Joseph Woolfolk’s painting on glass

The article concludes: '“Ski Yucca,” featuring a skier hitting the slopes wearing a gas mask and orange Hazmat suit, probably best sums up the clever and well-executed Poster Power.'

But this is not the first time that the high-level radioactive waste dump targeted at Yucca Mountain, Nevada has brushed up against cutting edge art work, or vice versa.

Joshua Abbey's Desert Space Foundation held a "Universal Warning Sign: Yucca Mountain" competition a decade ago. The idea was to come up with the best way to warn future generations "forevermore" about what was buried below.

Speaking of "Don't Dig Here," that is the title of a song about the Yucca dump performed by David Crosby and Graham Nash.

And the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) not having done it homework was starkly revealed, when its proposed railway for delivering 70,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste to Yucca scored a direct bull's eye on one of the single largest works of art ever conceived, Michael Heizer's "City" landscape sculpture in a remote Nevada desert valley. DOE hadn't realized Heizer's art was "in the way," till the artist protested the plan! The good news is, the Obama administration's wise cancellation of the Yucca dump will spare Heizer's "City," as well as countless other cities in most states along DOE's targeted Yucca dump transport corridors by truck, train, and barge.

Yucca Mountain, as framed by a Western Shoshone Indian ceremonial sweat lodge. Photo by Gabriela Bulisova.

Shimkus, as well as U.S. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), have long been outspoken champions pushing for the Yucca dump, as well as many other nuclear power industry "wish list" lobbying priorities. Upton, for example, sponsored "Mobile Chernobyl" bills each and every session from 1995 to 2000, which would have established centralized interim storage at Yucca, long before countless scientific studies were completed, or permanent disposal authorized at the site. Yucca is located on Western Shoshone Indian land (see photo, left), as acknowledged by the U.S. federal government when it signed the "peace and friendship" Treaty of Ruby Valley in 1863.

On Jan. 11th, in response to U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Steven Chu's "Strategy for the Management and Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste," Reps. Upton and Shimkus issued a joint statement calling for the resumption of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) Yucca dump licensing proceeding.

However, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), as the senior member of the united, bipartisan Nevada congressional delegation, has devoted his political career to successfully stopping the Yucca dump. President Barack Obama agrees, and DOE Secretary Chu has zeroed out the funding for the Yucca Mountain Project for several years running now. Secretary Chu has also moved to withdraw DOE's application from NRC's moribund licensing proceeding.

Any away-from-reactor scheme -- whether the Yucca dump or so-called centralized interim storage parking lot dumps targeted at such locations as Savannah River Site, SC, Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, NM, or Dresden nuclear power plant, IL -- would launch unprecedented numbers of risky irradiated nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste trucks, trains, and barges onto the roads, rails, and waterways.

Environmental coalition attorney Diane Curran

The coalition held a press conference today, featuring four speakers: Arjun Makhijani, President of Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, one of the coalition's expert witnesses; Diane Curran of the Washington, D.C. law firm Harmon, Curran, Spielberg + Eisenberg, LLP, a lead attorney for the coalition (see photo, left); John Runkle, an attorney with NC WARN (North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network), another coalition member; and Phillip Museegas, an attorney with Riverkeeper, and another expert witness for the coalition, of which Riverkeeper is also a member.

The U.S. federal court of appeals for the D.C. circuit ruled on June 8th that NRC "merely hoped" for a repository someday, and ordered the agency to undertake an environmental impact statement study on the long-term consequences of no repository ever opening, that is the long-term risks of on-site irradiated nuclear fuel storage in pools and dry casks.

Dr. Makhijani also rebutted NEI's claim that the Feb. 2002 U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Final Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed (now cancelled) Yucca Mountain, Nevada dumpsite could serve as a quick and ready stand-in for NRC's EIS consideration of the environmental impacts of a "no repository" scenario. Dr. Makhijani has documented that DOE significantly underestimated the environmental impacts of abandoning high-level radioactive wastes forever at reactor sites, and urged NRC to undertake a serious study of the consequences of the court-ordered consideration of a repository never opening in the U.S.

The coalition issued a press release; the full audio recording of the press conference is posted on-line.

The coalition's January 2nd public comments, including expert witness testimonies, are posted on-line. So are the coalition's supplemental comments submitted today, put together in rebuttal to NEI's Jan. 2nd comments.

