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Don't Dump Nuclear Waste at Yucca Mountain!
Fact Sheet provided by
Healing Ourselves &
Mother Earth
This Fact Sheet also available
in PDF Format
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Action
Alert
Letter
to Congress
When
It Comes to Atomic Waste Transportation, We All Live in Nevada
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What's
Wrong With Yucca Mountain?
It is on
Western Shoshone treaty land, and the US cannot show title.
The Treaty of Ruby Valley, ratified by Congress in 1863, is the
supreme law of the land. The US has never shown legal title to this
land, even when requested by federal and international courts.
The Repository would contaminate
groundwater.
Yucca Mountain scientists will readily tell you that the question
is not if the repository will release its contents, but when. Groundwater
moves rapidly down through the site. Tracers from atmospheric nuclear
weapons tests have been found at the underground level at which waste
would be placed. This means that precipitation on the surface can reach
the waste in less than 50 years, then carry the radioactive material
using the groundwater in as little as possibly a few hundred years.
The Repository would endanger
millions of people nearby.
Downstream from the site, groundwater is used for drinking, irrigation,
and the largest dairy in the Nevada, supplying thousands of children
with milk. Seventeen miles away, California hosts 1.4 million tourists
a year going to Death Valley. Seven tributaries flow down Yucca Mountain
to the underground Amargosa River, said by some to be the longest and
biggest in the world. The Amargosa empties into Death Valley, after
flowing right through a number of towns. Flash floods are frequent,
and can close roads for days.
Transportation would
endanger millions of people across the country.
Nuclear waste is safer sitting still than going 60-90 MPH. Distinctive
casks are an obvious and vulnerable target. No study has been done on
specific risks of transporting the waste to Yucca Mountain over a 30
year period, through 43 states, more than 100 cities with population
over 100,000 and within one?half mile of over 50 million people.
It is not geologic disposal,
and violates the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires that geology be the primary
barrier to radioactive contamination. This is not possible at Yucca
Mountain, so the DOE's design depends on an engineered barrier, of unproven
durability. The State of Nevada has filed suit against DOE claiming
this is a violation of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requirement for
geologic isolation.
Insufficient data exists
to evaluate waste containers.
The Department of Energy is proposing to place the waste in "corrosion
resistant" metal containers, which it claims will contain the wastes
for more than 10,000 years, the duration of the regulatory period set
by the EPA and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The wastes remain hazardous
for hundreds of thousands of years. The claim of corrosion resistance
is based on about 2 years of lab experiments under conditions less severe
than would be expected in the repository, and then these corrosion results
have been extrapolated for the thousands of years of containment necessary.
Yucca Mountain is an
active earthquake zone, with 33 faults on site.
Yucca Mountain is the third most seismically active area in the
continental US (after Alaska and coastal California). In the past 20
years, there have been over 600 earthquakes within 50 miles, with the
largest, in 1992, causing $1.4 million in damage to DOE's Yucca Mountain
field office.
DOE's rush to please
the nuclear industry is premature and illegal.
The Yucca Mountain studies and site recommendation have been called
inadequate and/or incomplete by the General Accounting Office, the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Broad
and several international peer review panels. The DOE still has at least
293 studies of site and design factors that it has agreed to complete
before it submits a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires that site characterization be
complete at the time of a site recommendation (Feb. 14th, 2002) and
that the license application must be submitted within 90 days of site
designation. However, the DOE's Yucca Mountain Management and Operating
contractor has estimated that it will take 4 years to complete these
studies.
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