NIRS and Atomic Train

["Michael C. Baker" <mcbaker@lanl.gov>]

Here is a recent email from NIRS to an anti-nuclear list.  Note the glee
with which they are awaiting the NBC movie "Atomic Train."  They are
planning on attaching their Mobile Chernobyl campaign to the movie and in
my opinion will likely be successful in getting at least a few NBC
affiliates to broadcast their garbage as a "local connection" to the movie
type of story.

Mike ... mcbaker@lanl.gov


>Date: Mon, 26 Apr 1999 13:30:17 -0400
>From: Michael Mariotte <nirsnet@nirs.org>
>Reply-To: nirsnet@nirs.org
>Organization: NIRS
>
>May offers you an "Atomic Issue Buffet" and we invite you to join a
>national and international focus day of education, action and media
>work.
>
>May 17 is INTERNATIONAL NIX MOX ACTION DAY 1999!!!!!!!!!!!!!
>MOX (mixed oxide plutonium fuel) for use in commercial power reactors
>that were not designed for them, initiates plutonium as an element of
>commerce, undermines nonproliferation policy and will give the
>international plutonium cartel billions in U.S. taxpayer money. (more
>info follows)
>
>May 17 is also the second night of a 2 day NBC mini-series called
>"Atomic Train" which will feature as an out-of-control train
>carrying nuclear weapons and commercial nuclear waste near Denver. It
>promises to be
>one of the biggest ads ever on the dangers of nuclear transport (we
>haven't seen it, but it is not a rosy ending). Atomic Train is airing
>just as nuclear shipments are traveling to New Mexico to the WIPP site
>and as
>Congress debates Mobile Chernobyl legislation (AGAIN) that would trigger
>an even larger nuclear waste shipping campaign, expediting commercial
>and military high-level nuclear waste travel to Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
>
>Mobile Chernobyl (HR 45 sponsored by Upton R-MI and Towns D-NY and S
>608, sponsored by Murkowski R-AK) -- would send 20,000--100,000
>shipments of high-level military and civilian waste across 43 states to
>Yucca Mountain, Nevada beginning in 2003 and continuing for 30 years!
>This is the 4th year that the nuclear industry has tried to push, bribe
>and beg their way to changing nuclear waste law. Transport remains the
>key issue
>to turn heads on the Hill, since the routes cross over 300 Congressional
>districts. We already know Yucca is such a bad site that if the waste is
>moved there, it would have to be moved again in order to meet the goal
>of nuclear waste isolation.
>
>The Department of Energy (DOE) has illegally begun plutonium shipments
>to WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) -- the salt repository
>in southern New Mexico. The DOE does not have authority to do
>this since they do not yet have a permit for mixed waste, and in order
>to prove that they are sending waste that is not mixed radioactive and
>chemical waste, these first shipments are waste from the fabrication of
>the Cassini probe. It is expressly excluded from WIPP since it is not
>military waste. WIPP shipments will travel across 22 states and are a
>key issue in Colorado where the NBC drama is set.
>
>MAY 17 ACTION DAY --
>
>So, this is an invitation to pick your focal point -- MOX, Mobile
>Chernobyl and Yucca or WIPP --- or maybe weave them together if you
>happen to be on a cross-roads for one or more...though for outreach and
>press work it is best to be focused and have no more than 3 points you
>are trying to get across.
>
>WHERE THE ISSUES INTERSECT: MOX fuel fabrication will produce more
>plutonium laced wastes that might eventually find their way to WIPP. MOX
>also complicates any geologic repository for irradiated fuel since it is
>hotter and has both more fission products and more long-lived elements
>heavier than uranium, including more plutonium that irradiated uranium
>fuels. MOX will also increase the number of shipments since fewer MOX
>fuel rods can be packaged together for shipment.
>
>Meanwhile the opening of WIPP is a huge booster for the international
>nuclear industry since it is the first big hole in the ground accepting
>waste for permanent disposal on a large scale. It is a big boost of
>morale for DOE to open Yucca too. And Yucca is the king pin for the MOX
>program since both tracks of plutonium disposition depend upon a
>permanent repository for final disposition.
>
>ACTION DAY SUGGESTIONS -- Does your community know about the key issue
>and what it means locally? If not, this is a chance to begin the
>educating process. Press conference? Teach-In? Flyers or
>articles/letters to the paper?
>
>An International NIX MOX ACTION DAY packet of materials is available,
>along with many web sites with information ready to be printed --- start
>with www.nirs.org, www.nci.org and www.ieer.org and follow the links
>from there. E-mail to maryo@nirs.org for the packet -- put NIX MOX
>ACTION in the subject line. (or call Mary Olson at NIRS 202-328-0002)
>
>Last year grassroots activists in the U.S. and Russia joined together to
>send the NIX MOX message to Clinton and Yeltsin, people in England,
>Canada and other parts of the plutonium empire also took action. Let's
>build on last year's initiative.
>
>Mobile Chernobyl -- the plan is to release once again to the press the
>projected transport routes and information on the status of the
>legislation at that time. It has been 4 years since over 100 groups
>released the project route maps from the nation's nuclear reactor to
>Nevada. It is time to do it again, and Atomic Train will give us the
>perfect entree. NBC affiliate stations will be hungry for local angles.
>We find that focusing on the projected routes to be the most powerful.
>NIRS can provide basic maps projecting the shipment routes of civilian
