Nuke waste: Foreign waste already finds its way to Utah

EngergySolutions exploits loophole by processing shipments in Tennessee

By Judy Fahys
The Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated: 10/18/2008 08:41:08 AM MDT

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For months, EnergySolutions Inc. has been fighting for permission to bring foreign radioactive waste to its Tooele County landfill.
Turns out, the Salt Lake City-based nuclear-waste operation has been doing so for eight years, bypassing approval of regional regulators and running counter to past company promises.
EnergySolutions Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Steve Creamer told a congressional subcommittee in May that waste shipments from Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada and Mexico have come to Tooele County.
Creamer explained that once this mildly contaminated waste goes through the company’s treatment facility in Tennessee, it no longer is considered foreign waste – thanks to a change in that state’s regulations two years ago.
EnergySolutions points to shipments of this waste ash to its Clive landfill as evidence that it safely can bury radioactive waste from Italy – something it is seeking federal approval to do.
Utah and the regional Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-level Radioactive Waste knew about and approved the past imports, maintains company spokeswoman Jill Sigal.
“What Steve and others have been saying all along,” she said, “is absolutely true.”
If so, regulators counter, those overseas shipments via Tennessee came without a nod from the Northwest Compact, which includes Utah and seven other states

Michael Tribble, an attorney representing the Northwest Compact, would say little about how the alliance might deal with the possibility that foreign waste never should have been coming into the region.
“If EnergySolutions has been disposing of foreign low-level radioactive waste at the Clive facility without an arrangement adopted by the compact committee,” he said, “EnergySolutions is in violation of the Northwest Compact.”
Utah and compact officials say they didn’t discover the “Tennessee loophole” until about a year ago.
And they didn’t know foreign waste was reaching Tooele County.
Earlier this year, compact members clarified that the contract it has had with EnergySolutions – previously known as Envirocare of Utah – for 20 years does not include waste from outside the United States.
In a 2001 letter to the Utah Division of Radiation Control, Envirocare Senior Vice President Kenneth Alkema wrote that the company “has made the policy decision that it will not take out-of-the-country wastes.”
In 2005, the company told The Salt Lake Tribune that it never has taken radioactive waste from outside the United States.
Envirocare has since morphed into EnergySolutions, which reports that the Tooele County operation has been taking foreign waste for eight years – even under the Envirocare banner.
The company’s contention that the Northwest Compact has been approving these shipments is a central point of the lawsuit EnergySolutions filed against the alliance last spring.
The company insists the compact has no say over its privately owned operations, but the compact argues that’s exactly why Congress created the national compact system 20 years ago – to regulate the flow of waste in and out of states.
A company vice president told compact officials in May that the Italian waste would be the first waste the company accepted that would be labeled as foreign.
EnergySolutions is seeking a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to import 20,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste from Italy – some to be processed in Tennessee and 1,600 tons to be buried in Utah.
Compact officials are set to meet again Wednesday in Portland, Ore. How to handle foreign waste that comes through Tennessee is on their agenda.
“We hope to come out of the meeting with the loophole closed,” said Bill Sinclair, the former director of Utah’s radiation-control office and the state’s representative on the Northwest Compact executive committee.
fahys@sltrib.com

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_10753978

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Rooting our Lives in a Sustainable Paradigm

October 18, 2008

The following video was recorded at the third annual Symposium For Food and Seed Sovereignty, which was held on September 26-27, 2008, in Tesuque, New Mexico. It features Evon Peter, the Executive Director of Native Movement and former Chief of the Neetsaii Gwich’in from northeastern Alaska.

A well-recognized advocate of Indigenous Peoples rights, youth, and a balanced world, Evon spoke for twenty minutes about Traditional knowledge systems, culture, the importance of supporting one another, and other key issues surrounding the need and value of rooting our lives in a sustainable paradigm (as opposed to following the rootless colonial paradigm that now drives us toward collective self-destruction).

Other participants of the symposium included Galen D. Knight, who talked about Integrating Indigenous Wisdom, Nutrition, Environment, and Immune Support; Rowen Kanienten:hawi White, who focused on Haudenosaunee Native Seed Conservation: Creating a Community Based Seed Network; and, among others, Ben Powless, who discussed the Challenges of Climate Change and Climate Justice.

