Yucca Mountain Action Alert from EII

[CAcyclist]

http://www.earthisland.org/news/new_news.cfm?newsID=657

White House Asks Congress to Overturn Court
Decision on Yucca Mountain!
Contact your Senators now!
Submitted by Nuclear Information and Resource Service
November 16, 2004

Congressional Quarterly is reporting today that the White House is asking the
lame duck Congress to overturn last summer's federal court decision that threw
out the Environmental Protection Agency's 10,000-year radiation protection
standard for the proposed Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste dump.
The court ruled that Congress had required EPA to abide by the
recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences, which has stated that
the highest radiation doses from Yucca could come in the hundreds of
thousands of years.
<snip>
This is absolutely inappropriate. There have been no hearings on this issue.
The Senate (and House) have not examined this issue. Further, the court
decision was correct, and should not be overturned. This is yet another
transparent effort to put politics above science (which candidate Bush in 2000
said he wouldn't do!) and license Yucca Mountain at any cost to Nevada and
the environment generally.

There is not much time to act, but your actions right now will make a huge
difference. Congress does have to pass the Energy appropriations measure,
but it also wants to go home. If we can flood the Congress with phone calls
this week, Congress will decide this is just too much to handle right now. So,
please, call your Senators and Representatives right now (Capitol
Switchboard, 202-224-3121).

[CAcyclist]

1. Here is my email to Senator Dianne Feinstein:

http://feinstein.senate.gov/email.html


Dear Senator Dianne Feinstein,

Please do not let the White House succeed in overturning the courts' decision on radiation storage in Yucca Mountain. Yucca Mountain sits on the confluence of significant earthquake faults and a major quake could spell a disaster bigger than any humans could manufacture themselves.

Loosening the controls to allow more radioactive waste storage in Yucca Mountain also just encourages the proliferation of radiation facilities when we should be investing in safer alternatives like solar and wind power.

Finally, encouraging shipment of nuclear waste from other parts of the country to Nevada not only endangers the communities the waste travels through, it is an opportunity for terrorists to strike the transported material, either to explode it or steal it. This endangers us all.

As a resident of California, I am willing to have our nuclear waste stored onsite within the state and not moved around. I believe that existing danger is more manageable and merely removing it from the state to dump elsewhere only trades one danger for another.

In closing, please consider my plea carefully. Thank you for your efforts,

Sincerely,

Dani W.

[SouthernStar]

2. Living in a drive through area...

We hope and pray that the Yucca Mountain facility never opens for business. Our area will likely be on the main transit route for some of the high level waste coming through. All of us are angry about it, but are feeling somewhat helpless to stop it, as well as betrayed by our government. I know many people who have relatives who died from cancers caused by the nuclear testing nearby. Now they want to do it again and it just makes me sick. We bought property and settled down to get away from the traffic and never ending hustle only to end up as potential downwinders ourselves. I think our senators and representatives need to be downwind of the first one that goes off so that they get a major dose of their own medicine.