Dear friends,
Today’s local paper contains an article about a bill which proposes a fund which would benefit decommissioning at VT
Yankee: https://www.reformer.com/stories/proposed-nuclear-decommissioning-bill-carries-big-bonus-for-vernon,614000 ” The bill provides two major benefits for the current decommissioning process at Vermont Yankee. It would provide $500,000 to the Community Advisory Board so that it can better perform its work; and it would provide $15 dollars per kilogram of waste being stored in Vernon each year, according to Lincoln Peek, spokesman for Welch.”
Also, please be reminded that tonight (Monday, Sept 21) is a virtual NDCAP meeting.
LET’S GET SOME CITIZEN INPUT INTO THE NUCLEAR DECOMMISSIONING CITIZENS ADVISORY PANEL!!By Ann Darling, Safe and Green Campaign & Citizen Awareness Network
The next (virtual) meeting of the Vermont Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel will be Monday, September 21, 2020 from 6PM to 9:30PM. The panel has two main roles, to advise the Vermont Legislature on decommissioning activities, and to serve as a conduit for public education and participation.
So far there has been almost no public outreach, and very little public participation. We’d like to change the latter side of that equation! Please join us on the 21st! (Instructions below.)
At the upcoming meeting, the issue of what will happen with the highly radioactive used fuel and reactor parts from VY will be on the agenda. This issue is relevant to all of us. Right now, there’s no place for it to go, and so it sits in Vernon, with very little protection. There is no long-term/forever place to isolate it from the environment. Now there is a move afoot to move it to two (supposedly) temporary or “interim” sites close to each other in Texas and New Mexico. This part of the country is already a nuclear “sacrifice zone” inhabited by mostly Native and Latino people. This means dumping yet more toxic material in places where the people have already suffered greatly from radioactivity and simply don’t want the stuff. And it means sending deadly radioactive materials over our poorly maintained roads and railroads, and then — someday — moving it again.
PLEASE JOIN US IN SPEAKING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
We in the Safe and Green Campaign and the Citizens Awareness Network think the high level radioactive waste that was generated at the same time as the electricity we all used should stay in Vernon. Yes, we all want it gone from the banks of the Connecticut River! But we do not want “our” waste to be sent to another community along with tremendous amounts of radioactive material from all over the country. By doing this, the nuclear industry and the government are pitting host communities like Vermont against rural, indigenous, and Latino co mmunities that would be forced to accept our waste against their will. (Oh, and by the way, not at all coincidentally, the parent of the company that bought VY, NorthStar, also owns one of those “interim storage” facilities.)
What the industry and the government should be doing is what they’ve promised to do and never done — find a permanent repository and ship the toxic material ONCE. Meanwhile, we think the radioactive waste in Vernon should in some way be hardened — in a building, bermed under earth — to protect it from weathering and attack, with truly robust monitoring.
The meeting will be held on Microsoft Teams: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga64MuSlAxY
NDCAP requests (but does not require) that you register ahead of time, especially if you want to speak, by emailing PSD.NDCAP@vermont.gov
For further information on NDCAP, go to https://publicservice.vermont.gov/electric/ndcap
The agenda is available here: https://publicservice.vermont.gov/content/final-agenda-9-21-2020
For further information on nuclear waste issues, please go to https://www.nirs.org/campaigns/dont-waste-america/