Rooting our Lives in a Sustainable Paradigm

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http://intercontinentalcry.org/rooting-our-lives-in-a-sustainable-paradigm/

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Canada: Indigenous Femicide on the Spotlight

Tsimshian Mask by get directly down
Through Women Make Movies we were made aware about a Canadian documentary which is bringing to public attention the disappearances and murders of more than 500 aboriginal women in Canada in the past 30 years. The film is called Finding Dawn by Christine Welsh. The movie is named after Dawn Crey, who was the 23rd victim whose DNA was recognized in the largest serial murder investigation in Canada back in 2002-2004. The film focuses on this story and others, as well as the reports and complaints regarding the authorities’ inaction regarding the murders and disappearances of these native Canadian women and the struggles the families of these women face on their road to find justice.

The clips to this film and others relating to femicide (the killing of women and girls) can be found in the Citizen Shift website’s dossier on the subject. The first clip from Finding Dawn shows the case of Dawn Crey in Vancouver:

See more on CitizenShift

The second video shows us Yellowhead Highway, a lonely stretch of road that connects many different towns, where so many women have disappeared or been killed that it has become known as the Highway of Tears.

See more on CitizenShift

The third and last clip from the movie focuses on Doleen Kay Bosse, a woman whose family has spent years searching for an explanation to her disappearance, wondering why the authorities haven’t taken seriously the reports of missing aboriginal women.

See more on CitizenShift

Posted by Juliana Rincón Parra

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/10/18/canada-indigenous-femicide-on-the-spotlight/

COLOMBIA: Indigenous People Protest in Face of Threats

BOGOTA, Oct 15 (IPS) – At the top of the list of demands of some 7,000 people mobilising in the Cauca municipality of Piendamó is the clarification of the deaths of 13 indigenous people killed over the past two weeks in different parts of Colombia.

Thousands of indigenous, black, mestizo (mixed-race) and white representatives of social organisations gathered over the weekend in the southern region of Cauca to participate in the “minga” (a traditional indigenous meeting convened to achieve a collective purpose) on occasion of the Día de la Raza (Day of the Race), which marks the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas.

In a public statement, the protesters denounced Tuesday that the army had injured 23 indigenous people and that three others were missing, as a result of “the repression exercised by the state against our peaceful demonstration.”

They also reported that army helicopters were overflying the indigenous reserve where the gathering is taking place.

Protesters were called to commemorate “516 years of resistance against a regime of terror at the service of multinational capitalist greed.”

Representatives of the union of judicial sector workers, the Asonal Judicial, and sugarcane cutters — both of which have been on strike for more than a month — joined the demonstration on Monday Oct. 13. These two additions are expected to double the current number of protesters, according to estimates by Manuel Rozental, a spokesperson for indigenous groups who spoke to IPS by telephone.

The demonstrators are waiting for Colombia’s right-wing President Álvaro Uribe to respond to a letter they presented on Thursday Oct. 9, in which they demand justice and recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples, which are enshrined in the 1991 constitution.

But Uribe and his staff have so far remained silent. Cauca Governor Guillermo González Mosquera “is talking, at least, but he offers no solutions and assumes no responsibility,” Rozental said.

On Sunday “he warned us that military intelligence reports revealed that indigenous leader Feliciano Valencia could be targeted by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia),” he added.

But the indigenous movement gives little credence to González Mosquera’s warning, as it is common, in the context of Colombia’s armed conflict, for far-right paramilitary and leftwing guerrilla groups to hurl this kind of accusation at each other.

According to Rozental, “The FARC accuse the black eagles (right-wing paramilitaries), and the black eagles accuse the FARC.” The Colombian army is also present in the area.

Valencia himself told IPS that “in any case, it doesn’t matter who gave the order; the order exists.”

Valencia is a leader of the Cauca indigenous movement who has gained a reputation for fighting the modern-day slavery conditions to which native ethnic groups and afro-Colombians are still subjected by large landowners.

“This activity is different from participating in an armed conflict. We are an indigenous community with our own rules, and we expect armed groups and the State to respect them,” Valencia said.

But the armed groups involved in the decades-old civil war think otherwise. In the last two weeks, they were responsible for the death of 13 people, whose killers have not been identified.

According to representatives of indigenous groups, the latest victim was 39-year-old activist Nicolás Valencia Lemus, who was murdered on Sunday Oct. 12 at 8:30 am. As he made his way to Toribío, in the Cauca region, he was stopped on the road by hooded men who identified themselves as black eagles, forced him to get out of the vehicle in which he was driving with his wife and son, and killed him.

“Regardless of where they come from, the bullets only serve the cause of those who are against the people,” states a press release issued by the indigenous movement.

