 Article on Prairie Island was missing information
Missing from Carey Biron’s article (20 more years of nuclear? Sept.15) is the recent federal court decision on the proposed high-level waste dump at Yucca Mountain, which has huge implications for the viability of the project.
The DC Appeals Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) illegally set the compliance period for radiation protection standards at Yucca Mountain. The law requires EPA to set public health and safety standards “based upon and consistent with” the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences
(NAS).
In order to protect public health and safety, the NAS concluded that the compliance
period should extend to the time of peak radiation doses from the site, which
studies show could occur in several hundred thousand years. EPA’s current
10,000-year standard simply would not protect the health of future generations.
The Department of Energy, the agency in charge of the project, cannot and should
not submit its license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)
in December as it planned. Not only must both the EPA and NRC re-issue standards
based on the NAS recommendation, but DOE must also show that it can actually meet
this stricter standard. Yet, DOE’s own analysis shows that the site cannot
contain the wastes this long.
Future generations will be affected by the decisions we are making now. If public
health and safety cannot be protected, the Yucca Mountain project should be abandoned
so we can put our resources toward a real solution.
Michele Boyd
Legislative Director
Public Citizen’s Energy Program
Washington, D.C.
Republicans are no longer conservative party
All of my life I’ve been told that the Republicans are the conservative
party and the Democrats are the liberal party. Tonight, I found myself questioning
this theory.
While Bush has been in office our national debt has accumulated to over $7,000,000,000.000
(7 trillion dollars) and in order to pay the debt off it would cost EVERY American
family $80,000!
It seems to me that today, the words conservative and liberal are just labels
to dress up the parties. They no longer hold their true meaning.
Garrett Stephan
Rice Lake, WI
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