Las Vegas citizens blast DOE over nuclear waste

By Keith Rogers

Las Vegas, Nevada, Sept. 6— In a hearing that was tense and packed with emotion, a long list of speakers, led by Gov. Kenny Guinn and Nevada’s congressional delegation on Wednesday night lambasted the Department of Energy’s plans to bury the nation’s most lethal nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain.

“This is honest, constructive and impassioned public input on an issue that is paramount to the health and safety of every Nevadan, and every American whose home, school or place of business sits along the proposed paths. If DOE has its way, the deadliest substance on Earth will be brought to Nevada,” Guinn said at the hearing in North Las Vegas.

“We in Nevada will not stand for it,” Guinn told the crowd of more than 300 that filled the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration’s meeting room and spilled into the hallway.

Hundreds of other people in a nearby room watched the proceedings on television. Gatherings in Carson City, Reno and Elko viewed the hearing on closed-circuit television.

As Guinn spoke, anti-nuclear demonstrators inside the hearing room held signs that said, “What does an active volcano do?” and “Why screw the Indians again?”

Guinn welcomed the support.

“Unlike many of the policy battles that grip Washington, this fight transcends party affiliation, socioeconomic classes, race or gender, and galvanizes Nevadans from every corner of this state in opposition,” he said.

Two-thirds of those in the room gave the governor a standing ovation as he castigated the federal plan to haul 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste to the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, where safety guidelines require that it must be contained for at least 10,000 years.

The plan to accomplish that feat, transporting the waste by trucks and trains for disposal in a maze of tunnels deep within the ridge, is predicated on lies, said Corbin Harney, a Western Shoshone who described the mountain as a snake that’s constantly moving. “Underneath, hot water is going to cause a lot of friction in that tunnel,” he said.

Shortly before the hearing began, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, who will review 20 years of scientific work this fall to decide if the site is suitable, sent letters to Nevada’s members of Congress informing them that he would extend the period for written comments by 15 days, until Oct. 5.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. was joined by Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., and Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., in testifying at the hearing via television from Washington, DC.

Reid criticized the hearing process, saying people had to pass DOE checkpoints to reach the facility and some were told they wouldn’t be allowed to speak until after midnight.

“What kind of a hearing is this?” he asked. “This is not a fair hearing. This has been unfair from the very beginning.

“Forty-six states will have this poisonous substance passing by their schools, businesses and bedrooms,” Reid said.

Ensign urged the Energy Department to keep the waste at reactor sites while scientists continue to pursue less dangerous solutions.

Gibbons said extending the comment period by 15 days was not adequate. “We should have been given a 60-day extension at least,” he said.

“The bottom line is, whether it’s five years, 50 years or 40,000 years, disaster is a real possibility in this project,” he said.

Berkley said the federal government should accept that the Yucca Mountain Project is fundamentally flawed.

“As a country, we must stop trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Instead of trying to change the rules and dance around the law, we should immediately begin the decommissioning of the Yucca Mountain Project,” she said. Not all speakers were opposed to the project.

Bill Vasconi, cochairman of the nonprofit Nevada Nuclear Waste Study Committee, said Yucca Mountain “is a viable solution to the nation’s nuclear waste concerns.”

His stance was mirrored by Gary Sandquist, an engineering professor at the University of Utah, and State Sen. Bill O’Donnell, R-Las Vegas.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, however, said he would personally arrest anyone who drives a truck with a cargo of high-level nuclear waste through the city.

“If they can’t tell us we’re safe, how dare they tell us they’re bringing this crap here,” Goodman said. “Let’s see the driver try to get out of jail in my city.”

John Wells, speaking for the Western Shoshone National Council, said the federal government has shown it cannot be trusted to fairly evaluate the suitability of Yucca Mountain.

“We believe that the DOE does not want to know the truth,” Wells said. “For the DOE, their truth is from an origin in a culture of secrecy.”

Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal

Coral reefs “face total destruction within 50 years”

By Tim Radford

Sept. 6— Most of the coral reefs of the world’s oceans will disappear within 30 to 50 years, a marine biologist warned yesterday.

Rupert Ormond, director of the university marine biological station at Millport in Scotland, told the British Association science festival in Glasgow that global warming would raise ocean temperatures to levels that would bleach the great reefs of the Pacific and Indian oceans, the Caribbean and the Red Sea.

Corals are animals that live in symbiosis with light-fixing algae. They colonize shallow coasts and their bones form the limestone platforms that form atolls, enclose lagoons and protect shorelines. They also become habitats for some of the richest collections of creatures on the planet.

Ten years ago, the greatest threat to reefs were pollution from rivers and eruptions of coral-eating starfish. There are now 1,300 marine parks managing the impacts of tourism and overfishing, Dr. Ormond said.

But corals are sensitive to changes in sea temperature. In 1998, at the height of a sudden natural surge in temperature, an El Nino, as much as 90% of the coral in the tropical Indian ocean was killed by bleaching.

“This whitening and then death of corals began to be known in a few areas in the 1980s. I became involved in 1997-98 when there was extremely widespread coral bleaching around all the oceans in the tropics,” he said.

More than 60 countries experienced coral bleaching. The latest evidence showed overwhelmingly that the bleaching was due to a steady, almost inevitable rise in ocean temperatures, now climbing at the rate of 1-2 degrees celcius every 100 years.

“It explains why, to begin with, we only saw these events in El Nino years, when the ocean temperatures tend to be warmest... Within 10 to 20 years we will get massive bleaching on a wide scale almost every year. One can predict, looking at those figures, that maybe within 50 years there will be very little left of corals in coral reef countries.

“Frankly, I find the whole prognosis extremely gloomy. I cannot see what can be done, given that there is something like a 50 year time lag between us trying to control carbon dioxide emissions and the temperature of the oceans beginning to drop,” he said.

“Reefs are not just attractive places to visit and fun to dive on, they are seen as critical service providers in four main areas: fisheries, tourism, biodiversity and coastal protection, and just as an example it is estimated that some $100 million a year is spent by people in the wider Caribbean. In Egypt, where I do a lot of my work, there are 2 million tourists a year visiting the marine national parks that have reefs.”

NASA researchers said yesterday the growing season in Europe and Asia was now 18 days longer than two decades ago. Evidence from satellites showed trees were going into leaf a week earlier in spring, and autumn was arriving 10 days later.

Source: The Guardian (UK)