Sacrifice Communities

Disposition of toxic pollution created in every phase of the nuclear fuel cycle is central to democracy, pollution prevention, and environmental justice.

Every community adjacent to nuclear technology-mining, fuel fabrication, recycling of irradiated scrap metal to the production of depleted uranium ammunition, etc experiences a meltdown in democratic safeguards and degradation in health. The public concern is manipulated toward the accident while the health consequences of routine operation and subsequent costs of exposure are ignored.

Nuclear power is a dirty technology. It contaminates everything it contacts, creating a monstrous waste problem. The solution to the problem for nuclear corporations is to dump it. An operating reactor both releases rad waste into the local environment and stores waste on site for shipment to another community. No exposure to radiation is safe.

CAN addresses nuclear pollution as members of contaminated communities. CAN started as a local group fighting a nuclear neighbor; we lived within 16 miles of two reactors.

In the Northeast, rad waste not released into the air and water locally is shipped to a dump in Barnwell, SC- a low income, rural 46% African American community where a hundred-acre radioactive plume is migrating from the dump to the single source aquifer for the community. The state of South Carolina has now closed its doors to out of state waste.

Sierra Blanca, Texas was targeted by the states of Vermont and Maine for a nuclear waste dump. The average income in that community was $7,000. per year. Local community acitivist stopped Sierra Blanca from becoming the next nuclear waste dump for the country.

The most toxic waste, irradiated fuel rods, are stored on site in pools and dry cask. The industry intends with the Bush administration’s help to ship this waste thousands of miles to Native American land in Nevada- 15,000 to 70,000 shipments depending on whether a rail spur is built at tax payer expense.

Private Fuel Storage a consortium of 8 nuclear corporations targeted the Goshute Reservation in Utah (and the Apache Reservation in New Mexico before that) for a “temporary” dump. EPA regulations require the waste remain separate from the environment for 10,000 years. The state of Utah has stopped this "temporary storage" for the industry's waste to open.

The solutions proposed by the industry pit sacrifice community against sacrifice community, manipulate community’s fears of contamination, support opportunism, and develop an illusionary fallacy- reactors, touted as clean, are dirty and dangerous if waste remains on site as an interim or possible permanent solution to the waste problem.

Communities chosen to suffer nuclear contamination are poor, rural and often people of color. - Native Americans, Mexican Americans, African Americans-the rural poor, or women who are disproportionately impacted by toxic pollution due to biological realities of the reproductive process. Communities are hard pressed to value health and safety over short-term financial relief.

It is unacceptable to force people to choose between immediate economic survival or the sacrifice of future generations.

UNTIL SEPTEMBER 11^th The most urgent threat to surrounding communities was the standard operation of a nuclear reactor. For a PWR like Yankee Rowe, there were on average 5 batch releases a month into the Deerfield River. For a BWR like Vermont Yankee there is a continuous release of radioactive effluent into their community's atmosphere and periodic releases into the River.

Yankee Rowe: The Experiment

Yankee Rowe was the first commercial nuclear power station in the country. It operated for thirty-one years until the embrittlement of the reactor vessel and local citizen pressure closed the reactor down.

In researching the release history of the reactor, we learned that it routinely and regularly released radioactive waste into the Deerfield River. Citizens were shocked. Our river is used for recreation by our community. Over 500,000 people a year use the river. Since the NRC classified our river a “dead river”, it was not required to the meet the EPA standards for drinking water.

Our children swam in that river. Agricultural land is adjacent to the river. In drought, farmers pumped water from the river to irrigate their crops. Air inversions blanket the river valley over 34% of the time, trapping the air-borne contamination in our valley. The river is used for white-water rafting. Spit and spume from the rapids are dispersed into the adjacent community.

CAN compiled a history of radioactive releases. Due to faulty fuel rods, large quantities of tritium, a dangerous enviro-toxin, were released. In the 1960's-1970 's over 10,000 curies of tritium and perhaps as much as 20,000 curies were released.

All releases were within Nuclear Regulatory Commission acceptable limits.

Tritium

Tritium is a radionuclide routinely released from pressurized water reactors (PWR). It was believed to be a relatively benign radionuclide with a half life of 12 1/2 years. Recent research has reclassified tritium as a dangerous enviro-toxin. It has been found to be 2 times as carcinogenic, 2-5 times as mutagenic, and 2 times as teratogenic. It is associated with Down syndrome in epidemiological studies and birth defects and spontaneous abortion in animal research. It has been linked to breast and intestinal cancers.