Yucca Mountain's western face, as viewed through the frame of a Western Shoshone Indian ceremonial sweat lodge. Photo by Gabriela Bulisova.

The Review Journal reported that the State of Nevada has vowed to fight on if the licensing proceeding is resumed:

"...Halstead [Director of the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects] offered assurance that Nevada's legal team is prepared for a fight if the appeals panel signals resumption of the hearings. 'If they restart the licensing proceedings, we're ready to bloody them up on 200-plus contentions, and 100 of those are really, really strong,' he said. 'This is not going to be a cakewalk through the license application.'"

As reported by the Aiken Standard, however, Aiken County, South Carolina -- home to large amounts of high-level radioactive waste at the Savannah River Site nuclear weapons complex -- is arguing the licensing proceeding should resume post haste, with whatever funding is available. Aiken County, the State of South Carolina, and the State of Washington sued the federal government, to force the resumption of the Yucca licensing proceeding.

Ironically enough, while Aiken County and the State of South Carolina seek to export their high-level radioactive wastes to Yucca Mountain, Nevada, pro-nuclear boosters are simultaneously volunteering -- and lobbying the federal government -- to import large quantitites of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel for "centralized interim storage," and even reprocessing, at the Savannah River Site.

Yucca Mountain, as viewed through the frame of a ceremonial Western Shoshone sweat lodge. Photo by Gabriela Bulisova.

But the science -- Yucca's geological and hydrological unsuitability -- caught up to the proposal. So did Harry Reid's revenge, as he grew in power to become Senate Majority Leader. Led by Western Shoshone spiritual leader Corbin Harney, the Western Shoshone National Council maintained tireless opposition to the dump, joined, over time, by more than 1,000 environmental groups. Then, in 2009, President Obama and his Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, wisely cancelled the dangerous, controversial proposal.

Although $11 billion of ratepayer and taxpayer money had already been wasted, another $90 billion would have been wasted if the project had gone forward. If the dumpsite had opened, many thousands of high-level radioactive waste trucks, trains, and barges would have travelled through most states, past the homes of tens of millions of Americans, at risk of severe accidents or intentional attacks unleashing disastrous amounts of radioactivity into metro areas. And if wastes had been buried at Yucca, it would have eventually leaked into the environment (beginning within centuries or at most thousands of years), dooming the region downwind and downstream as a nuclear sacrifice area.

Dec. 21st marked the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

Cover of Beyond Nuclear's pamphlet "A Mountain of Radioactive Waste 70 Years High"

But on June 8th, the U.S Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed with a coalition of state attorneys general (from NY, CT, NJ, and VT) and environmental groups (including BREDL, NRDC, Riverkeeper and SACE) that NRC's Nuclear Waste Confidence violated the National Environmental Policy Act. In effect, the court ruling, which NRC decided not to appeal, ordered the agency to carry out a decades-overdue EIS on the risks of extended (for decades, centuries, or forever) high-level radioactive waste storage at reactor sites, if a permanent repository is never opened.

From the 1987 "Screw Nevada Bill" onwards, NRC's Nuclear Waste Confidence rested on Yucca Mountain in Nevada, the only site in the U.S. under consideration to become a high-level radioactive waste repository. As Michael Keegan of Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes has put it, Yucca served for 25 years as an "illusion of a solution" for the high-level radioactive waste problem, allowing unlimited reactor operations, and thus waste generation, despite no real solution for the perhaps unsolvable problem. But in 2009-2010, President Obama and Energy Secretary Chu cancelled the Yucca Mountain dump proposal, dispelling the illusion, showing NRC's confidence to be false.

This means at least a two year delay in any finalization of NRC licensing decisions for new reactors, or license extensions at old reactors, until this EIS process and NWCD revision are completed. However, all other aspects of the NRC licensing proceedings can still be finalized and dispensed with in the meantime, taking NRC rubberstamps of reactor licenses right up to the edge, just shy of finalization. Beyond Nuclear has raised Nuke Waste Con Game contentions in opposition to two proposed new reactors (Fermi 3 in MI, and Grand Gulf 2 in LA), as well as to two old reactor license extensions (Davis-Besse, OH, and Grand Gulf 1, LA). An environmental coalition has raised similar contentions against all three dozen new reactor construction/operation, and old reactor extension, licenses across the U.S.

