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 Re: Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository

 Dear Senator John Edwards,

 As North Carolinians, we are opposed to the premature approval of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository and ask that you uphold Nevada’s veto of the facility.  Yucca Mountain will not solve North Carolina’s “spent” nuclear fuel problems.  Instead, frequent high-level nuclear waste shipments on our roads and rails will create unnecessary public health risks to North Carolinians.  Nuclear waste will remain at North Carolina nuclear reactors for as long as they continue to operate.  If Yucca Mountain is completed, there will still be massive amounts of nuclear waste at plants around the nation because the capacity at Yucca is insufficient to contain all of the nuclear waste that already exists, let alone that which is continually being created.  At the earliest, Yucca Mountain will open in 2010, so it is in no way an immediate solution to our nation’s nuclear waste crisis.

As a site, Yucca Mountain is physically and culturally unsuitable for long-term nuclear waste storage.  Under the Treaty of Ruby Valley (1863), Yucca Mountain belongs to the Western Shoshone and not the federal government.  The repository sits atop an aquifer that provides drinking water to surrounding communities and farms as little as 12 miles away.  Six hundred and twenty-five earthquakes of 2.5 or greater on the Richter scale have occurred within 50 miles of Yucca since 1976.  There has been a total departure from the original requirement of geologic disposal and the radioactivity will undoubtedly outlast any storage containers and contaminate the environment. It would cost another $50 billion to license Yucca Mountain without any assurance of a safe disposal plan. 

The integrity of the process for choosing Yucca Mountain has been compromised. The General Accounting Office referred to Yucca as “a failed scientific process” and cited 293 technical and scientific problems that must be resolved before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) can license the facility. The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) has spent $28 million annually lobbying for Yucca Mountain, and DOE even used a law firm that lobbied for NEI to prepare their site recommendation. Former DOE Yucca project manager John Bartlett declared that the site would never achieve the standards that the law requires.

An analysis from the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent government agency convened by Congress to provide scientific oversight of the U.S. program for management and disposal of high-level nuclear waste from nuclear power plants, concluded that there are “enormous gaps in what the Energy Department knows about the site,” and they called the scientific basis for the site, “weak to moderate” (New York Times, 1/31/02).

The risks of transport to Yucca Mountain cannot be justified.  Fifty to one hundred thousand nuclear waste shipments would pass through 44 states and Washington, D.C., making this a national public safety and public health issue.  By DOE ‘s own analysis, at least 16.4 million Americans will live within one half mile of proposed shipment routes.  Nuclear waste trucks and trains moving along Interstate 40 and rail routes in North Carolina communities would put citizens at risk.  The emergency response and public health infrastructure are not prepared to respond to a nuclear waste shipment accident.  Currently licensed shipping casks have never been physically tested, and the NRC requires no physical tests be done.  The Department of Energy actually estimates that 50 to 310 nuclear waste transport accidents could occur, not including any terrorism factor. 

In the current geopolitical climate, it would be remiss not to consider the opportunity for terrorist attacks presented by such a large number of nuclear waste shipments.  In fact, terrorists have already overtly threatened existing nuclear facilities.  Under likely transport scenarios, terrorists could have six opportunities each day for over twenty years to use nuclear waste as a weapon.  While proponents of Yucca claim that storing waste underground in Nevada would reduce the number of terrorist targets, that claim is false.  Fifty to one hundred thousand shipments combined with a huge repository in Nevada and pool storage at all operating reactors significantly increase the number of potential terrorist targets.

Given the unsuitability of Yucca Mountain, and the risks posed by nuclear waste transports, we must shift the discussion to viable options for keeping nuclear waste safe at the reactor site.  The current storage arrangements in high-density pools are clearly unacceptable for the long term.  Pool storage that concentrates large amounts of radiation in a small space should be abandoned and a shift made to hardened, onsite, dry storage. This will provide us with sufficient time to undertake an independent assessment of the nuclear waste storage problem and to find a permanent solution.

North Carolinians are already living with risks from nuclear waste transports across our state.  These shipments pass through communities that are poorer and are home to more people of color than average in North Carolina.  To demonstrate leadership in a nation that is becoming increasingly diverse and under siege from corporate pollution, it would be strikingly appropriate for you to oppose all nuclear waste shipments in North Carolina and Yucca.   

North Carolinians would like very much to be able to support your position on this issue and to say that you stood up for public health and safety.  Just because Yucca Mountain is the only national high-level nuclear waste dump being considered does not make it justifiable to North Carolinians. Policy by default is not acceptable.

 We need and deserve an earnest approach to the nuclear waste crisis and look to you to lead by rejecting Yucca Mountain and taking clear steps to support a true solution to the nuclear waste piling up in North Carolina.  Yucca Mountain is an issue that directly impacts all 44 states that nuclear waste transports will pass through; as a presidential candidate you must consider the nationwide public health ramifications of the Yucca Mountain decision.

For the health and safety of North Carolina families along transport routes, we request that you uphold Nevada’s veto of Yucca Mountain and encourage other legislators to do the same.   Regardless, we need to know your formal stance on this issue and to know how you will be representing North Carolinians when the time comes to vote.

Sincerely,