The Pen Is Mightier Than the Highly-Radioactive Nuclear Fuel Rod. Don't Let the Nuclear Industry Screw Us All Demand DOE & EPA Do the Right Thing!
The nuclear industry wants to sweep its biggest problem under the rug, by burying its deadliest wastes under Yucca Mountain in Nevada. In fact, 95% of the radioactivity generated in the entire Nuclear Age is contained within these highly-radioactive fuel rods expelled from the reactor cores of commercial nuclear power plants. But Yucca Mountain is not suitable for this, and will release massive amounts of radioactivity into the water and air over time. For this reason, over 200 environmental organizations petitioned the U.S. Secretary of Energy in Dec. 1998 to disqualify Yucca Mountain from consideration as the nation's high-level nuclear waste dump. The petition was denied.
Rushing to "externalize" its deadly wastes, the nuclear industry intends to launch tens of thousands of dangerous shipments of irradiated fuel rods onto our nation's roads and rails. Nuclear utility companies hope to dump their forever deadly atomic garbage into the flawed, leaking, earthquake-plagued hole in the ground that is the proposed Yucca Mountain dump. All this, just to transfer the costs and liabilities of its deadliest wastes onto the shoulders of American taxpayers, so that the nuclear industry can continue making profits and generating more wastes!
The nuclear industry wants the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to do its dirty work, and wants the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to allow this to happen. The DOE is currently accepting public comments on its "Draft Environmental Impact Statement" for this national transportation and Yucca Mountain dumpsite scheme. The EPA is likewise accepting public comments on its proposed radiation protection standards for the Yucca Mountain repository. Now's the time to make our voices heard, before an irreversible mistake is made with some of the deadliest poisons on the planet!
Tell DOE and EPA the following things, in your own words. With enough public pressure, we can stop DOE & EPA from doing the wrong thing!
• Persons living downstream from the proposed dump should be exposed to a dose of zero additional radiation. NRC's proposed 25 mrem/year dose is unacceptably high; even EPA's 15 mrem dose should be lowered.
• The groundwater under Yucca Mountain should be specifically protected, for the highest doses of radiation to the public and releases into the environment will follow this pathway. Drinking contaminated water, irrigating their crops with it, feeding those crops to their livestock, all will biomagnify the radiation doses to harmful levels. EPA's 4 mrem/year groundwater protection standard should be upheld; NRC's failure to protect the groundwater is unacceptable.
• The people most vulnerable to radiation living downstream would be subsistence farmers, especially pregnant women and the babies in their wombs. Children, the elderly and the infirm would also be especially vulnerable. These vulnerable individuals should be protected as much as possible, and thus should be the basis for radiation health damage assumptions.
• Dilution is not the solution to pollution. EPA & NRC propose to require compliance to radiation dose standards not until 20 kilometers (12 miles) or more from the dumpsite. Their reasoning, that that distance of mixing with the groundwater will dilute the radiation to acceptable levels. This is outrageous, and a terrible precedent that could then be applied to other types of dumps and polluting industries. Demand that NRC & EPA require compliance on-site or at the boundary of the dumpsite.
• NRC & EPA propose to require compliance for only 10,000 years. But at 100,000 years, doses to the public from Yucca Mountain will be hundreds of times higher than they were at 10,000 years. DOE admits that peak doses will not occur until about 300,000 years after the wastes are buried. The regulatory period should extend for as long as the nuclear wastes are hazardous.
• The repository, or the severely contaminated groundwater right beneath it, could be breached in the future by humans drilling for water or valuable minerals. Even today, there is a gold mine within site of Yucca Mountain. Such breaches could rupture waste casks and open up pathways for water seepage that will more quickly degrade casks and dissolve the deadly wastes. DOE, EPA & NRC all assume only one such intrusion will occur in 10,000 years. The truth is, numerous such intrusions could occur. For this reason, continual, eternal vigilance, regulatory institutional controls, and guardianship over the repository is called for, extending out into the thousands of years.
• There is a fight between EPA & NRC about who should set the radiation standards for Yucca Mountain. The nuclear industry and its supporters in Congress would love for NRC to be the one, with their much weaker standards — the proverbial fox guarding the hen house, for NRC is legally mandated to promote nuclear power, and has decades of close ties to the nuclear industry. EPA should remain the standard setter, as present law provides. Even though EPA's standards are better than NRC's, that's not saying much. EPA's proposed standards are too weak, and must be strengthened.
The fundamental question is, will the greedy nuclear industry succeed — with the help of its supporters in Congress and the federal agencies — in lowering the environmental standards for Yucca Mountain so far that it still qualifies for the nation's high-level nuclear waste dump, despite its severe shortcomings? The EPA should be encouraged by as many people as possible to strengthen its standards, so that an unfit location is not permitted to go forward in the first place. The DOE must be shown that the nation is watching, and that we will not sit silently by while it attempts to cram this ill-conceived nuclear nightmare down our throats!
Submit your written comments for the DOE to: Wendy Dixon, Environmental Impact Statement Project Manager, Yucca Mtn. Site Characterization Office, Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, U.S. DOE, P.O. Box 30307, M/S 010, North Las Vegas, NV 89036-0307. Written comments can also be submitted via Internet at http://www.ymp.gov. Comments are due to DOE by January 19, 2000.
As for EPA, submit 2 copies of your comments to the Central Docket Section (6102), ATTN: Docket A-95-12, U.S. EPA, 401 M Street SW, Washington, D.C. 20460-0001. Comments are due to EPA by Friday, November 26, 1999.
And if it's not too much extra bother, send copies of your comments to Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and we'll be sure they're entered into the record at upcoming public hearings.
Share this action sheet with your friends and members of your organization. The only cure for nuclear waste is preventive medicine — stop making it! As for what already exists, two wrongs don't make a right — Yucca Mountain is not the place for it, and we'd be much better off starting over from scratch than to bury the waste at an unsuitable site.
Watch our website for our talking points and comments to DOE and EPA: www.nirs.org. If you have questions or need help, call Kevin Kamps, Nuclear Waste Specialist at NIRS: (202) 328-0002, or e-mail kevinkamps@yahoo.com
Thank you for your help!
Prepared by Kevin Kamps on October 19, 1999.
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