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| Thursday, August 26, 2010 |
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Our Jobs Are Not Done
By bbrailsford @ 3:50 PM :: 915 Views ::
0 Comments
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Monday, September 13, is the deadline for telling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission your objections to Areva’s plan to build its Eagle Rock Enrichment Factory in Idaho. The very same week will see the first vote on START ratification, so Idaho’s senators need to hear from you now. Here’s how to join both debates and encourage others to do so, too.
First, please send both your comments to the NRC on Areva’s enrichment plant and your comments to Idaho’s senators on ratification of the New START treaty to Idaho’s newspapers so others learn more about the issues and get involved.
Idaho Statesman, editorial@idahostatesman.com
Lewiston Morning Tribune, letters@lmtribune.com
Twin Falls Times-News, letters@magicvalley.com
Idaho State Journal, editor@journalnet.com
Idaho Falls Post-Register, letters@postregister.com
Monday, September 13 — Comments due
Email: EagleRock.EIS@nrc.gov
Surface mail: Cindy Bladey, Chief
Rules, Announcements and Directives Branch
Division of Administrative Services
Office of Administration
Mail Stop TWB-05-B01M
US NRC
Washington, DC 20555-0001
Fax: To RADB at (301) 492-3446
Your comments to the NRC could include some of these points.
• There is no need for a new US plant to enrich uranium for electricity production. Current supplies are clearly adequate, and already operating or planned new enrichment capacity would exceed US demand by about the same amount as Areva’s plant might produce, even if a nuclear renaissance occurs.
• Areva’s plant would not increase US energy security by providing a “domestic” source of enriched uranium. Areva is owned by the French government. The raw material for the plant would be imported. Some portion of its product would be exported.
• Areva’s plant would produce 320,000 tonnes of depleted uranium hexafluoride over its licensed lifetime, and its license might well be extended. All this waste might be stored in Idaho until the plant was decommissioned. Even after it’s removed and treated, there is no certain disposal pathway. Areva’s plant should not be licensed until regulations are in place for disposal of large quantities of depleted uranium.
• Gas centrifuge uranium enrichment is a technology the Federation of American Scientists calls “an open road to a nuclear weapon.” At the very least, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must produce an unclassified proliferation assessment of Areva’s plant.
• The NRC has demonstrated a clear bias toward licensing by granting Areva permission to begin “preconstruction” activities in October, long before any final decision has been made. The NRC must withdraw its permission to begin.
• Pronghorn antelope, greater sage grouse, and ferruginous hawks all will likely abandon the Areva site and surrounding areas due to development and human activity. Sage grouse is a candidate species for federal protection. The problem is compounded by construction of the electric transmission line and poles proposed to support the facility, which sage-grouse are known to avoid because they serve as perches for raptors.
• The NRC should address both Areva’s failure to comply with the Federal Farmland Protection Act and its own failure to fully analyze the environmental effects of a large range fire at the Areva site.
Week of September 13 — First Senate vote expected
Contact Senator Mike Crapo
Contact Senator Jim Risch
Some points you might include in your messages to Idaho’s senators.
• The New START Treaty between the US and Russia reduces deployed, ready-to-use strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 for each country—30% below existing ceilings. The US and Russia can each have no more than 700 launchers. These modest limits will make both countries—and the rest of the world—more secure.
• Right now, we have no way of verifying what Russia is doing with its nuclear weapons. New START will give us vital mechanisms to monitor the Russian nuclear arsenal, and we will be more secure with New START than we are today. It permits 18 short-notice inspections per year and allows us to track missile launchers.
• The US Conference of Mayors unanimously adopted a far-reaching resolution calling on the US Senate to "ratify the New START without conditions and without delay." The US Conference of Mayors is the official nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more, of which there are 1,204 in the US.
• New START does not affect our missile defense plans at all. It has only one restriction on missile defense: we can’t use existing ICBM silos or SLBM launch tube for missile defense interceptors. But the most senior military leaders say they do not want to use them anyway because converting them is more expensive and less effective than building new facilities.
• The treaty has been endorsed by six former secretaries of state and five former secretaries of defense from both parties, and nearly all former commanders of US nuclear forces. Lt. General Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Advisor to Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, said that "the reason this treaty is important is over the decades we have built up all these counting rules, all these verification procedures and so on, so that each side feels, 'Yes, we can take these steps.' If you wipe those out, you're back to zero again." We can’t go back to zero, into what General Scowcroft called “a state of chaos.”
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