“As we celebrate the Minga para la Conmoción de los Pueblos (or Minga to Mobilise the People) and commemorate 516 years of resistance and pain, Nicolás’s murder must be clarified. Several armed groups who are looking to benefit from these acts of terror are active around the area where he was gunned down,” the press release adds.

“In the face of death, we will continue to speak out and defend life and dignity…The terror they spread will shame and condemn them. Their lives, guns and words will not be enough to cover up their abominable crimes. Nicolás Valencia Lemus’s death hurts us all and we will fight for justice to be done in his name,” it states.

Twelve other murders, besides Valencia Lemus’s, were committed in different parts of the country, including Nariño in the south, Caldas in the central region, and Antioquia in the northwest.

And it is not just murders: there have also been numerous threats and other attacks. On Monday, demonstrators who were headed for the Piendamó meeting were held up by the army for a few hours, but “they eventually let us through, and here we are,” Ezequiel, another activist, told IPS.

The Minga is also being held simultaneously in other regions, like the northern provinces of La Guajira and Santander, Boyacá and Casanare in the east, and the midwest province of Quindío. But the largest demonstration is taking place in Cauca, Colombia’s most heavily indigenous province, which is culturally close to Nariño and Putumayo.

Demonstrators also expressed their repudiation of the free trade agreement between Colombia and the United States, which is pending congressional approval in the U.S.

The indigenous people are calling for “treaties between peoples, treaties that are for the people and for life, and not treaties between those who are against the people and are killing our Mother Earth with their greed.”

They are also demanding “the repeal of the constitutional reforms and pillaging laws that surrender our wealth to corporate interests, and condemn us to silence, stupidity, forced labour, marginalisation and death.”

The statement mentions a number of regulations promoted by the Uribe administration, including the rural statute, the mining code, water laws and programmes, and the forestry law, which the movements “will continue fighting until they are repealed.”

They are also speaking out against the “terror spread by Plan Colombia (the U.S.-financed anti-drug and counterinsurgency strategy), (Uribe’s) Democratic Security policy, and ‘para-politicians’ (lawmakers linked to the far-right paramilitaries), which are infesting our country and sowing death and forced displacement with the false promise of achieving social recuperation.”

“With this protest — which is not a crime, but rather an obligation seen as a crime by those who fear freedom — we want to tell the world how the United States and the (U.S. army) Southern Command are setting up Coordination Centres for Integrated Action, from which they occupy our territories with the aim of handing them over to multinational corporations along with the wealth of our peoples,” Valencia said.

He also recalled the legislation currently in force in Colombia, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, land rights, trade union rights and other basic rights, and called for “the drafting of a peoples’ agenda that will allow us to go from a country with owners and without the people to a country of the people without owners.

http://weblogian.com/?p=22

China to help build 2 Pakistan nuclear plants

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi gestures during a media briefing regarding President’s China visit, Saturday, Oct. 18, 2008 in Islamabad, Pakistan. Qureshi said China has signed an agreement with the energy-starved Islamic nation to help it build two more nuclear power plants. The agreement was among 12 accords which were signed during Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari’s recent visit to Beijing. (AP Photo)

©2008 Google – Map data ©2008 AND, NFGIS, Europa Technologies – Terms of Use

By MUNIR AHMAD – 8 hours ago

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan said Saturday that China will help it build two more nuclear power plants, offsetting Pakistani frustration over a recent nuclear deal between archrival India and the United States.

The agreement with China was among 12 accords signed during Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari’s recent visit to Beijing, said Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

While Qureshi gave few details, the accord deepens Pakistan’s long-standing ties with China at a time when its relations with Washington are strained over the dragging war against terrorism.

U.S. officials including Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, who arrived in Islamabad on Saturday for talks, have rejected Pakistani calls for equal treatment with India on nuclear power.

Chinese leaders “do recognize Pakistan’s need, and China is one country that at international forums has clearly spoken against the discriminatory nature of that understanding” between Washington and New Delhi, Qureshi said.

Zardari met with China’s top leaders during his first official trip to Beijing since replacing stalwart U.S. ally Pervez Musharraf as president in September.

China, a major investor and arms supplier for Pakistan, has already helped it build a nuclear power plant at Chashma, about 125 miles southwest of the capital, Islamabad. Work on a second nuclear plant is in progress and is expected to be completed in 2011.

Qureshi said the Chashma III and Chashma IV reactors would provide Pakistan with an additional 680 megawatts of generating capacity.

He didn’t say when they would be built or what assistance China would provide.

