- LAS VEGAS, Nevada (ENS) -
Nevadans will not accept the nation's high-level nuclear waste being dumped
at Yucca Mountain 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Hundreds of angry people
showed up at a Department of Energy public hearing in Las Vegas last night
to express their objections. Simultaneous hearings were held in Carson
City, Elko and Reno.
-
- Led by Governor Kenny Guinn and the entire Nevada
Congressional
delegation, who testified via satellite hookup from Washington, DC,
speakers
continued until well after midnight.
-
- A few expressed support for the construction of the
permanent
nuclear waste repository, but the overwhelming majority of the crowd was
hostile to the Department of Energy (DOE) proposal.
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- The DOE proposes to haul 77,000 tons of spent nuclear
fuel rods and other high level radioactive waste from 70 storage sites
in 46 states by road and rail to Yucca Mountain, the only site being
considered
for its permanent storage.
-
- Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn, a Democrat, delivers a grim,
determined challenge to the Bush administration. (Photos © Sunny Lewis
unless otherwise credited)
-
- Governor Guinn characterized the outpouring of opposition
by the crowd in a positive light. "This is honest, constructive and
impassioned public input on an issue that is paramount to the health and
safety of every Nevadan, and every American whose home, school or place
of business sits along the proposed paths that the deadliest substance
on Earth, if DOE has its way, will be brought to Nevada."
-
- The governor and the overflow crowd expressed anger that
the hearing was called with only a few days notice and before an
environmental
impact statement has been filed. The scientific evidence is not complete,
Guinn said, yet the DOE has called this meeting to gather public comment
on that evidence "prematurely" and over our "reasonable
and faithful objections." He pledged to complain about the process
in letters to President George W. Bush and Energy Secretary Spencer
Abraham.
-
- "This fight transcends party affiliations,
transcends
socio-economic class, race or gender and galvanizes all Nevadans from every
corner of the state in opposition," the governor said to a standing
ovation. "We in Nevada will not stand for it."
-
- Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat, called the hearing
"unfair
from the beginning." He criticized Abraham for failing to attend the
Nevada hearings and charged the Bush administration with rushing Yucca
Mountain through by limiting the public comment period to an additional
15 days instead of the 60 day extension requested by the Nevada
Congressional
delegation. Public comments on the possible recommendation of Yucca
Mountain
as the nation's nuclear dump are now due by October 5.
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- Reid called transportation of the nuclear waste the most
difficult issue. "It's in everybody's backyard," he said.
"The
Department of Energy won't tell us what railways they're going to use,
what highways they're going to use because they know they would have to
have an environmental impact statement, which I don't think they can get
approved." Reid said the waste should be left where it is and dealt
with in those locations.
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- Senator John Ensign, a Republican, expressed outrage
and said the hearing process "may be technically legal, it is
certainly
not the morally right way to handle these hearings."
-
- Ensign pointed out that DOE scientists differ from
"outside
scientists" on the safety of the Yucca Mountain proposal, and
criticized
the agency for holding the hearings before an official investigation into
a possible conflict of interest on the part of one of its contractors is
concluded.
-
- Warning that Yucca Mountain would cost $60 billion
dollars,
making it the "most expensive construction project in the history
of the world," Ensign said the safest and cheapest way to handle the
spent nuclear fuel would be to put it in dry cask storage on the sites
where it is currently located.
-
- Dry cask storage is "good for 100 years,"
Ensign
said which would give scientists time to explore promising new nuclear
waste "recycling" technologies that would reduce the volume of
the waste and the length of time it would be radioactive.
-
- Republican Congressman Jim Gibbons called the Yucca
Mountain
plan "a misguided policy," and said "disaster is a very
real possibility."
-
- Congresswoman Shelley Berkeley, a Democrat, said the
DOE's scientific evaluation concerning the repository's ability to safely
contain the waste was "incredibly optimistic," and conformed
only to the "lowest possible standards." The government should
begin the decommissioning of Yucca Mountain, she said, because
"Nevadans
don't want this project."
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- Western Shoshone native leader Corbin Harney told the
hearing that his people had enjoyed the lands which include Yucca Mountain
for hundreds of years until the federal government began atomic weapons
testing on Shoshone lands. He accused the DOE of "telling lies after
lies."
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- Western Shoshone Leader Corbin
Harney
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- "Yucca Mountain is not a safe place to put any kind
of nuclear waste," Harney said. "It's not a mountain to begin
with, like they've been telling us, it's rolling hill. That's a moving
mountain," said Harney. "It's got a snake there, it's going to
continually move."
-
- "There are seven volcanic buttes there," Harney
warned. "Underneath it is hot water that's causing a lot of frictions
in that tunnel, and today they're telling you it's not dangerous. But how
come, if it's not dangerous, many, many of my people have died from cancer
caused by radiation."
-
- The crowd relentlessly heckled Gary Sandquist, a
professor
of mechanical engineering from the University of Utah who has spent 40
years monitoring nuclear weapons testing.
-
- During a tense few moments, moderator Barry Lawson,
threatened
to close the public hearing if the angry shouts did not stop, and some
order was restored.
-
- Sandquist tried to convince the hostile audience that
in what he called "this energy crisis" Americans need
electricity,
and that because 20 percent of the nation's power is generated by nuclear
power plants, "we must store the nuclear fuel somewhere." Yucca
Mountain is the best place to store it, he maintained in the face of hisses
and boos.
-
- Part of the Standing Room Only
Crowd
-
- Speaker Bill Vasconi, co-chairman of the non-profit
Nevada
Nuclear Waste Study Committee, has worked for 17 years at the Nevada
Nuclear
Test Site. He said Nevada should accept as a fact that Yucca Mountain will
be the nation's nuclear repository and begin extracting financial
concessions
from the federal government. He envisioned federal funding for nuclear
energy research centers and other educational institutions.
-
- The crowd reserved its loudest cheers for Las Vegas Mayor
Oscar Goodman who said he is "the happiest mayor in the world"
and wants to stay that way without worrying that a truck on its way to
Yucca Mountain is going to turn over in Las Vegas spilling radioactive
waste.
-
- Mayor Goodman described his inspection visit to Yucca
Mountain in the company of two DOE officials. "After we viewed the
site, I said to them, 'Can you tell me with any kind of certainty that
this nuclear repository is safe?' He quoted one of the officials, Dr.
Ritkin,
as saying, "No one could ever say that with certainty."
-
- Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Gooodman said he will personally
arrest any driver of a nuclear waste truck in his city.
-
- "Well if they can't tell us that we're safe, how
dare they even consider bringing this crap here?" Goodman challenged.
"If there is a spill, the driver doesn't have to worry because he's
wearing a uniform, but the people around here within 42 square miles are
having carcinogens put into the air that can give them cancer and kill
them, and that's not going to take place as long as I'm the mayor of Las
Vegas."
-
- Additional hearings will be held on September 12 in
Amargosa
Valley, adjacent to Yucca Mountain, and on September 13 in Pahrump,
Nevada.
-
- The Preliminary Site Suitability Evaluation, released
August 21, and the Yucca Mountain Science and Engineering Report, release
May 7, are available on the Yucca Mountain Project website at: http://www.ymp.gov/
-
- Public comments are being accepted on the Yucca Mountain
Project website or by mail or fax to:
Carol Hanlon,
S Products Manager,
U.S. Department of Energy,
Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Office,
P.O. Box 30307 M/S 025,
North Las Vegas, NV 89036-0707.
Fax: 1-800-967-0739.
-
- Further technical information about Yucca Mountain is
available at the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board website at: http://www.nwtrb.gov/
-
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