This article was first drafted by Mays Smithwick, Coordinator of the National Radioactive Waste Coalition through the collaborative efforts of members of the NRWC. The NRWC is a campaign of over 45 member organizations working to build a collective voice for environmental justice in national radioactive waste policy that brings to the foreground the needs of affected communities, and emphasizes the self-determination of Indigenous Peoples. This version was edited by Marilyn Elie, Sierra Club member. A more detailed version can be found at https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/26/the-advance-act-a-bipartisan-surrender-to-the-nuclear-lobby/.
It Is a hard time for those of us who have worked towards replacing fossil fuels and nuclear power with what we need – cheap, clean and green electricity production.
With little debate and without public testimony, the so called Advance Nuclear Act was passed in the Senate by a vote of 88-2 and passed the House by a vote of 393-13. The imprudent decision to pass the Advance Act, started as a bill written by the nuclear industry and was included in a totally unrelated Fire Safety bill. It was rushed through at the close of the last Congressional session and is undemocratic and unconscionable. It is a stunning example of the success that long term, well financed lobbying can have on legislators.
Here are some highlights of the law.
The decision to combine incompatible mission statements into one agency is bureaucratically and financially untenable. While the Advance Act purports to preserve the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) existing mission of protecting public health, safety and the environment, the Act contradicts that mission by mandating the NRC to promote nuclear energy and to “fast track” nuclear licensing regulations. This double mission of protection and promotion is paradoxical and illogical. That is why, in 1974 Congress dissolved the Atomic Energy Commission and created the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as an independent agency to regulate commercial nuclear power, with oversight of public health, safety and the environment. Nuclear promotion and advancement was delegated to the Department of Energy which has been enthusiastic in its support ever since.These conflicting missions were unacceptable in 1974 and are unacceptable today.
The Advance Act ignores the crisis of pervasive radioactive contamination impacting our country and the imminent threat of widespread catastrophe. It is indisputable that building more nuclear reactors correlates to higher contamination and nuclear disasters. The NRC was created to enforce a stringent regulatory processes. Getting this captive agency to enforce regulations to ensure that existing nuclear energy infrastructure would protect public health and safety and withstand the increase in natural hazards as a result of climate change has been a battle activists have fought for years. At least we had the mission statement and regulatory standards as a theoretical guide. Now the gap in regulatory standards will be compounded by the consequences of changing the NRC’s mission to “advance the benefits of nuclear energy.”
Research shows that radiation impacts are gender disproportionate. Girls between the ages of birth to five years suffer from cancer at a rate seven times higher than adult men. Now the NRC will not take into consideration cancer causing harms to a pregnant person and the fetus when determining regulatory standards.
The Advance Act undermines the self-determination of Tribal Nations and creates sacrifice zones in already underserved communities. Low-income, Hispanic, and Indigenous peoples have been disproportionately harmed for generations by private and federal nuclear activities. The harmful consequences of the Advance Act will undoubtedly fall on the Tribal Nations whose sovereignty, spiritual systems and health have already been decimated due to nuclear extraction, exploitation and contamination.
The Advance Act commits the NRC to promote and sell a myth—Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) and the so-called “advanced” reactors which are unproven and nonexistent. As now structured, funding for experimentation with new Small Modular Reactor technology undermines the responsibility of the federal government to remediate harms. No reactors of this type have ever been constructed in the United States. It would take years for these “power point” reactors to be implemented so they cannot be considered as a part of climate change solutions. These experimental designs would create high-level radioactive waste (in the form of spent fuel) that is more lethal than the waste already produced by conventional commercial reactors. In the push for more reactors, the Advance Act totally ignores the fact that there is no solution for the permanent isolation and disposal of high-level radioactive waste, despite the current effort of the Department of Energy to entice communities into volunteering to host this deadly waste. Creating more high level nuclear waste is handing a major problem to future generations.
The massive subsidies the Advance Act gives to the nuclear industry puts the financial burden for extension and expansion on all taxpayers and specific ratepayers where reactors are located. The nuclear industry is selling a fantasy of economic growth as a means to obtain subsidies, and extract enormous profits with no federal oversight. In the meantime the overhaul in the NRC’s commitment to protect public health, safety, and the environment puts us all at risk while the industry is reaching into our pockets for more subsidies. The NRC has been looked to globally as a model on how to regulate the nuclear industry. That will no longer be the case under the Advance Act.
Nuclear energy is NOT clean energy. Of all of the ways to generate electricity, it is the dirtiest, most dangerous, and expensive energy source. The Advance Act endorses the profound lie that climate change can be solved by expediting licensing, expanding regulations to encourage re-nuclearization of decommissioned sites and to “fast track” unproven reactor designs. It brushes off the cost of the construction and the amount of time it takes to site and build a reactor. We need cheap, fast, carbon free sources of electricity. Nuclear energy offers none of this.
There is no existing solution to the permanent storage and disposal of radioactive waste. The Yucca Mountain Deep Geological Waste Repository project was canceled in 2010 after widespread public opposition and direct intervention by the State of Nevada. It was slated to be located on land belonging to the Western Shoshone Nation and is prone to seismic and volcanic activity. Research shows that it is not suitable for a deep geological repository. The Advanced Act also neglects to consider the heightened risk of natural hazards due to climate change. The NRC’s Waste Confidence policy aims to “streamline” licensing for new reactors and the relicensing of decommissioned nuclear reactors. The NRC alleges that irradiated nuclear fuel waste may be stored at nuclear reactor sites indefinitely, which contradicts its own admissions that existing on-site storage casks will leak in less than 100 years.
The Advance Act would allow foreign entities to buy, build and operate nuclear power reactors in the United States. It would encourage the export of American nuclear technology. The provocative intent to achieve nuclear supremacy with coalition nuclear states is hardly different from the Cold War arms race with an inevitable outcome: harm to human health and the environment, and an increased threat to national and global security. Foreign licensing of nuclear reactors is unacceptable on global security grounds. It increases the risks of terrorism and proliferation inherent in the special HALlEU fuel required by SMRs. It is important to remember that every nuclear facility can become a target of an attack.
The Advance Act takes us back to a time when the nuclear industry was not regulated and no one really understood the dangers of the lethal high level radioactive waste produced by reactors or the long term problems of storing it. Our government contracted to take high level waste until a national repository could be established. For 40 years, through all of the repeated so called renaissances of the industry, we have lived under the false promise that the waste would be taken care of “someday.”
Underneath the push by the industry and the Department of Energy for Centralized Interim Storage is the drive for reprocessing nuclear waste for the plutonium it contains. Taking high level waste from multiple reactors and putting it all in one place while disregarding dangers inherent in transporting it would make reprocessing potentially profitable. This dangerous technique has been tried before and has never been successful. It leaves behind waste that is even more deadly than what is currently produced by nuclear power plants.
Increasing public awareness of nuclear issues is a key building block to returning our energy policy to a carbon free, nuclear free standard. Environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and its individual members must continue to hold ourselves and our elected officials accountable for taking a strong position against extraction, pollution of all varieties, and vigorously call for a carbon-free, nuclear-free future.
