DOE is moving ahead to make the sacred Shoshone Yucca Mountain that is also leaky and geologically unstable the nation’s high-level nuclear waste dump (the vast majority of the waste that would go there is from making electric power East of the Mississippi River). This is categorically wrong since both the Western Shone Nation and the State of Nevada oppose this dump. It is also stupid since all evidence points to an active magma pocket below the site!  Your comments are needed now on a draft supplemental EIS designed to expedite the dump license!  DEADLINE IS JANUARY 10 — instructions are given in the WSDP Alert below.

While there are other schemes afoot (The Bush Global Nuclear Energy Partnership  — featuring reprocessing) the fact that the nuclear industry is staging a “come back” is driving DOE (a nuclear energy promoter) to  do ANYTHING — including multiple “baits and switches” — to get irradiated fuel (high-level radioactive waste) OFF nuclear power reactor sites and into the tax-payer’s pocket (when DOE takes the waste it transfers off the balance sheet of the corporation and on to the taxpayer’s back). We have been fighting Yucca Mountain for a long time — please don’t stop now!

An additional set of “talking points” that came via our friends at Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force are attached.  If you live in a state with nuclear power reactors — or near the nuclear waste transport routes please DO look at the attached talking points  (see:http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/maps2002/roadrail/index.htm –scroll down the page to see links to state maps).   DOE is now planning to use a standardized waste container — called a TAD — (Transport and Disposal). These containers are enormous — and while they will reduce the number of shipments of highly radioactive waste, the reactor-site loading of these containers would be challenging, and accident consequences would go up. Rail would likely be used more — and while rail may be preferred for a number of reasons — rail bed throughout the USA has been deteriorating to an alarmingly sad state. Also: regulations allow a shipment to sit in a rail yard for extended periods (up to 2 years) so security in urban transport hubs may be more of an issue. (If you did not get the attachment, send an email to nirs@main.nc.us or nirsnet@nirs.org and we will send them again.)

If you want the whole 9 yards the DOE document is DOE/EIS-0250F-S1D and is posted at: http://www.eh.doe.gov/nepa/docs/deis/eis0250F-S1D/index.html
NIRS has a large body of basic information about high-level radioactive waste posted at: http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/radwaste.htm See link at left called Mobile Chernobyl to learn more about the problems of transporting high-level waste and the Yucca Mountain dump-site site itself.

We encourage you to go on record — even short comments will demonstrate that people DO still oppose Yucca Mountain and are working to STOP MOBILE CHERNOBYL!

— Mary Olson
NIRS Southeast Regional Coordinator

Please forward widely!

Western Shoshone Defense Project
So-Ho-Bi (South Fork) office:
775-744-2565 (fax and phone)
 
Main office:
P.O. Box 211308
Crescent Valley, NV  89821
Newe Sogobi
775-468-0230
775-468-0237 (fax)

 

 

URGENT ACTION ALERT!! DEADLINE APPROACHING!

YUCCA MOUNTAIN, SACRED TO THE SHOSHONE & MAJOR FAULT ZONE, IN IMMINENT DANGER!

DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY MOVES PLANS FORWARD TO TURN YUCCA MOUNTAIN INTO NUCLEAR WASTE REPOSITORY.    

PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD DEADLINE JANUARY 10, 2008. 

 

Public hearings have not been well attended, statements mostly in favor of the plan to put all of the nuclear waste in the country in this one sacred place. Activists were told that if we do not go on record with a statement, we will have no legal recourse later on.  Local papers & media spin have recently stated that opposition to the nuke dump had dropped off since the passing of Corbin Harney. The nuclear reps are confident to the point of acting like it’s a done deal.  LETS PROVE THEM WRONG! MAKE YOUR COMMENT NOW & TAKE ACTION!!

 

Yucca Mountain is sacred to the Shoshone as an herb gathering site, for rituals, and as a part of their stories. Yucca Mountain is known in Shoshone language as Snake Mountain.  Indeed it looks like a snake. It is said that the snake was headed north when it froze where it is. Further more it is said that it will move again and “flip around”. Geologists say that there are thirteen different fault lines running through it.

 

Citizens  can make an oral statement at the scheduled public hearings or fill out a form and mail it in to EIS Office U.S. Department of  Energy Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Mgmt, 1551 Hillshire dr.  Las Vegas, NV, 89195-7308 or by e-mail at EIS_Office@ymp.gov. 

HERE ARE TALKING POINTS: http://www.h-o-m-e.org/Yucca/index.htm

 

 

 “The eyes of the elders are on us.  The fate of the unborn is rolling toward the cliff, the voice of Corbin Harney is ringing in my ears, “It’s on your shoulders now…”.   Info from Bear Dyken. mdyken@goldrush.com.

 

 

YUCCA MOUNTAIN FACT SHEET, TALKING POINTS, & MORE INFO: Healing Ourselves & Mother Earth http://www.h-o-m-e.org/

The DOE released two Draft Supplemental Environmen-tal Impact Statements related to repository changes and rail transportation of high-level waste in Nevada.  

Inyo County CA- Excellent Draft Impacts Assessment Report Comments due by 1/18/08