Nuclear Energy Information Service
Illinois' Nuclear Power Watchdog for 25 Years

ACTIVISTS CALL ON DOE TO ENFORCE LAW, DUMP RADWASTE DUMP

PRESS RELEASE

For immediate release: Wednesday, Nov. 18, 1998
For more information: (847)869-7650 David Kraft, NEIS
Mary Olson, Nuclear Info. Res. Svc.

EVANSTON-- More than 225 local, national, and international environmental organizations called on the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to enforce the Nation's high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) laws, and disqualify the controversial Yucca Mt., Nevada site as a candidate site for perpetual storage of the Nation's HLRW.

"We'll now see whether science and the rule of law are the standards that DOE will use to select a national HLRW dumpsite," says David A. Kraft, director of the Evanston-based Nuclear Energy Information Service, an Illinois nuclear power watchdog organization.

"More likely, DOE will cave in to the political and financial influence of the nuclear power industry and its allies in Congress," Kraft continued.

The site at Yucca Mt., Nevada, is currently the only site nationwide being evaluated to serve as a site to store ultimately 70,000 tons of dangerous, long-lived HLRW created by the use of nuclear reactors. To date, 35,000 tons of HLRW has been produced. This material will represent 95% of all the radioactivity created during the entire Nuclear Age.

Because of the immense environmental threat this material represents, environmental organizations have constantly had to remind DOE that only a decision based on sound science, using all available information and data, and free of political manipulation and decision making, would satisfy the environmental concerns and interests of the nation.

"This is clearly not happening with the Yucca Mt. decision," notes Kraft.

"New revelations about the hydrologic and geologic characteristics of Yucca Mt. are being ignored. This is no longer science 'to know,' but science 'to show' the manufactured, pre-determined results that DOE wants. It's not longer science; it's political justification," Kraft criticizes.

Illinois' 14 reactors have produced the largest amount of HLRW of any state. According the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the HLRW is safely stored at the reactor sites, and can remain there safely for up to 100 years, contrary to paradoxic claims coming from the nuclear industry that the waste must be moved immediately for safety reasons.

"Contrary to nuclear industry hysteria and mythology, there is no great urgency to move this deadly cargo, which would have to be sent through 43 states," Kraft maintains. "The only real urgency is to transfer financial and environmental liability from the nuclear industry, where current law places it, onto the U.S. taxpayers ASAP," Kraft asserts.

Among the 225 groups petitioning for Yucca Mt.'s disqualification are the Sierra Club, Public Citizen, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and locally NEIS.

Nuclear Energy Information Service is an Evanston-based, environmental, energy education organization founded in 1981 to provide the public with credible information on nuclear power and radiation hazards, and viable alternative energy choices to the continued use of nuclear power.

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