A Union Pacific rail line connecting Pueblo, Glenwood Springs and tracking I-70 west to Grand Junction is projected to carry 180 casks, each 5 times the size of a truck cask.
THE BILL BOOSTERS ARE TRYING TO ForCE A VOTE IN THE U.S. SENATE BY MEMorIAL DAY — PRESIDENT CLINTON HAS VOWED TO VETO THIS BILL, BUT THE BOOSTERS ARE TRYING TO BUST THE MARGIN NEEDED TO SUSTAIN A VETO
CALLS ARE NEEDED NOW!!!! Senator Campbell: 202-224-5852
LETTERS: Senator Campbell, US Senate, Washington, DC 20510
TELL SENATor BEN NIGHTHorSE CAMPBELL TO STAND FIRM IN OPPOSING THIS BILL. THANK HIM For HIS OPPOSITION TO S-104 AND HIS CONCERN ABOUT NUCLEAR WASTE TRANSPorT IN COLorADO.
FROM ANOTHER STATE? GREAT! ALL SENATorS SHOULD BE CONTACTED NOW!
SENATE SWITCH BOARD: 202-224-3121
(Check out the map on reverse side of this Alert)
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