 good evening everybody I'm I'm using a microphone I'm not used to using a microphone in this particular room it's good to see everybody here tonight we really had had a lot of meetings in this room over the last let's say 15 years maybe longer regarding nuclear issues here in Vermont in particular we spent a lot of time in this room fairly recently on the ongoing campaign successful campaign to close Vermont Yankee and you know the people celebrating and many people were happy and I'm happy to report that every time I go to a nuclear decommissioning citizens advisory panel meeting in Brattleboro energy corporation reports at the beginning of every one of their reports they report that in fact Vermont Yankee is cold and dark of course there are now 58 dry casks filled with irradiated fuel rods sitting on a parking lot that have nowhere to go no science sound scientific destination and that's what we're we're dealing with now and we're under no illusions that Vermont Yankee is not the the front page you know top of the fold issue that it was all those years that we fought so hard but the fact remains that the waste that Vermont Yankee and at 100 and subodd sites all across the country is a significant problem that has to be dealt with and we've taken it upon ourselves to see to it that sound science and justice are applied to the solution and this is not going to be an easy fight nonetheless we're taking it on I'm here tonight with my my colleagues from the Vermont Yankee decommissioning alliance who to this day we meet monthly here in Montpelier and everybody's welcome I'm also here with my colleagues from the citizens awareness network cat I'm also here with the executive director of the nuclear information and resource service in Washington DC Tim Judson and president of Cannes and I'm the board chair of the nuclear information resource it just goes around and we have two very very special guests with us tonight who are going to be with us on this tour around Vermont and Massachusetts this is the beginning of a long long organizing process Kirsten Riddick is from Germany and Kirsten will talk to us about her experiences and her organizations experiences with fights around high-level nuclear waste in Gorleben Germany this is powerful stuff that has gone on over generations and of course lately you know there's always a new proposal lately they're talking about setting up a giant interim parking lot dump in the state of New Mexico not very far of course from a couple of very well-known weapons laboratories but I left my tinfoil hat out in the out in the truck and I'm not going to go on much about it no it's significant Leona Morgan is with us and Leona is with the nuclear issues study group and she's also part of the Navajo Nation or DNA which I'm learning to get right and I have to say Leona and excuse my my friend is an ass-kicking organizer I'm so happy that she's here so we also have one other member with us and the members out there on a trailer the mock nuclear waste cast that cast was originally built some 20 years ago and had five siblings around the country each one stationed in a different region and the cast did this did public education around high-level nuclear waste and at that time yuck them out which is back we rehab that cast and we're going to be taking it tomorrow night to Brattleboro Thursday night to Greenfield where those of you who remember our lobbyist Bob standard will be performing with Wildcat Ohara doing the blues in Greenfield so we'll be having some fun where they're going to move on to the Statehouse in Boston where we're working with the Cape Town Winders among others about the imminent closure of the Pilgrim nuclear power plant and from there we will have another program in Plymouth much closer to the reactor so this is the start there are activities in other regions but the public has to know about high-level nuclear waste because it's just not acceptable for people to say hey it's got to go somewhere and as long as it isn't near where I live I don't care with that I'm going to introduce Leona Morgan and as I said she's a wonderful organizer she has an insight about her home that Vermonters have to hear so please welcome Leona thank you Chris okay so I need someone to forward the slides for me good evening thank you for everyone for coming so I'm here on this can cast or and this is my first time here in Montpelier I was saying Montpelier okay so I live in Albuquerque and I am Dineck our people are indigenous to the Southwest in an area we call the Four Corners so this is a picture here of what is Monument Valley this is a really iconic landscape of the Southwest I don't know how many of you guys have seen John Wayne movies I've never seen any but apparently this is where they did a lot of filming and a lot of their folks the film crew and others died from different types of cancers this is a contaminated place like most of the areas on our people's land so I just like to start the presentation off with this picture because it's really pretty but um the truth is it's it's contaminated so I have eight ten minutes to go through all of these topics and so I'm gonna do so now so first and foremost I work on issues of what we call nuclear colonialism so in order for nuclearism to exist that this was all written about by a lot of academics and people like Winona LaDuke you know they've talked about nuclear colonialism since the 80s I like to use this term because people think colonization is something of the past but it is very much still happening today probably not the way it did in the past but now more so with the mining of minerals the taking of water rights and then like how I like to explain it is there you know they've stolen our land and our water tried to kill our people