We in Deerfield River Valley (DRV) in western Massachusetts suffer from an epidemic of disease. Home to both the Yankee Rowe and Vermont Yankee reactors. AND we are not alone. This is not unusual in reactor and waste communities

AND NOW THERE IS TERRORISM

Nuclear power reactors are recognized in the aftermath of the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, as terrorist targets. Reactor sites contain more than a 1000 times the radiation released in one Hiroshima sized atomic bomb.

Amhed Ressham, the terrorist, convicted of trying to import explosives into the US to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, referred in his testimony to a camp in Afghanistan where he received training to destroy power plants, airports, railroads and large corporations (NYT, 07-04-01).

REACTOR FUEL POOLS ARE THE TARGETS FOR TERRORISM

It is generally recognized that the closely packed irradiated fuel rods in of operating and decommissioning reactors are targets for terrorist since millions of curies of lethal materials materials could be dispersed over entire regions. Dry cask storage is likewise vulnerable. None could withstand an attack like America experienced on September 11th. In fact fuel pools and cask storage are far more vulnerable than containment buildings and less secure.

The land and property destroyed would remain useless for decades. Significantly, homeowner's policies do not cover nuclear disasters.

Shipping high level waste somewhere else is no solution. Even if Yucca Mountain or another dump were sited, the fuel would not be moved for decades if not centuries. Hardened On Site Storage is required to protect adjacent communities.

The nuclear industry’s responds to the prospect of a terrorist attack as a public relations problem. It attempts to conceal the grim reality of increased vulnerability. Impression management will not solve the problem. The awful truth is that reactors will always be vulnerable to terrorism. Reactors must be replaced with sustainable energy solutions, conservation and efficiency since as long as they operate they create more deadly waste, that makes reactor communities hostage to terrorist attacks and disease.

CLEAN UP

The greatest task in the history of nuclear power is the clean up and disposition of the waste generated by nuclear utilities and corporations. Cutting edge technology in this high tech industry is to dump it whether on top of the group or under the ground.

Small amounts are utilized in medical treatments, which does not constitute 1% of the radioactive waste requiring management and disposal.

There is a monstrous waste problem without an adequate solution that will have far reaching consequences for us all.

HIGH LEVEL WASTE

1980’s the Government proposed through the waste policy act to explore permanent storage for high level waste. This waste must be isolated from the environment for at least 10,000 years. The waste will remain toxic for 250,000 years.

The nuclear industry is targeting both Yucca Mountain and the Goshute Reservation in Utah for it toxic waste. The urgency to site a dump whether it is suitable or not, is to make the waste “disappear” so that it can relicense aging reactors and site new reactors on old sites.There are significant problems with both sites as well as problems with transportion as well as the vulnerability of transport casks to terrorism.

In reality waste must remain on site until a scientifically sound environmentally just solution is created. Irradiated fuel that is presently stored in under protected pools- must be put into Hardened On Site Storage. This storage must be able to withstand a terrorist attack, able to act as deterrent for terrorism.

This is a terrible reality for reactor communities. This waste has hurt us and we are now forced to accept responsibility for it for an unknown period of time.

A Green policy on radioactive waste must develop to protect the environment. It will be driven by the concerns of ordinary citizens needing to protect their children and future generations from expanding nuclear contamination.

· Stop the creation and shipment of rad waste off site to contaminate other communities. STOP ENVIRONMENT INJUSTICE AND RACISM.

· A democratic process must be initiated for an environmentally safe solution to be developed. Let us not sacrifice any more communities. The waste we ship out will return to haunt us.

· Halt the production of rad-waste. The DOE estimates 85,000 tons of irradiated fuel will be produced by the present generation of reactors alone. Only 30,000 tons has been produced so far.

· Create Hardened On Site Storage of Irradiated Fuel. Return a percentage of the money in the Nuclear Waste Fund to generators to maintain on-site storage. Acknowledge the truth. Classify nuclear sites as superfund sites. Provide funding to communities for education, medical training, monitoring, and other protective services,health studies.

The Future: Democracy in the USA

There is no pro or anti-nuclear. There is waste with no cost-free solution. It is America's problem, not just the industry's. Citizens must be included in the problem-solving process to create pollution prevention and reduction techniques to decrease rad waste in their community and determine the eventual storage for rad waste.

To effectively participate in democracy, citizens must be presented with the full range of scientific opinion concerning low-level radiation, rad-waste, and nuclear power.

If we can understand that the world is our neighbor, then we can end the cycle of contamination and sacrifice.