Submitted by Eileen McCabe, Apr 23, 2007 14:13

Nuclear power is an immature, dangerous technology that should never have been rolled out on a commercial basis. Use of it requires infallible reliability on the part of inherently unreliable human beings. No solution has been found for the waste problem, and the reprocessing efforts of the English, French and Japanese have all resulted in accidents and contamination. The process cannot be called recycling, because it results in a toxic wastestream, that is even hotter than the spent fuel rods. Scandinavia and Ireland are complaining about the dumping of this waste into ocean waters.

Yucca Mountain is opposed not just by the state of Nevada, but by conscientious individuals and groups who realize that it is unethical to dump your waste on someone else, and to risk exposure of millions of americans to radiation from the thousands of shipments of high-level that would be necessary to ship this waste. The Yucca Mountain site is riddled with numerous problems, including faultlines, porous volcanic rock that will speed the movement of contaminated water to the underlying acquifer, and most importantly that the land belongs to the Western Shoshone, under the Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863. This is not reservation land, where the US government can withdraw public land for other uses. It was never ceded by the Western Shoshone people. The United Nations CERD committee in March 2006, upon reviewing an appeal by the Western Shoshone Nation, directed the US government to cease, freeze and stop all activities on Western Shoshone land, including the Yucca Mountain project. Besides the issues with nuclear power and waste disposition themselves, the continuance of the Yucca Mountain Project represents an abrogation of international law, and should be shut down.

Waste should be stored on-site in hardened on-site storage (approved even by members of the Nuclear Energy Institute)until some feasible transmutation technology is developed, and if communities don't like the presence of nuclear waste, they should work to shut down existing plants, and oppose the siting of new ones. Accept responsibility for the waste that has resulted from your electricity consumption, and transition to other forms of power generation.

Eileen McCabe, GreenAction Utah

Former resident of the vicinity of Seabrook Power Station

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