ML050630389
| ML050630389 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Waterford  |
| Issue date: | 02/17/2005 |
| From: | Mcdonald M - No Known Affiliation |
| To: | NRC/ADM/DAS/RDB |
| Shared Package | |
| ML050910380 | List: |
| References | |
| 69FR71854 00411 | |
| Download: ML050630389 (2) | |
Text
- ftS-5000 Cartersville Rd.
Powhatan, VA 23139 Chief, Rules & Directives Branch Div. of Administrative Services Office of Administrations 6 rjK /a3&
Mailstop T-6D59 i I U.S. Nuclear Regdlatofy Commission Washington, D.C. 22055-0001 February 17, 2005
Dear Mr.Dia7z,
In 1982, 1 spoke at a public hearing before the Atomic Satety & Licensing Board concerning the licensing of the Waterford 3 nuclear reactor in Louisiana.
Nothing has changed. The facts are still the same: nuclear is a flawed technology.
It is flawed because the first step of the fuel cycle, extraction of uranium ore from the earth, involves a deadly exploitation of uninformed and unprotected miners. I was teaching on the Navajo Reservation in 1972 when the unemployment rate was 65%. By 1979, attractive salaries offered by the uranium mines in the 85-mile Grants Mineral Belt led many Native American miners to sign on and ultimately supply more than half of the uranium used in this country. These miners were given no information about and no protection against the radon and radium to which they were exposed. Lung cancer, previously unknown among the Navajos, was predicted by the United Mine Workers Union to be the probable cause of death for 80-90% of the uranium miners. Only a flawed technology could exact this kind of human cost.
Mill tailings, alone, have contributed to an untold number of deaths. Remember the 100 million gallons of uranium tailing solution along with 1000 tons of solid material that flooded the Navajo's life-sustaining Rio Puerco River due to-a broken dam.-The Churchrock, NM reactor responsible for this situation was shut down barely 3 months.
The deadly consequences to the people continue.
Nuclear technology is flawcd because we are no closer now than we were 40 years ago to finding a safe and permanent mode of nuclear waste disposal-radioactive waste that has accumulated by the thousands of tons that will remain dangerously toxic for hundreds of thousand of years. Yet we read that "the search for a definitive method of disposal.. .drags on" and the temporary storage methods now in use or being suggested for use generate multiple questions concerning duration, stability, adequacy and guardianship of the stored material.
Every additional nuclear reactor exacerbates the plight of the uranium miners and the people who live in the mining areas, and condemns generations to come to the despicable 1-t i-4 3
task of maintaining and guarding tons and tons of radioactive waste generated by a flawed technology, the use of which technology these future generations will never be able to comprehend. Only a flawed technology could exact this kind of commitment from generations yet to be born.
As the late E. F. Schumacher said: " No degree of prosperity could justify the accumulation of large amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make 'safe' and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation for historical or even geological ages. To do such a thing is a transgression infinitely more serious than any crime ever perpetrated by humans. The idea that a civilization could sustain itself on the basis of such a transgression is an ethical, spiritual, and metaphysical monstrosity.-It means conducting the economic affairs of -
humans as if people really did not matter at all".
Additional nuclear reactors are not needed; renewable energy sources can accomplish as much and more than nuclear generated energy has or ever will. And with none of the lethal consequences of the flawed nuclear technology.
Respectfully, Sr. Marion M. McDonald, sfcc