Nor did he discuss any measures to prevent nuclear materials from the new plants from being diverted to Pakistan’s atomic weapons program. Pakistan has placed several other civilian reactors under International Atomic Energy Authority safeguards.

Pakistan’s nuclear program remains a sore topic with Washington because of its past record of proliferation.

International sanctions were slapped on Pakistan after it detonated its first nuclear charges in 1998 in response to similar tests by India.

The sanctions were eased after Musharraf agreed to help Washington hunt down al-Qaida terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

But the revelation in 2004 that the architect of Islamabad’s nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had passed nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea set back Pakistan’s hopes of becoming a trusted member of the world’s exclusive nuclear club.

The U.S.-India deal allows American businesses to sell nuclear fuel, technology and reactors to India in exchange for safeguards and U.N. inspections of India’s civilian — but not military — nuclear plants.

Boucher told reporters earlier this month that the pact with India was “unique” and that a similar agreement with Pakistan was “just not on the table.”

He said Washington would help Pakistan — where chronic power shortages are contributing to a gathering economic crisis — develop its huge coal reserves, expand hydroelectric power generation and build wind farms on its Arabian Sea coast.

Pakistan, the Islamic world’s only known nuclear weapons state, began operating its first nuclear power station with Canadian assistance near the southern port city of Karachi in 1972.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jb4knIrkSTiC6qdm1qhDpFK7Es8QD93SS5TO0

Nationals leader says WA should take nuclear waste

Joe Spagnolo, political reporter

October 18, 2008 03:00pm

NATIONALS leader Brendon Grylls says WA should accept nuclear waste from around the world, setting his party on a collision course with its Liberal partner.

In the first real test of the relationship between Mr Grylls and Liberal leader Colin Barnett, the two clashed over the controversial issue, with the Premier slamming the Nationals’ position on nuclear waste.

Mr Grylls, an unashamed supporter of the nuclear industry, told The Sunday Times WA should get into the storage of nuclear waste, revealing that he’d already held informal discussions about the idea with several councils.

He also promoted the idea of a referendum on the contentious issue.

Mr Grylls said WA would miss out on big dollars by not accepting nuclear waste, which included spent fuel rods from nuclear reactors.

He argued that it was safer to store the nuclear waste in WA than allow less-developed countries to manage the material.

But Mr Grylls’ comments have infuriated Mr Barnett, who has consistently denied claims by Labor that his decision to lift a ban on uranium mining in WA would make it impossible for the state not to accept nuclear waste from other parts of the world.

Labor said yesterday most West Australians would be disgusted at the idea of the state becoming a nuclear waste repository.

Responding to Mr Grylls’ comments, Mr Barnett sent a statement to The Sunday Times on Friday distancing himself from the man who handed him Government just a few weeks ago.

“While people have their personal opinions, nuclear waste dumps are illegal in WA,” Mr Barnett said.

“In 1999 the Court Liberal government passed the Nuclear Waste Storage (prohibition) Act.

“The Bill prohibits the construction of a nuclear waste storage facility.

“The legislation will not be repealed and as a result the acceptance of nuclear waste is not something that can or will occur in WA.

“Australia only exports uranium to countries signed to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.”

But the man who helped Mr Barnett become Premier disagrees.

Asked by The Sunday Times whether he supported the idea of nuclear waste being stored in WA, Mr Grylls said: “Yes. If you believe you want to reduce carbon emissions, which I do, and we want the world to become a lower carbon world, then nuclear power is going to be part of that.

“If people are going to be worried about spent nuclear fuel rods being used to make nuclear weapons, then you have a way of having greater control over the management of that if you are involved.

“I have spoken to individual councils in WA which see this as an opportunity for them.

“I won’t name them because they were just preliminary discussions.”

Opposition environment spokeswoman Sally Talbot said Mr Grylls’ comments raised serious concerns about what the Government’s real agenda was on nuclear power.

“There is no solution to dealing with nuclear waste in other countries. Why bring it here?” she said.

http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/story/0,21598,24517617-2761,00.html

Helen Caldicott speaks tonight in Knoxville

Helen Caldicott speaks tonight in Knoxville

Dr. Helen Caldicott has spent much of her adult life working on behalf of peace while waging war with the nuclear industry. She has tracked the health hazards associated with nuclear operations and rallied citizens to take up the causes to protect the environment and human health.

She will speak at 8 tonight at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Knoxville. Her appearance is connected to the 20th anniversary of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance. Here’s more on her background.

http://blogs.knoxnews.com/knx/munger/2008/10/helen_caldicott_speaks_tonight.html