Dear Friend,
We must act now to stop Congress from funding a dangerous nuclear waste project. The US House of Representatives Energy and Water Appropriations Bill could come to the floor for a full house vote the week of June 10, 2019.
There could be a Yucca Mountain amendment to fund restarting the licensing of Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository. Licensing of this failed project was rightly cancelled in 2010. The full Appropriations Committee voted NO against a Yucca funding amendment, but it could be brought up again on the House floor.
A vote to fund Yucca Mountain hurts all of us. It is a vote to send many thousands of high-level radioactive waste shipments to an unsuitable dump site—over 40-50 years of transports, traveling regularly through our towns, cities, farms, waterways, putting everyone along those routes at radioactive risk. Nuclear waste transport is dangerous—NO insurance covers the damages (check your policy for nuclear exclusions)!
Each of the thousands of containers that would move daily or weekly on our roads, rails, rivers, and waterways has more radioactive cesium than released from the Hiroshima bomb and more plutonium than the Nagasaki bomb. There will be accidents. There could be deliberate foul play.
Reviving the licensing of the proposed Yucca Mountain site, in the high-risk volcanic and earthquake-prone area of Western Shoshone land in Nevada, throws good money after bad, violates a treaty, environmental justice and consent principles, and threatens the water supply. It wastes more time pretending Yucca can work, when we know Yucca will fail to isolate the waste.
Over 200 legal objections from state and Native American interveners have been filed against Yucca which will take many years to address, if the contested licensing process ever resumes.

Thanks for all you do!
Diane D’Arrigo
Radioactive Waste Project Director