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October 19, 1998 Dear Buzz, I read your Oconee Nuclear Station article [Chattooga Quarterly, Summer '98] with much interest. I have been working on nuclear power and waste issues for the last few years. Your article was very informative on many levels, but failed to address the severity of the problems with the nuclear industry and the proposed Nuclear Waste Policy Act. I will start by saying that the nuclear industry fails to mention that at every step of the nuclear fuel chain (uranium exploration, mining, milling, processing, enrichment, fuel fabrication, power generation, and radioactive waste), more radiation is released into the environment causing damage to our ecosystem and human health. Exposure to ionizing radiation (the alpha, beta and gamma radiation that escapes from nuclear power plants) can cause a wide variety of cancers and birth defects in humans. It is becoming more apparent in the scientific community that one of the factors in the rise of breast cancer rates in certain areas is due to radiation, as well as other industrial chemicals. In some cases, radioactive mill tailings from uranium mining in the Southwestern states have been left to blow in the wind and be washed into the rivers by rain. Not long ago, these highly hazardous waste tailings were sold to construction companies to use in building facilities, including schools and low income housing. The list of insidious activities goes on, but some of it we fail to see because it does not occur in our area. Not only is nuclear energy not safe, it is not cost effective. Fossil fuels (including uranium) get subsidized by the US Government in the order of billions of dollars a year. The Rocky Mountain Institute reports that the US Government has been burning up to $50 billion worth of tax dollars every year to subsidize the energy industries. Commercial nuclear power plants provide 20% of US electricity. This electricity can be made up with increased energy efficiency and renewables, which are cost effective and environmentally sound. Utilities that rely on fossil fuels want to keep doing business as usual, so there is no economic incentive to promote energy efficiency. For example, as late as 1990, the US generated 90% of the world's wind power and US companies dominated the solar industry, but fossil/nuke interests have bought up nearly all the patents and blocked advances. The myth of safe nuclear energy has been literally sold to the American people for too long. When more than 30,000 metric tons of nuclear waste that remains hazardous for 250,000 years sits at commercial nuclear reactors across the country, it is obvious that we need to stop producing it. We do not know how to safely clean up this mess. The proposed Nuclear Waste Policy Act is not a solution to the problem, and would not insure that this deadly waste is not produced. This legislation would initiate 15,000 shipments of canisters filled with radioactive waste by rail and highway over a 30-year period. The waste would travel through 43 states and within 1/2 mile of the front yards of 50 million people. Each canister would hold the long lived equivalent of 200 Hiroshima bombs. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act would have congress set radiation standards 35 to 3,500 times higher than the Environmental Protection Agency's standards. The bill transfers liability and ownership of the waste from the utilities that created it, to the American people. The destination of the waste, Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is not only an active earthquake zone, but also the Western Shoshone sovereign territory. The people of this area, the Paiute and Western Shoshone, have been victims of the nuclear machine ever since our government tested the atomic bomb, to the present battle over this legislation. Of any group of American people, the Native Americans have been the most negatively impacted by the nuclear industry. We must insist that representatives from all communities (scientific, indigenous, environmental, etc.) be enlisted to form a commission to study the proper treatment of the waste that has been created. More importantly, we must voice our opposition to the nuclear industry. For information, you can contact: Sincerely, Amy Ray |