Shoshone Fight Mobile Chernobyl

This year's revision of the NWPA also allows on-site storage of nuclear waste outside power plants until Yucca Mountain or an interim dump site is ready. That interim dump may be on a Utah reservation (Skull Valley Goshute land.) The on-site storage authorization is handy for utilities who don't want to have to fight citizen groups over turning their nuclear reactors into defacto nuclear waste lots. The bill also provides for the federal government (meaning taxpayers) to take ownership of the waste and liability for it. What this means is that the utilities, as might be expected, will be abdicating responsibility for waste they created over the past 30 years. Summarizing the legislation, [George Crocker] states that, "It's the latest in a long line of stop-gap measures by the industry to continue operations and accommodate the production of more nuclear waste - despite the fact that the industry doesn't know how to deal with the waste it has." The Shoshone are asking people to support Native land rights issues raised by the EIS. What is glossed over by decision makers and ignored in the EIS is the fact that Newe Sogobia, land guaranteed the Western Shoshone Nation by treaty, includes Yucca Mountain. Even study of the site is a violation of the treaty. The Shoshone want the DOE off their land and their mountain restored. Upholding the treaty can be an important tool for organizers to stop the dump, but the Shoshone face extreme geographic and political isolation and, without sufficient public support, fear their voice will not be heard. That isolation is reflected in a statement by representative Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who said "God made Yucca Mountain for the express purpose of storing high level nuclear waste. There's nothing within 100 miles of the place." Add racism to low level logic and you get a high level waste dump.