What We Can Do To Stop PFS - Goshute Nuke Dump Proposal
June 30, 2000
Twenty years ago, the people of Utah were united in opposition to a project that threatened everything we stand for, even our very existence - the MX missile deployment in the West Desert. Because we shouted a resounding, collective NO!, the MX shell game scheme was scrapped.
It will take the same collective, persistent, informed, and committed effort to defeat Private Fuel Storage's proposed high level nuclear waste facility on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation.
While reasonable people can disagree over the size and nature of the risks this project poses, how those risks are assessed, and what is "acceptable risk", it should be understood that the project's impacts upon the state -; even without a catastrophic release of radiation - are nearly all negative. Nor can it be fairly said that the process evaluating the PFS deal to date has been credible or open to public participation.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the other three agencies that have approval power over the project have already, for all intents and purposes, caved to PFS and the nuclear industry. That should come as no surprise. The NRC has "never actually denied a license application [requested by the industry], except in one case for failure to consider environmental justice issues," according to testimony from the Nevada Governor's Office. After all, the NRC is the son of the AEC, the Atomic Energy Commission that Utahns know deliberately and knowingly subjected all Americans downwind of atmospheric nuclear tests to radiation exposures and lied about it for decades. Like the AEC, the NRC represents and promotes the industry with far more vigor than it regulates it.
Negative impacts
Will our motto in 2002 be "The World's Waste is Welcome Here"? If the PFS facility is permitted, and if a proposal by Envirocare to take the hottest "low level" radioactive wastes from all over the nation is approved by the Legislature and the Governor next winter, then Utah will be a one-stop, full-service dumping ground for EVERY variety of rad waste there is! Is this how we want to sell our "Pretty Great State"? Is this the legacy we wish to leave future generations of this land, this people?
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First, learn about the issue. You might start with the Downwinders web site (http://www.downwinders.org) and its links to information.
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Talk to your family, your friends, neighbors, and co-workers.
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Seek guidance from your spiritual leaders.
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Contact your congressmen (Senators Hatch and Bennett have been conspicuously silent on this issue).
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Make this an election year issue - ask the candidates what THEY will do to stop PFS.
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Write a letter to the editor.
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Join an organization working to stop this project.
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Encourage organizations to which you already belong to take a stand in opposition. Sign a petition that just says no (soon to be available on the Downwinders web site).
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Contribute to Downwinders. Get involved!
- Participate in the ONLY public process left. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the PFS scheme has been issued. But the NRC has printed limited copies (Utah State Government received just three - count 'em - copies of the document!), has scheduled just two hearings in Salt Lake and Grantsville (July 27 and 28), and is allowing just 30 days for written comments.
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Write the NRC, ask for a copy of the DEIS, demand that copies be made available to all who request them, tell the NRC that the comment deadline must be extended to at least 90 days, insist that more public hearings be held in Utah, as well as in the cities where the spent fuel originates and cities along the transportation routes. (Write to Office of the Chief Information Officer, Reproduction and Distribution Services, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C. 20555-0001, and comment via the NRC web site: http://www.nrc.gov/NRC/NUREGS).
It is not too late. Like MX, this deal is mostly about money and politics, not sound science or smart policy. This project, like MX, can be stopped. Utahns, the choice is yours: act now or regret later.