NEWSNUCLEAR

Margaret Swink is the Communications Director of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. Ploughshares Fund provides support to the Kansas City Physicians for Social Responsibility, a member group of the Kansas City Peace Planters.

Over 150 people have already died and more are sick from working at the nation’s leading manufacturer of nuclear weapons parts in Kansas City, MO. But instead of cleaning up the plant, run by Honeywell for the National Nuclear Security Administration, Kansas City is planning to rebuild and expand the facility. It will create new jobs, they claim, in an economy that badly needs them.

Many in Kansas City, however, believe that jobs building nuclear bombs aren’t the jobs they need to rebuild the local economy. Instead, they’ve created a proposal to convert the bomb factory into a wind energy plant, building on the area’s natural wind resources to create green-collar jobs that will last long into the future.

The plans for the new plant are being financed by a city municipal bond, and incentivized by millions of dollars in city tax incentives to Honeywell. The financial burden this imposes on the city should mean that the community has the right to choose what they want the plant to be used for, argues the Kansas City Peace Planters, the leading group opposing the plant. They’ve gathered almost 5,000 signatures asking the City Council to put the issue on November’s ballot, allowing the community to choose between building a bomb facility and building alternative energy components, including high-voltage power lines, turbines and windmills.

I've written on nuclear power a lot recently here on Change, and I'm going to write again. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has a great petition up on the site urging the Commissioners of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to scrutinize the safety of the U.S.'s 104 nuclear power reactors in order to prevent a catastrophe like the one we've seen in Japan.

UCS has been a reliable source of information on nuclear technology and a nuclear watchdog for more than 40 years. The organization strongly supports efforts to reign-in global climate change and understands the role nuclear can play in that realm. But it is also a pragmatic organization of scientists interested in protecting humanity from the threats of nuclear catastrophe. And the U.S. is currently not as safe from such catastrophe as we may think.

"For years to come, the Japanese people will suffer grave human, environmental, and economic costs as a result of the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. And the truth is, it could happen in the United States as well," UCS writes.

Just when you thought the disaster in Japan might help put the breaks on dangerous nuclear projects in the States, it turns out a little-known oversight panel has approved what one spokesperson has called “a major milestone” for the U.S. nuclear industry.

If a decision rendered in January by the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact Commission is allowed to stand, 36 states could soon start transporting nuclear waste across the country to a permanent storage site in Andrews County, west Texas. Sources close to the case also report that waste could be shipped to the dump from overseas as well.

Though the site will be used to store only low-level radioactive wastes, groups including the Texas office of Public Citizen and the Sierra Club warn of a serious contamination threat to the Ogallala Aquifer – the largest freshwater aquifer in the country – which lies dangerously close to the site. In the wake of the decision, these community advocacy groups have launched a campaign to challenge the decision via an array of legislative, legal and administrative pathways.

Every year, 5 million tourists from all over the world flock to the Grand Canyon in Arizona, where they can view 2 billion years of geologic history in its glory.

Today, this national landmark is under threat.

In only the last few years, the uranium mining industry has lined up more than 1,000 claims throughout hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine ecosystem that surrounds the official protected park. Mining these claims would spell disaster for the Grand Canyon's wildlife, its rivers, and its scenic beauty. Already the National Park Service advises against drinking and bathing in some Grand Canyon waters, where "excessive radionuclides" have been found, according to The Grand Canyon Trust.

When President Obama took office, environmental groups worked hard to secure a two-year moratorium on uranium mining while the Interior Department further studied the issue. But that pause is about to expire, and now the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is considering a few options. Among these include the worst-case scenario—opening 1 million acres to uranium mining companies—and the best case scenario—a 20-year total mining ban on these lands.

Below is a Q&A conducted by Change.org with Linda Pentz Gunter, who founded the group Beyond Nuclear in 2007 and is now its International Specialist and media and development director. Here, she discusses the nuclear situation in Japan and what it means for the anti-nuclear movement in the U.S.

Based in Takoma Park, Maryland, Beyond Nuclear is a group working for a world free of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. You can learn more about them and support their work by signing their campaign on Change.org here.

Change.org: Based on the information you have available right now, how bad is it at Fukushima?

Linda Gunter: This is a unique situation because there are problems at multiple reactors at the same time including one using especially deadly plutonium. There are potentially 6 reactors in crisis with no end in sight. Every time they struggle to get one aspect under control, another faces critical failures. So the picture is constantly changing – most of the time for the worse.

Obviously radioactivity has already gotten out—it’s difficult to tell how much because we can’t trust official estimates. What’s already released is extremely serious because there is no safe dose of radiation. Any additional unnecessary dose is harmful, especially for children and pregnant women.  You have to note that official “safe” dose estimates are based on doses for healthy men.

Even the nuclear industry acknowledges that all nuclear power plants pose a risk to surrounding populations. No plant can be called 100 percent safe.

But some are worse than others.

Take a look at Indian Point in Buchanan, New York—the site of two 40-year-old nuclear reactors just 24 miles from Manhattan. Here is just one staggering fact: Twenty million people, or 6 percent of the U.S. population, reside within 50 miles of the facility—a facility that federal regulators acknowledge has an "unworkable" area evacuation plan in the event of a fast-acting disaster.

In recent weeks, the events at Fukushima have renewed longstanding calls to close the facility. (New York Governor Andrew Cuomo calls the plant a "catastrophe waiting to happen.")

A poll released this week by the Civil Society Institute found that more than half of U.S. citizens want "a halt to the United States extending the operating lifespan of its oldest nuclear reactors.” A survey in February 2010 found that 68 percent of Vermont residents wanted their decades-old Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, which uses the same design as the failing reactors at Fukushima, permanently closed according to its originally approved schedule — in 2012. The Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 for the same thing last year and Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin is a leading proponent of this push.

But the owner, Entergy, has other plans.

It filed for a 20-year license renewal and is actually looking to sell the plant, which leaked radioactive material that produced radiation readings 37 times higher than the federal limit last year and may have leaked more radioactive material this year.

Well, this week, the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has decided to ignore the people of the United States, the people of Vermont, the Senate of Vermont, the Governor of Vermont, and the environmental and health risks posed by this aging plant. In the midst of the crisis in Japan, it extended the license renewal on Monday.

The nuclear disaster in Japan was a huge shock to many, but it wasn't a surprise at all to others, including numerous nuclear experts who have seen corners cut, regulations loosened, and disasters waiting to happen for a long time. The question is not really "Can we see another nuclear disaster like at Fukushima?" -- of course we can. The real question is "Are we going to learn from this disaster and take responsible steps going forward?" -- I sure hope so.

You might be surprised to know that 23 currently-operating nuclear reactors in the U.S. use the exact same General Electric Mark I design as the nuclear reactors that have failed in Japan. You may also be surprised to know that in 1972, after looking at the design flaws of this type of reactor in detail, the Atomic Energy Commission recommended that the U.S. stop using them. Of course, despite accepting this recommendation in concept, the recommendation was rejected because it "could well mean the end of nuclear power...." (What a disaster that would have been!)

Now, almost 40 years later, we've got 23 of these badly designed nuclear reactors in operation and 21 of those have actually been approved for license extension by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently. The highly controversial Vermont Yankee reactor, which we've written about before and still have a petition on, received its license extension this Monday, March 21. Rushed through, perhaps?