>and military waste to Yucca Mountain. They are available in the Don't
>Waste America section of NIRS' website (www.nirs.org) or 
>e-mail to maryo@nirs.org and put
>"Yucca Maps" in the subject line. (or call Mary Olson at NIRS
>202-328-0002)
>
>WIPP -- we will network you to groups who are working on this issue
>intensively.
>
>If your community is already aware of the issue(S) and you have news
>then a press conference is the way to go. Have one near a major rail or
>highway transport route. Or maybe it is time to
>make some news. A peaceful demonstration outside a nuclear utility? A
>caravan along a projected transport route? Hang
>a banner on the route a that irradiated fuel or plutonium would travel?
>Start a petition drive? Introduce a resolution before your town or
>county opposing plutonium fuel use or use of tax dollars for plutonium
>economy, or the Mobil Chernobyl bills (HR 45 and S 608).
>
>YOUR IDEA HERE! Do share it and we will circulate it back out with the
>next ALERT on this Action Day.
>
>PLEASE DO CONTACT US IF YOU ARE GOING TO BE TAKING ACTION OF ANY KIND
>ON MAY 17...let us know what your issue focus is too. A list will be
>compiled of all the actions, and distributed so that each site is aware
>of the other sites and interested media and the industry can see that it
>is not a small world, but we are a BIG FAMILY! To get on this list and
>get a copy of it, once again, e-mail maryo@nirs.org or call 202-328-0002
>ask for Mary Olson.
>
>We know that this is short notice, and apologize. We hope that people
>nationwide will join in in some way. Why May 17? Not only is NBC doing
>its broadcast, but the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is
>hosting a 3 day meeting in Vienna on MOX, starting May 17.
>
>Let's send a loud message -- NIX MOX! STOP MOBILE CHERNOBYL -- STOP WIPP
>
>BACKGROUND
>
>NIX MOX
>The international nuclear cartel is promoting the use of MOX
>plutonium fuel in current power reactors worldwide that were designed
>for uranium fuel. In the U.S. and Russia, the conversion of warhead
>plutonium to plutonium reactor fuel is the opportunity for these same
>plutonium promoters to receive a huge a U.S. taxpayer subsidy, in the
>name of surplus plutonium disposition.
>
>The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has just awarded a contract to a
>group of corporations to develop MOX fuel in the U.S. This contract
>has been awarded prior to the final environmental analysis or official
>decision to pursue MOX as the disposition for surplus plutonium from
>warhead dismantlement. The contract went to these corporations: Duke
>Engineering, Cogema Inc., Stone and Webster, Belgonucleaire,
>Framatome Cogema Fuels, Nuclear Fuel Services, Duke Power and Virginia
>Power.
>
>The United States has had a policy in the past of at least superficial
>separation between military and civilian nuclear activities. The U.S.
>MOX program demolishes even the thin veil that has been there. By
>promoting, and indeed paying for use of plutonium fuel in Russia, the
>U.S. is also supporting the development of a plutonium economy there.
>
>Cogema is the primary beneficiary of the U.S. federal MOX contact,
>and British Nuclear Fuels is the primary contractor at the Savannah
>River site in South Carolina where the plutonium processing and MOX fuel
>fabrication is supposed to occur. It is clear that the plutonium
>promoters of Europe will benefit from the U.S./Russia program even
>while their homeland plutonium businesses are facing serious economic
>and environmental challenges.
>
>Mobile Chernobyl
>This nick-name for legislation openly authored by the commercial nuclear
>power industry raises the specter of the worst case scenario for a
>nuclear waste transport accident: a cask damaged to expose nuclear fuel,
>engulfed in a high temperature fire which spreads particles of the
>lethal waste in the smoke plume. This is similar, on a smaller scale, to
>what happened when the fire burned out of control at Chernobyl.
>
>The two bills, HR 45 and S 608 are variations on proposals first
>introduced in 1994, which would remove current law and authorize an
>interim "parking-lot" style dump next door to the one site under study
>for a permanent high-level nuclear waste dump. This would trigger the
>largest nuclear waste shipping campaign in history. Over 95% of the
>radioactivity of the nuclear age is in this irradiated fuel.
>
>It would travel on interstates and highways, on common carrier freight
>trains, traveling through nearly every U.S. city since the commerce
>routes would be used. This most deadly waste -- lethal radiation
>exposure in less than a minute if it is unshielded -- would travel
>within 1/2 of the homes of 50 million people. It would continue for 30
>years, or more.
>
>Why now? The utilities claim it is because DOE missed the deadline to
>begin taking this waste off utility property by 1998, transferring
>liability from the private industry to the taxpayer. It is also the case
>that with utility deregulation, many nuclear utilities have lost their
>monopoly and are facing competition. They are seeking to expedite this
>transfer.
>
>The proposed legislation (particularly the House version) sets terrible
>precedents, gutting environmental protection, forbidding EPA to set a
>radiation standard for Yucca Mountain permanent repository, instead
>legislating one (100 millirems) that is 4-100 time less protective than
>other country's waste disposal standards, and threatening to preempt
>EVERY other law except for the Atomic Energy Act! HR 45 and S 608 take
>us many steps further away from a sound nuclear waste policy.
>
>Lets be clear and strong. Together we will NIX MOX and Stop the Dumps!
>

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