Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Wow! 113 groups! To borrow a phrase, what a "critical mass"!
Thank you very much for signing your group onto this public comment letter to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), re: the agency's Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), expressing opposition to the Holtec International/Eddy Lea Energy Alliance irradiated nuclear fuel consolidated interim storage facility (CISF) targeting southeastern New Mexico. See the coalition comment letter, as submitted to NRC, below.
The organizational coalition sign-on comment letter, below, is also posted online, here:
Sorry it's taken me this long to even acknowledge receipt of your sign-on for almost all of you. Meeting last night's comment deadline has meant a blizzard of busy-ness for the past many days!
I did submit the coalition comment letter before last night's midnight deadline, so it should now be an official public comment included in the NRC docket. I've yet to receive confirmation of receipt from NRC, so will keep after them until I get it!
As many of you probably already know, there is "no rest for the weary" -- we now face a Nov. 3 deadline (yep, Election Day!) for public comments on the Interim Storage Partners/Waste Control Specialists (ISP/WCS) CISF, targeting Andrews County, west Texas, very near Eunice, NM. Call-in NRC verbal comment submission sessions are scheduled for Thurs., Oct. 1 (6-9pm Eastern); Tues., Oct. 6 (2-5pm Eastern); Thurs., Oct. 8 (6-9pm Eastern); and Thurs., Oct. 15 (11am-2pm Eastern). Please attend one or more of these sessions, and provide public comment. And please spread the word.
You can also submit individual comments against the ISP/WCS CISF in TX, using the webform/sample letter at this website: http://nonuclearwasteaqui.org/
And keep an eye out, in the not too distant future, for yet another group comment letter, similar to the Holtec/ELEA, NM one you just signed onto, only this time, re: the ISP CISF at WCS, TX.
The two dumps are just 40 miles apart across the NM/TX state line. This is an environmentally unjust (radioactively racist) attempt to turn southeast NM/west TX into a nuclear sacrifice zone for the rest of the country. At a grand total of 213,600 metric tons of commercial irradiated nuclear fuel and other highly radioactive waste (such as Greater-Than-Class-C "low" level radioactive waste), the Holtec/ELEA, NM (173,600 MT) and ISP/WCS, TX (40,000 MT) dumps would be three times larger than the proposed Yucca Mountain, NV permanent geologic repository (70,000 MT), targeting Western Shoshone land, in violation of the "peace and friendship" Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863. This also would mean three times the inbound-to-CISF transport risks, as compared to Yucca, for "just" the inbound shipments from atomic reactors to the CISFs in NM/TX. Of course, the 213,600 MT of irradiated nuclear fuel would supposedly still then leave the CISFs again some decade (or century) in the future -- they are actually planning to send it to the long-cancelled, illegal, unsuitable, non-consent based Yucca dump! -- which would mean multiplying the Mobile Chernobyl transport risks.
Thanks once again, very much, for signing your group onto the coalition Holtec comment letter to NRC. 113 groups is a very strong showing! And thanks once again to Nuclear Issues Study Group of ABQ, NM, for providing the original sample letter template/language, that Karen Hadden of SEED Coalition used to compose the national group sign-on letter, that Diane D'Arrigo of NIRS and I helped provide minor edits on. It was a good team effort all the way around!
Sincerely,
Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear & Don't Waste Michigan
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