MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!
Submit Your Comments on Department of Energy (DOE) Draft Environmental Impact Statement on Yucca Mountain Repository, and thousands of shipments of high-level nuclear waste
YUCCA MOUNTAIN WILL FAIL TO ISOLATE WASTE
- DOE’s own data shows that the Yucca Mountain site will fail to contain nuclear waste – radioactive gases will be released and radioactive waste will be washed into the ground water a short time after the first containers fail
- Containers do fail – about 70 dry storage casks are in use at reactors, there is already 1 “juvenile failure” – a cask with a faulty weld – in less than 20 years. Repository casks will be made of different material, but the manufacturing will be subject to the same problems…there will be more than 10 thousand repository casks…and so likely hundreds of early cask failures.
- DOE and Congress have both changed the rules of the game repeatedly instead of disqualifying this site as their own regulations would call for
- Over 200 local, state, national and international environmental / public interest organizations petitioned the DOE to disqualify the site under existing repository Site Suitability Guidelines
- DOE is in the process of attempting to change these Guidelines, even while they are taking public comment on an Environmental Impact statement that should be based on them
- DOE denied the petition to disqualify, not because they could prove the 200 groups were wrong, but because they want to study the site more in order to try to prove us wrong…in the mean time the site violates a disqualifying condition for nuclear waste repositories –that requires that water move very slowly in the ground. DOE’s data shows that water travels very quickly through the Yucca Mt.rock
- Since the Yucca Mountain site is not fit to isolate nuclear waste, DOE has come to rely on engineered barriers for containment…contradicting the legislative mandate for the program which selected geologic isolation…if DOE is going to rely on engineered structures, the whole process must be started over to examine appropriate siting and design for engineered isolation.
- Instead of holding public hearings on Yucca, DOE should be holding public meetings on how to start over on a high-level nuclear waste program
- Yucca Mountain repository project violates a treaty with the WESTERN SHOSHONE NATION, there is an unsettled land dispute which DOE ignores
TRANSPORT OF IRRADIATED NUCLEAR FUEL
- Specific concerns and information about the routes near you might include: proximity to schools, hospitals, water and food storage, other vital resources, and also history of problems on these routes is very appropriate to bring out. For projected routes and schools and hospitals nearest you see www.citizen.org select “Critical Mass Energy Project” to visit the ATOMIC ATLAS
- Concerns about environmental protection, environmental justice (the poor and people of color often live along railways and highways), safety, about liability, emergency response preparedness (or lack thereof), disaster management, worker safety, incidental radiation exposure, property value – in other words, HOW WILL 30 YEARS OF NUCLEAR WASTE SHIPMENTS THROUGH YOUR COMMUNITY IMPACT YOU?
- Nationally, this is the largest nuclear waste shipping campaign in history, affecting 43 states, hundreds of towns and cities and moving more high-level waste each year than the last 30 years combined. DOE says 50 million people live within ½ mile of the projected routes
- DOE’s Environmental Impact Statement assumes specific routes, but these were kept secret until January 21, 2000 – less than three weeks before the public comment period’s original deadline. View DOE’s shipping route maps on their web site (http://www.ymp.gov/timeline/eis/routes/routemaps.htm), and demand DOE specifically address how this will affect your community.
- DOE averages those impacted by a severe shipping accident across the whole US population when they say there is “no significant impact” in early analysis. Make it clear this is not acceptable.
- Point out that DOE’s “No Action Alternative” – that either Yucca Mountain goes forward, or else the wastes will be abandoned to leak into the environment at reactor sites — is entirely unrealistic and is being used as a scare tactic.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT KEVIN KAMPS AT NUCLEAR INFO. & RESOURCE SERVICE, PH. 301-270-6477.