January 18, 2006

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Shundahai Network

For Immediate Release 11/14/2005

Goshute and Allied Activists Challenge Nuke Waste Consortium in its Hometown.

Opponents of the proposed Private Fuel Storage High-level nuclear waste dump took their opposition this past weekend to LaCrosse, WI, hometown of the PFS nuclear consortium.

Several experts and activists spoke at a conference Saturday at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse dealing with the dangers of transporting nuclear waste and the impact on American Indian people.

About 50 people attended the event, which was hosted by the UW-L Native American Student Association, and was sponsored by Nukewatch from Wisconsin, Nuclear Information Resource Service from Washington, DC, Wisconsin Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Midwest Treaty Network, and the UW-L Progressives.

Margene Bullcreek, resident of the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation, gave the keynote address. Margene has opposed the PFS Nuclear waste dump from the beginning.

“I’ve always felt that the casks PFS wants to use to ship and store this waste weren’t safe, that’s why we oppose PFS.” she said. “Besides the dangers of shipping this waste to our reservation, this is an issue of environmental racism. PFS is targeting Native Americans to dump their poisonous waste.”

Private Fuel Storage is headquartered in La Crosse. Its chairman, John Parkyn, is a resident of LaCrosse, and a former executive with Dairyland Power, one of the seven member utilities of PFS.

The local LaCrosse newspaper reported Parkyn as recently saying that it will be several years before the Skull Valley facility is ready to accept shipments. According to Parkyn, shipment plans and routes are subject to further approval of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Pete Litster, Executive Director of Salt Lake City-based Shundahai Network, expressed concerns about these statements.

“John Parkyn is telling the communities where this waste is produced that this process could take a while.” he said. “ Meanwhile PFS is telling the Skull Valley Goshutes and the people of Utah that this is a done deal, there is nothing more we can do, and they could begin construction of the dump next year and begin accepting shipments in less than two years.”

Litster, who also presented at the conference, explained to participants the outstanding objections against the PFS project that have been raised by the state of Utah. These include risks of aircraft accidents en route from Hill Airforce Base to the bombing range west of the Reservation, and the possibility that the Skull Valley site may not be temporary, as PFS claims, due to the inability of the U.S. Department of Energy to take the nuclear fuel storage casks from Skull Valley to the proposed final destination at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Litster also described concerns over the ability of PFS to cover the enormous costs of emergency response along the proposed transportation routes. This is in light of Department of Energy revelations last year that the DOE can no longer predict a definite time-frame for opening the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear repository in Nevada, given their inability to meet their own financial commitments to emergency response along the proposed shipping routes.

According to Litster, this is further compounded by the fact that some PFS member utilities, the financial backbone of the consortium, have either pulled out of PFS, are threatening to pull out, or are looking at options for expanding storage of their waste at the plant sites.

The PFS dump is proposed as a temporary storage facility, designed to hold this waste until Yucca Mountain is able to accept it, which according to Litster, “will likely never happen.”

“We see no guarantee,” Litster said “given that DOE cannot keep its financial obligations to the emergency response of our communities, that PFS will be able to either.”

Oscar Shirani, a nuclear industry whistle-blower, spoke passionately about the dangers of moving this waste from its current locations to the Skull Valley Goshute reservation in Utah.

Shirani worked in the nuclear industry for 23 years, and was a structural engineer and auditor at Exelon Corp., which operates nuclear plants in Illinois and elsewhere. He said he found problems with casks being made for Exelon, but the company covered up his findings and eventually laid him off.

Mr. Shirani was blacklisted from the U.S. nuclear industry after citing major violations in the fabrication and approval of the casks that would move 40,000 tons of used nuclear reactor fuel from across the U.S. to the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in Utah.

Shirani said he’s concerned that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission isn’t doing enough to ensure safety of waste storage casks and that its audits only look at procedures, not the actual manufacturing of the casks.

“Plane crashes and terrorist attacks aside,” Shirani said, “these casks are dangerous on their own. Flaws in their fabrication could cause them, among other things, to crack and possibly rupture from internal heat and pressure.”

In the end,” according to Margene Bullcreek, “it’s not just Goshute Indians who will be threatened by this waste. Everyone across the country who lives along these transportation routes, including indigenous tribes, will be put at risk if this goes through.”

According to Litster, “PFS is on a collision course here, and they’re hoping we’ll look the other way. We won’t. We intend to stop them in their tracks.”

For more information contact

Margene Bullcreek 801-680-2349

Pete Litster 801-533-0128