Atomic Discrimination

Beyond Nuclear Goals for Ending Atomic Discrimination and Radioactive Racism: Work to halt all planned radioactive waste dumps slated for Indian land; collaborate with organizations focused on nuclear discrimination against minorities, people of color, low income communities, and other economically and politically vulnerable populations; co-host events and press conferences.

Casualties of the Nuclear Age

The entire nuclear fuel chain causes suffering to all forms of life including humans, plants, and animals because every time uranium (or its byproducts) is handled, it results in exposure to radiation. The scientific consensus continues to be that there is no safe dose of ionizing radiation. Medical studies indicate that prolonged exposure even to low doses can impact our health with deadly consequences.

Case Studies:

Native Americans and the Nuclear Fuel Chain

The first link in a nuclear chain that binds us to catastrophic weapons and energy is uranium mining. The final link is the intensely radioactive waste these industries produce. Native Americans are targeted at both ends of the chain.

The health of members of tribal communities living near operating and abandoned uranium mines and mills has been negatively affected and they continue to demand population-based health studies to explain these illnesses. No extensive health studies have ever been conducted among these populations.

Read the letter to Honorable Dalton McGuinty supporting the 60-day long hunger strike pushing for a moritorium on uranium prospecting and mining in eastern Ontario, Canada.

FACT: On the western part of the Navajo Nation about 1 in every 5 drinking water sources contains uranium and arsenic that exceed EPA drinking water standards, and many of these contaminated water sources are located close to abandoned uranium mines.

QUOTE: American Indian activist and poet, John Trudell “People talk about the theoretical nuclear war: what if it ever comes? The nuclear war is here. That is what that dead Navajo uranium miner is – he’s a victim of that war.”

Today, the targeted high-level radioactive waste site for geological disposal is on Western Shoshone Indian land at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Dozens of Native American reservations have been targeted for high-level radioactive waste “parking lot” dumps. The anti-nuclear and environmental justice movements, working with members of these Native communities, have stopped every such proposal thus far.

Indian tribes in Alaska are facing the prospect of a new prototype reactor that could contaminate America’s most pristine watershed.

At Prairie Island, Minnesota, Indian land involuntarily hosts a massive dry cask storage “parking lot” for spent fuel rods just 600 yards from the tribal day care center.

The Seneca Nation of Indians is downstream from the West Valley dump for nuclear power and weapons wastes and the country’s failed commercial irradiated fuel reprocessing plant.

The victimization of Native peoples is the smallpox blanket
of the nuclear age.

Recent Victories against Environmental Injustice

• Working with the Western Shoshone Defense Project and Western Shoshone National Council, Beyond Nuclear’s Kevin Kamps, then with NIRS, helped the team effort to stop the planned “Divine Strake” bunker buster blast at the Nevada Test Site, located on Western Shoshone land in violation of the Treaty of Ruby Valley. The blast would have blown radioactive dirt and dust (leftover contamination from previous atomic tests) thousands of feet into the sky, high enough to be carried long distances downwind.
• An attempt to create a ground-level dump on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in Utah was defeated after a collaborative effort among Native and environmental activists and elected officials including members of the Beyond Nuclear team.
• Kevin Kamps, while with NIRS, forced the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to admit in an Environmental Impact Statement that the Palisades Nuclear power plant in Michigan had never conducted a site survey for Native archeological sites on the property, including burials. This has led the NRC to require more careful procedures from the nuclear utility, in order to prevent the bulldozing of sacred Native sites.

For more about atomic discrimination:

• See the excellent LA Times series, Blighted Homeland.

Discrimination against Low-Income People of Color

Claiborne County, Mississippi, a community that is 84% African American with more than 32% of its people living below the poverty line, has been targeted by the nuclear industry for construction of a second nuclear reactor. Already home to the 1,210 megawatt reactor, Grand Gulf-1, in the town of Port Gibson, the county, whose hospital is in disrepair and whose emergency evacuation routes had been washed out for years, is expected to shoulder all of the risk from this added radiological target.

In 1985, when the first reactor came on line, the community was led to believe it would reap 100% of the tax benefits from the plant. Instead, under pressure from the utility owner, Entergy, the state abruptly passed a law that redistributed 70% of the tax revenue to other parts of the state. This was done to offset the exorbitant cost of nuclear generated electricity. This essentially left one of the poorest communities in the state to subsidize electricity for the entire Entergy service region, including Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas.

The staff at Beyond Nuclear continues to help this community build opposition to an additional reactor that can only further endanger the health and wellbeing of the community.