March, 08 2022, 10:56am EDT
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140 Organizations Urge DOE to Withdraw Radioactive Waste Federal Consolidated Interim Storage Facility Push
Groups Warn about Environmental Injustice, Multiplication of Irradiated Nuclear Fuel Transport Risks
WASHINGTON
On March 4, 140 environmental, environmental justice, public interest, peace, faith, women's, and safe energy non-governmental organizations (NGOs) across the U.S. and Canada have submitted comments to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), expressing strong opposition to federal consolidated interim storage facilities (CISFs) for highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel. The 47 pages of comments came in response to DOE's Request for Information, published in the Federal Register on December 1, 2021, regarding "consent-based siting" of federal CISFs.
The coalition began with an introduction, making clear the comments were submitted under protest. On February 15, 2022, 50+ groups in the coalition wrote DOE, demanding its fatally flawed RFI, and associated process, be withdrawn. DOE did not even acknowledge receipt of the letter, let alone respond to it, nor withdraw the RFI.
From Page 2 to 21 of its March 4 comments, the coalition then responded directly to a series of questions asked by DOE in its RFI. From Page 22 to 33, the coalition provided additional comments, which have been summarized and posted online here. Pages 34 to 47 then list the 140 signatory organizations, as well as additional individuals. The full list of endorsers is also posted online here.
The coalition's organizations range from national groups to regional, state-wide, and local grassroots ones. They included Native American and Indigenous-led NGOs from across the continent, including Alaska's Big Village Network, Michigan's Citizens' Resistance at Fermi Two, Minnesota-based Indigenous Environmental Network and North American Water Organization, Nevada-based Native Community Action Council, and New Mexico-based Indigenous Lifeways and Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment, itself a five-group coalition, including Navajo Dine and Pueblo organizations.
Indeed, an overarching frame for the comments was environmental justice (EJ). The coalition decried DOE's infamous past attempts to dump high-level radioactive waste on Native American reservations and treaty lands.
The late Keith Lewis, environmental director for the Serpent River (Ojibwe) First Nation near Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada was quoted by the coalition in its comments: "There is nothing moral about bribing a starving man with money." DOE has explicitly named Native American tribal governments and reservations as lead targets again this time, with offers of jobs, infrastructure development, and potential funding.
Grace Thorpe (1921-2008), Sauk and Fox and Pokagon Potawatomi founder and leader of the National Environmental Coalition of Native Americans, was celebrated by the coalition in its comments, for her 2009 presidential proclamation by Barack Obama, who praised her "successful campaign to organize Native Americans to oppose storage of nuclear waste on their reservations, which she said contradicted Native American principles of stewardship of the earth."
Latinx organizations also signed onto the comments, including Alliance for Environmental Strategies, based in southeastern New Mexico, very near the Texas border. The area is already targeted for not one but two large CISFs, owned by private companies. The Interim Storage Partners (ISP)/Waste Control Specialists CISF in Andrews County, Texas already received its construction and operating license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) last September. The Holtec International/Eddy-Lea [Counties] Energy Alliance in New Mexico will likely get its NRC license approval yet this year. The two CISFs are but 40-some miles apart, across the Texas-New Mexico border. The storage capacity of the two private CISFs is more than twice the amount of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel currently in the U.S., begging the question if military or even foreign wastes will also be imported.
The region is majority Latinx, and disproportionately polluted by the fossil fuel industries of the Permian Basin, as well as the multifaceted hazardous nuclear industries across majority minority (Latinx, Indigenous) New Mexico, and extending into Texas. Adding highly radioactive waste to the mix would be yet another environmental injustice. The private CISFs are seeking DOE's business, blurring the lines between "private" and "federal," in violation of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as Amended. Federal appeals against both private CISFs have been launched in the D.C., 5th (New Orleans), and 10th (Denver) Circuit Courts, by a coalition of opponents, ranging from environmentalists, to a fossil fuel and ranching company and association, to the States of Texas and New Mexico themselves.
