GREAT LAKES UNITED
RESOLUTION ON WEST VALLEY NUCLEAR WASTES

Whereas the West Valley, New York nuclear waste site has large inventories of long-lasting and intensely radioactive high-level and so-called "low-level" nuclear wastes from nuclear power, weapons and other sources buried in trenches, holes and tanks upstream of Lake Erie;

Whereas West Valley is not a suitable place for permanent disposal of radioactive waste because of erosion;

Whereas DOE is attempting to change its regulations to declassify high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) to "waste incidental to reprocessing," to allow for its abandonment in the ground in Idaho, South Carolina, Washington, and New York;

Whereas Natural Resources Defense Council, with the support of numerous affected state governments, successfully sued DOE in federal court for violating the Nuclear Waste Policy Act's requirement that DOE manage high level radioactive wastes (HLRW) from reprocessing irradiated fuel;

Whereas DOE successfully lobbied to insert language into the Fiscal Year 2005 Department of Defense Authorization Bill that would allow DOE to abandon HLRW in storage tanks at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina;

Whereas such abandonment of HLRW in storage tanks would likely doom nearby groundwater and surface waters to eventual massive radioactive contamination;

Whereas such radioactive contamination would be catastrophic for public health and the environment both on-site and downstream;

Whereas such a change to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act would legalize the abandonment of HLRW and set a dangerous national precedent that DOE would likely apply to the HLRW tanks at West Valley, New York;

Whereas, if abandoned, much of the West Valley radioactive waste would eventually erode into adjacent waterways that flow into Lake Erie, Niagara Falls, Lake Ontario, and the St. Lawrence Seaway, affecting both Canada and the United States;

Therefore, be it Resolved that Great Lakes United urges the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to disapprove DOE's attempts to declassify HLRW as "waste incidental to reprocessing" and abandon it on-site;

And be it also Resolved that GLU supports the exhumation and containment of the West Valley nuclear waste;

And be it also Resolved to distribute copies of this resolution to all appropriate government agencies and public officials.

Sponsored by the Coalition for a Nuclear Free Great Lakes;
Passed 6-6-04 by Great Lakes United