Disconcertingly, the NRC Commissioners' press release announcing this EIS launch also stated: "The Commission said the staff should draw on the agency’s 'long, rich history' with waste confidence determinations as well as work performed by other agencies, such as environmental assessments, technical studies and reports addressing the impacts of transportation and consolidated storage of spent fuel."

This seems to indicate that the NRC has joined with the likes of President Obama's and Energy Secretary Chu's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future in pushing for "consolidated interim storage" instead of "hardened on-site storage" of high-level radioactive waste. This should come as no surprise, as NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane served on the BRC.

Legislation has already been introduced on Capitol Hill that would launch and fund "consolidated interim storage."U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman will hold a hearing on such legislation on Sept. 12th. Witnesses will include two other members of the BRC -- one of its co-chairmen, General Brent Scrowcroft, and former NRC Chairman Richard Meserve -- as well as Pete Lyons, himself a former NRC Commissioner, and now director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy, mandated to promote nuclear power, and in fact host agency for the BRC. Another witness is the head of Constellation Nuclear, recently acquired by Exelon Nuclear, which would love nothing more than transferring title -- and liability -- for high-level radioactive waste to the American taxpayer, once it begins moving by road, rail, and/or barge, in unprecedented shipment numbers, toward "consolidated interim storage." The final witness is Geoff Fettus, the nuclear attorney at NRDC who helped lead the environmental coalition's victory at the DC Court of Appeals on June 8th. 

Beyond Nuclear has already issued action alerts against the juggernaut revving its engines on Capitol Hill. We have also joined with the likes of Nuclear Energy Information Service, to hold a "Mountain of Radioactive Waste 70 Years High" conference Dec. 1-3 in Chicago. Kevin Kamps will speak about federal legislative threats on the high-level radioactive waste front, and what you can do about them. The grassroots environmental movement has held off the "Mobile Chernobyl" for 20 years, but this may be the most challenging fight yet in 2013. The Nuke Waste Con EIS also means we have to generate large volumes of public comments, so this conference will be a a launching pad for doing so. Please consider attending, and help spread the word!

For more information on "The Mountain of Radioactive Waste 70 Years High," see our pamphlet by that title (the pamphlet's cover is reproduced above, left), as well as the rest of Beyond Nuclear's Radioactive Waste website section.

Although not named explicitly, NRC's Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision assumed the Yucca Mountain dump would open in NV. But the Obama administration wisely canceled it. In this photo by Gabriela Bulisova, a ceremonial Western Shoshone Indian sweat lodge frames their sacred Yucca Mtn.

That confidence game has been used against states, environmental groups, and concerned citizens for decades, blocking them from challening the generation of high-level radioactive waste in atomc reactor licensing proceedings, as the NRC has flippantly expressed "confidence" that storage on-site was safe for decades or even centuries, and that a geologic repository for permanently disposing of irradiated nuclear fuel was just over the horizon -- despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

More.

In a blog posted at Forbes, climate denier and nuclear power proponet Larry Bell cannot deny the the Obama administration's wise cancellation of the proposed high-level radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, represents a powerful block to nuclear power's expansion in the U.S. Likewise, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals' recent ruling, that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's "Nuclear Waste Confidence Decision" assurances of irradiated nuclear fuel safety and security at reactor sites for 120 years was unfounded, powerfully undermines the Nuclear Relapse.

U.S. NRC Chairman Gregory JaczkoRyan Grim of Huffington Post, in an in-depth investigative report, documents

“[NRC Chairman Jaczko's] not ‘our guy’ by any means, he has voted to re-license plants that should probably be shut down” says Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear.  “But he does care about safety, in ways that the [other NRC Commissioners] do not.”

One of Jaczko's (pictured, left) greatest "transgressions" against the nuclear power industry and its right wing political supporters -- earning their eternal wrath -- seems to be his carrying out of President Obama's policy decision to phase out the Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste dump. Before becoming an NRC Commissioner, Magwood had advocated for opening the Yucca dump.

Media coverage of this "mutiny" at the highest levels of the NRC began on Friday, December 9th with U.S. Representative Darrell Issa's (Republican-California) public release of a letter from NRC Commissioners Magwood, Svinicki, Ostendorff, and Apostolakis to President Obama that was clearly marked "Not for Public Disclosure," and has continued up to the present, as documented, with links to the articles, at the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Project's What's News page.

The webcast of the 3 hour, 30 minute long hearing on these matters, conducted on Dec. 15, 2011 by the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), featuring the five NRC Commissioners as the sole witnesses, is archived online.