Yet another aspect of the coalition comments focused on the multiplication of transport risks inevitably associated with CISFs. Texas groups like the Nuclear-Free World Committee of the Dallas Peace and Justice Center, Public Citizen's Texas Office, Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition, and Tarrant Coalition for Environmental Awareness have pointed out that many thousands of high-level radioactive waste rail shipments from the eastern U.S., bound for the private CISFs in Texas and New Mexico, would pass through a place like Fort Worth, only to then pass back through, when the CISF one day exports its wastes to a permanent geologic repository. (Both ISP and Holtec's CISF license applications included a nearly identical map showing Forth Worth getting hit coming and going, very clearly.)
This doubling of transport risks from "Mobile Chernobyls," "Dirty Bombs on Wheels," "Floating Fukushimas" (barges on waterways), and "Mobile X-ray Machines That Can't Be Turned Off" (hazardous gamma and neutron radiation emissions even from "incident-free" shipments, made significantly even worse when shipping containers are externally contaminated, something Orano of ISP has been infamous for in its home country of France) reveals the dangerous absurdity of CISFs. The coalition called for a single shipment, from the reactors where the wastes are currently stored, to a scientifically/technically suitable, socially acceptable/environmentally just, consent-based permanent geologic repository.
Groups already living in the shadows of high-level radioactive waste risks, such as those near nuclear power plants and/or DOE facilities (like the African American-led Georgia Women's Action for New Directions (WAND), watchdogs on both the four-reactor Vogtle nuclear power plant, the largest in the U.S., as well as DOE's severely radioactively contaminated Savannah River Site nuclear weapons complex, not to mention to leaking national "low-level" radioactive waste dump in Barnwell, South Carolina, upwind and upstream of low-income, rural African American majority communities such as Shell Bluff in Burke County), called for Hardened On-Site Storage, or Hardened Near-Site Storage, as a much preferred alternative to willy nilly, high-risk irradiated nuclear fuel shipments back and forth across the country.
Groups like Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Great Lakes, Don't Waste Michigan, Milwaukee Riverkeeper, Nuclear Energy Information Center of Chicago, Nukewatch of Wisconsin, and Physicians for Social Responsibility Wisconsin, have warned about the high risks of barging high-level radioactive wastes on Lake Michigan, such as bound for CISFs. Lake Michigan is a major headwaters for the Great Lakes downstream, the drinking water supply for 40 million people in eight U.S. states, two Canadian provinces, and a very large number of Native American First Nations. The Great Lakes comprise 21% of the world's surface fresh water, and 84% of North America's. The Great Lakes are the lifeblood of one of the most productive bioregional economies in the world. A single high-level radioactive waste barge catastrophe could put all this in peril.
Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abandon both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic.
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US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
slammed the bill as a "xenophobic attack" meant to silence "Black voices, brown voices, LBGTQIA+ voices, [and] young voices."
Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
toldNola.com earlier this week.
"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
ordered county election offices to stop registering voters with past felony convictions who have not received official pardons. The move came after the state's unicameral Legislature passed a bill granting voting eligibility to felons immediately after they have completed their sentences instead of waiting two years.
"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
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Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that campaigners linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
"And it mandates oil and gas extraction in our oceans," he continued. "The insignificant crumbs thrown at renewable energy do nothing to address the climate emergency."
"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else," she continued. "It would unleash more drilling on federal lands and waters, unnecessarily rush the review of proposed oil and gas export projects, and lift the Biden administration's pause on new LNG exports."
"We urge Congress to reject this proposal and commit to action that protects frontline communities from the impacts of fossil fuel development and the climate crisis," Rosenbluth added.
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
"We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry," she stressed. "We need new solutions for permitting if we are going to meet our clean energy potential and address the climate challenge. But this is not it."
"This bill would altogether be a leap backward on climate, health, and justice if passed into law," Adams added. "The Senate should reject it and look toward alternative solutions already being considered."
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'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
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