News

The U.S. Department of Energy; nuclear by nature, forever?

by Ann Garrison

Barack Obama stands behind Energy Secretary Steven Chu, former Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, and advocate of nuclear renaissance.

On March 11, 2009, Barack Obama's Energy Secretary, Stephen Chu, announced his support for a new generation of nuclear power , but Terry Macallester, writing five days later, on March 16, 2009, in Common Dreams, warned that these new power plant designs could, by 2075, produce enough plutonium to make a million nuclear bombs, and cause nuclear anarchy.

The next day, March 17, 2009, New York Times ran Stephanie Cooke's well-reasoned, but, nevertheless curious, op-ed about Barack Obama and Steven Chu, beginning thus:

"PRESIDENT OBAMA has made clean and efficient energy a top priority, and Congress has obliged with more than $32 billion in stimulus money most ly for conservation and alternative energy technologies like wind, solar and biofuel. Sadly, the Energy Department is too weighed down by nuclear energy programs to devote itself to bringing about the revolution Mr. Obama envisions."

by Ann Garrison

Since 2006, Energy Solutions, global leader in the nuke waste storage biz', has paid to brand its name on Salt Lake City's Sports Arena, (left), home of Salt Lake's NBA pro basketball team, the Salt Lake City Jazz. Ailing Delta Airlines had branded the arena for the previous 15 years, but could no longer pay for the privilege. Energy Solutions' business continued to grow, however; book-to-bill orders for nuke waste disposal just kept piling up.

Now, Energy Solutions is even offering to save Utah from its state budget crisis by paying for the right to turn Utah into one of the world's biggest nuclear waste dumps.

In stealth negotiations, the corporation promised a full fifty percent of revenues.

Heal Utah's John Ungo says: "When we first learned about the deal, brokered in secret between EnergySolutions and Utah legislators, we were caught speechless."

Utah's Republican Governor Jon Huntsman says: “Our position is abundantly clear. Let's just say that the price the state pays for being a dumping ground lasts forever. The recession will not." 

Utah's Democratic Congressman Jim Matheson says: "I am outraged that Utah legislators would even consider allowing our state to become the universal dumping ground for the world's nuclear garbage and I know most Utahns share my anger."

However, this is hardly the first time a corporation, or several, have tried to make the State of Utah nuclear disposable.

Margene Bullcreek of the Skull Valley Goshute Tribe led a 10-year defense of her tribal homeland against Private "Fuel" Storage, a nuclear conglomerate of eight nuclear power corporations including Excelon, Entergy, and Southern California Edison, which wanted to dump 44,000 tons of nuclear waste on 800+ acres of their reservation. The Western Goshute finally won an Interior Department precedent setter, in September, 2006.

Then the Skull Valley Goshute went solar , with Southwest sun, and Margene Bullcreek's electricity meter began spinning backwards:

Nuclear Weapons Waste

Nuclear weapons manufacturers, and the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy, subjected Utahns to more radiation exposure from aboveground nuclear bomb tests, in Nevada's northeastern corner, than the citizens of any other state; they had the misfortune to be downwind of the Nevada Nuclear Test Site as our federal government prepared to defend us against nuclear weapons attack by a foreign power.

Then, in 2006, the U.S. threatened to stir up all the radioactive dust at the Nevada Nuclear Test all over again, into the wind blowing through Utah, in a test of the 700-ton nitrate-and-fuel- oil monster bomb: Divine Strake.

Near the eve of the scheduled Divine Strake explosion, the (anti-) Divine Strake Coalition of 50 organizations met---where else?---in Salt Lake City's Energy Solutions Sports Arena, home of the Salt Lake City Jazz.

Nevertheless, the (anti-) Divine Strike Coalition, stopped Divine Strake, after Salt Lake City newscasters flew to Washington with the paper copies of so much e-mail that it had disrupted Congressional computers to the point of dysfunction.

So here's hoping that Utah itself cannot be bought like the home court of their b-ball team, the Salt Lake City Jazz, which is, let's face it: a big corporation, like all professional ball teams.

See action alerts at Heal Utah, http://healutah.org/ .