Beyond Nuclear aims to educate
and activate the public about the connections between nuclear
power and nuclear weapons and the need to abandon both to
safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy
future that is sustainable, benign and democratic.
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 Jackson Browne nails nuclear energy on the Colbert Report. Watch here.
copyright Getty. Beyond Nuclear on the Daily Kos. Read Beyonder 1 here and join in the lively comments debate! Environmental Protection Agency dooms future generations to elevated fatal cancer rates at Yucca Mountain, Nevada  Sixteen years after Congress ordered EPA to set radiation release regulations for the proposed high-level radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, the agency has finalized it standards just a month before the presidential elections that could decide the Yucca dump's fate once and for all. EPA's proposed 100 millirem per year "allowable" radiation dose rate for persons living downstream from Yucca 10,000 to one million years from now is four times the amount of radioactivity allowed under comparable international standards. It's also six to seven times more radioactivity than EPA would allow in the first 10,000 years following waste burial at Yucca. Given that all human generations are of equal importance and moral worth, EPA's regulations are a violation of inter-generational equity, and an ethical outrage. They seem designed to accomodate a geologically unsuitable site that is guaranteed to massively leak radioactivity into the drinking water supply below over time.
Read Beyond Nuclear's Sept. 30, 2008 media release responding to EPA's announcement of its regulation here. Photo from the U.S. Dept. of Energy/Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste/Yucca Mountain Project website.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Dockets Energy Dept. Yucca Mountain Dump Application  With breakneck speed, NRC has rubberstamped DOE's half-baked application for permission to construct and operate a high-level radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Once NRC's docketing decision hits the Federal Register, likely in about two to three weeks, the State of Nevada and any other opponents to the Yucca dump will then have a mere 60 days to submit intervention contentions to NRC. The NRC proceeding will last for three to four years. If elected president, Barack Obama has pledged to withdraw the Yucca license application. John McCain, who has consistently voted in favor of the Yucca dump, has recently indicated the dump may not be needed after all.
Read Beyond Nuclear's Sept. 8, 2008 media release responding to NRC's docketing decision here. Photo by Gabriela Bulisova, Jan. 2004, showing Western Shoshone Indian sweat lodge frame at sacred ceremonial site, with Yucca Mountain in background. Act Now to Stop Latest Nuke Industry Subsidy Scam: Help Block $166 Billion Atomic Money Grab! .jpg) Exploiting public concern over high gasoline prices, the nuclear power industry and its friends in Congress are attempting to attach massive taxpayer subsidies for new reactors and radioactive waste reprocessing onto offshore oil drilling bills set to be voted on as early as next week!
Read Beyond Nuclear's Sept. 4, 2008 action alert here. Read Physicians for Social Responsibility's Aug. 2008 analysis of the bills here. Artwork compliments of Avenging Angels, previously featured on the cover of the Nation magazine, accompanying Christian Parenti's feature article "What Nuclear Renaissance?" Nuclear Plant Company in Idaho Facing Bankruptcy
A mandatory audit of Alternate Energy Holdings (AEHI), Inc., the company hoping to build more nuclear power in Idaho, shows that the company has suffered losses of 3.4 million dollars, leaving it in danger of bankruptcy. Despite its financial woes, the company still plans to forge ahead on the reactor. AEHI is publicly traded and started the building process last year, but has since only filed a Letter of Intent with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC says the process should be further along. AEHI is planning on receiving funding from a Texas-based company to fund the project, although this company was not named. A spokesperson for Snake River Alliance, a group opposing the plant, says AEHI has little progress to show since it moved from Virginia to Idaho a year ago. Click here for more information. Ten Reasons to say No to Nuclear. Read and print our handy tip sheet on why nuclear power cannot address climate change, plus our 10 brighter ideas, here. Every U.S. nuclear reactor releases radioactivity into the air and water during routine operation. But virtually every U.S. reactor has been leaking radioactivity into the surface and ground water and even beyond the reactor boundaries. In some cases, the reactor owners never told the public about the leaks. When the leaks were made public, the utilities downplayed their potential for harm. Yet scientists agree there is no “safe” level for exposure to radiation and chronic exposure can even increase health risks, especially to children (including in-utero) and to pregnant women. Our petition demands that utilities identify all off-site pathways of radioactive water from reactors; that the public be immediately informed about all radioactive leaks from nuclear reactors; and that more protective and precautionary radiation standards be developed, implemented and enforced. Sign our petition today! We will submit it to the U.S. Congress. And please download and copy our blank petition page to use in your communities and with your city and state officials. Please act today to make communities safer tomorrow. Sign our petition |
