Not in my backyard anymore (nuclear waste, tribal land, MN)

[jpak]

http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096417537

WASHINGTON - In an effort to get nuclear waste moved away from Minnesota's Prairie Island Indian Community, its tribal officials are supporting a national nuclear dumping spot in Nevada - despite strong objections from Natives living in the Silver State.

Ron Johnson, president of the Prairie Island tribal council, has recently come out strongly in favor of a renewed push by the U.S. Department of Energy to secure a controversial national waste storage site, which is proposed to be centered in an underground facility in Yucca Mountain, Nev.

Johnson's small reservation is located just 600 yards from a power plant owned by Xcel Energy Inc., and is believed to be the closest community in the U.S. to such a site. In the mid-1990s, the company constructed a waste storage pad near the reservation. Old nuclear rods containing radioactive material are housed in the aboveground storage facility.

''Until the waste is moved elsewhere, it's going to permanently sit on these pads,'' Johnson said. ''We cannot live with that at Prairie Island because this is our community, and we were here long before the plant was built.''

Johnson believes that when the plant was first constructed in the early 1970s, the federal government failed to protect the health and welfare of the tribe's citizens under its trust responsibility.

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[kristopher]

1. People in NJ live closer than that to the waste stored at Salem. nt

[Systematic Chaos]

2. Oh those poor, poor babies!

I worked at their fucking resort/casino for nearly two years back in the early 90s, and I'm still here.

Only difference between then and now is that then I was ignorant and uneducated about energy and every time I looked at the nuke plant in the distance I'd cringe with fear. Now, I know better.

[kristopher]

3. Maybe they are thinkg further ahead than your next paycheck. nt