Energy to Die For - Pasco and Hood River GNEP EIS hearings

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Available text from testimonies given in Pasco Washington and Hood River Oregon GNEP EIS hearings (Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, Environmental Impact Statement)



The Oregon Conservancy Foundation

19140 SE Bakers Ferry Rd., Boring Oregon 97009-9158
P. O. Box 982, Clackamas, Oregon 97015
Email: cnsrvncy@teleport.com
Phone & Fax: (503) 637-6130
http://www.orconservancy.org
 

BEFORE THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership
-
Testimony of Lloyd K. Marbet

November 18, 2008
Hood River, Oregon

My name is Lloyd K. Marbet and I am the Executive Director of the Oregon Conservancy Foundation. On March 26, 2007, I appeared before you, testifying on behalf of Don't Waste Oregon and stated the following:

It always amazes me how you can witness significant events in history and yet fail to get the message, especially when it impacts your economic aspirations or threatens your global image. A group of men, filled with hate, take over commercial airplanes, and instead of flying them into nuclear power plants, which they actually considered doing, fly them instead into two towers that were not supposed to collapse. We wake up in a world of terrorism, and now what we are proposing to do is build more nuclear plants, produce more nuclear waste, create more potential accidents and terrorist targets, and through reprocessing (designed to prop up the continued operation of existing nuclear plants and its backed up nuclear waste) create even more weapons grade material for a world that competes preemptively to see who will self destruct first. If this is addressing non-proliferation then we are all in Alice's Wonderland.

Upon reading the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, my conclusions have not changed. What we have is a document designed to promote the increased reliance on nuclear power in the most favorable light, free from rigorous comparison "with meeting future electricity demands by non-nuclear means or conservation,"1 while at the same time using nuclear waste reprocessing as justification for exporting nuclear power throughout the world. The issue of non-proliferation is not even addressed, having been separated from the GNEP PEIS and placed in a Nonproliferation Impact Assessment (NPIA) that we are told is being prepared by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and available to be used by the US DOE for its Record of Decision, but only after these public hearings are over.2 This is highly objectionable considering the need to formulate government policies that actually stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons and our right as citizens to provide informed public input on the underlying foundation of these proposals.

Yet I forget the forum that I am in, for the controlling factor here is not so much what we have to say but who is in power and how they will manipulate the outcome. It is obvious what the current government administration seeks to do, it is not so obvious whether the next government administration will adopt or reject its legacy.

I believe our job as citizens is to bypass this process and go to the source. Our economy is in shambles. Our world is in conflict and the last thing we need to do is spread more nuclear power around. This GNEP EIS isn't reflective of current domestic and world economic conditions, nor does it grasp the seriousness of the crisis we face in the need to immediately reduce global warming gases while at the same time banning the use of nuclear weapons from this planet and protecting ourselves from terrorism. It instead seeks to isolate itself from full accountability while at the same time acting as a fait accompli. We cannot let this happen and we will not stop it here. Our chance, if we have any, is in helping to shape the decisions being made by the new political administration, along with how we individually choose to live our lives.

We need to increase the effectiveness of the anti-nuclear movement. We need to join nationally with others in our political lobbying capability. We need to protect ourselves from becoming isolated from each another and help those who also confront this problem. It is not enough to stop this proposal from being implemented at Hanford, we must stop it worldwide. Instead of a Global Nuclear Energy Proliferation Addiction (GNEPA) we need a greening of the planet and we are only going to have that when we create our own environmental impact statement.

And it is being done as we speak. In Idaho, Snake River Alliance is bringing Dr. Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) to testify, on November 20, before the US Department of Energy in Idaho Falls. Dr. Makhijani has written an important book, "Carbon-free and Nuclear-Free" which you can download for free by going to his website: <http://www.ieer.org>. In a detailed analysis this book demonstrates how we can achieve a Zero-CO2 U.S. economy within 30-50 years without using nuclear and without acquiring carbon credits from other countries. The website also provides the Executive Summary from Dr. Brice Smith's book, "Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change."

There are also other important publications that are available on IEER's website and I have brought with me this evening, some written materials from IEER that describe their work. Separate from this I invite you to read Jonathon Schell's excellent new book "The Seventh Decade - The New Shape of Nuclear Danger" and if you are into PowerPoint presentations, The Oregon Conservancy Foundation also has one addressing nuclear power and global warming entitled, "Before Hitting the Ground." Let me end this by saying that I appreciate you all being here and providing your input. If we educate ourselves, we can help educate others and by acting on what we learn become the change we wish to see in the world.

Thank you.


Oregon Department of Energy Comments on proposed GNEP activities at Hanford
Hood River, Oregon
November 18, 2008

Good evening. I am Dirk Dunning. I am a Chemical Engineer with the Oregon Department of Energy. I am providing comments on behalf of the State of Oregon. Oregon and Oregonians have a long-standing interest in Hanford, and we appreciate this opportunity to provide comments directly to the U.S. Department of Energy.

I want to thank the Department for returning to Hood River to conduct tonight's meeting. We are also pleased that the Department is considering our request for a meeting in Portland - however, we wish that a decision on a Portland meeting had been made early enough so that the Portland folks who are here tonight could have possibly saved themselves the trip.

I want to thank all of you as well for coming out, once again, to provide the voice of Oregon citizens and Columbia River area residents to this process.

The State of Oregon provided oral comments on the GNEP scoping meeting in March 2007. We followed that up with written comments in June 2007.

Our message then was simple, and it remains unchanged.

Oregon has strong objections to using Hanford facilities and the Hanford Site for GNEP activities. Hanford is a cleanup site and will be involved with cleanup for decades to come. That must remain the focus at Hanford. Bringing more waste and creating more waste at a site that has the immense environmental problems that still exist at Hanford would be a detriment to the cleanup.

The draft EIS raises as many questions as it answers, and it is not clear that closing the nuclear fuel cycle through reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel would result in a significant reduction of risk to people and the environment. We hope that the Final EIS will provide more clarity on this issue.

However, at this point we are choosing not to comment on DOE's preferred action to close the fuel cycle.

Our concern is importing or producing large volumes of new waste at Hanford, when Hanford still has many decades to go before it resolves its current waste problems. We don't even yet know the cumulative damage and impact that has already occurred at Hanford because of past waste activities and disposal, not to mention added impact yet to occur because of DOE's plans to bring additional waste to Hanford for disposal.

Some of the alternatives presented in the draft EIS generate fairly significant volumes of high-level waste, Greater-Than-Class-C waste, and low-level waste. Speaking from the perspective of Hanford's down-river neighbor, adding any of these GNEP waste streams to Hanford is unacceptable.

One last point..

Nearly a decade ago, DOE designated Hanford - along with the Nevada Test Site - as sites for the disposal of large volumes of low-level and mixed low-level waste from throughout the DOE complex. That designation occurred through a Programmatic EIS in which site-specific impacts were not assessed. What concerns us, is that after the selection of Hanford, subsequent site-specific environmental analysis was conducted to validate the choice of Hanford - not to compare proposed sites to determine whether in fact Hanford was the best alternative, or even an acceptable alternative.

Given that the draft GNEP PEIS does not contain any site-specific analysis, we strongly encourage that no site - including Hanford - be selected prior to a comparative analysis of every proposed site.

I look forward to hearing everyone's comments this evening.

Thank you.

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