off but now they're killing our future so the genetic impacts and then I'm gonna talk a little bit about the cultural impacts so this is what some of the the things that need to exist in order for nuclearism to to move forward is that the government and the entities that create nuclear weapons they they have they do a lot of this in secret and there's this mass numbing and othering which have to do with basically making these things seem like they're occurring to to people who are have less rights or that you know are this idea that it's it's okay to basically do these things because like indigenous folks or people in rural areas may not I guess we're expendable is is what I'm trying to get at so good next slide so this here is is the nuclear fuel chain minus the weapons so I'm gonna talk a lot about the front end so we call uranium mining and I'm sorry the print is so small but it basically starts with uranium mining and there's a couple different types of uranium mining either institute leech mining or what we call conventional mining when you get the ore out of the ground and then you have to process it at a mill where you make yellow cake and then there's all these different types of processing and conversion in order to make the uranium fuel that is used in your power plants and I say your power plants because we don't have any power plants in New Mexico not not a commercial scale power plant anyways there's one in Arizona and that's the closest to us so what we're dealing with and what we want to talk about is right here and so like I said this is the nuclear fuel chain not the nuclear fuel cycle but we are missing the weapons which are very present in New Mexico so next slide so I'm from New Mexico but my people were there before New Mexico existed I'm gonna get a little bit into that but before I do I just wanted to talk a little bit about the different health impacts from uranium mining because we're dealing with a lot of contamination from the past mining which which is basically still there there's a 15,000 abandoned mines across the United States and and there's very little health studies so just like I don't know how many of you guys have heard about the secret agreement between the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organization to not publish health data on the impacts from nuclear facilities there this this is specific to uranium mining that there are some health studies that have been done by individuals through private funding and just basically people that know what's going on and know that the government is never gonna pay for this kind of stuff so a lot of it has been done under an organization called the Southwest Research and Information Center which did this DINET project so the studies are being done at a UNM and basically what they found is that over long periods of time people living close to low-level radioactive radiation exposure are subject to these different health problems so this is a lot of this is self-recorded but they're also doing actual studies to show the direct impacts and what they're finding is a lot of kidney disease and autoimmune disorders so there's two types of ways we're impacted and it's either from the radioactivity or the chemical toxicity so uranium as a heavy metal and then you know all of the exposure we get from radiation this is just to give you guys an idea what it looks like out there and how uranium moves around so like when uranium is in the ground naturally occurring it doesn't it doesn't really go anywhere on its own but once it's oxygenated through different processes mostly anthropogenic then it's able to move throughout the environment so right here is a mine and you can see it's a little bit higher up than these houses here so basically when it rains the mineways will wash down and then like right here goes into this little waterway which will go down here and then join you know other other bodies of water and we don't have a lot of water in the desert so it's it's it's really bad when water gets contaminated here this is you know that picture at the beginning that I showed you that was facing the east but if you turned around the direct opposite direction this is a mesa that would have been behind you and this is one of the places where there was a mine up here and so this one this mine here they the government is doing some cleanup a cleanup of your any mining it's not done very well so basically what they did is brick in oh my bad thing they bricked in the mine here to try to contain the uranium so it doesn't get out but you can see from this these white this white line that uranium is still coming out in the other chemicals and whatever they used up there the mine and then it's washing down behind these people's houses next slide so everywhere that there is mining it's transported very easily and so these are just other pictures of native communities this is a mill a mill a mill tailings pile of waste that's blowing toward the school this is the world's largest open-pit uranium mine near Hwati this is a picture I'm this is a fight we're dealing with this is a transport of uranium in a truck and this isn't we use this picture in a fight with a whole no so I got my t-shirt here so these are different ways uranium mine waste and mill tailings are transported next slide and so basically next slide we're dealing with over like I said 15,000 mines that have not been cleaned up and on the Navajo nation we have about a little bit over 500 and that is an area that is getting some cleanup so next slide and so this just shows all of the areas with mines and then the blue squares show mills there's only one mill currently operating in the country and that's in Utah so this is this is what we call the four corners so New Mexico Arizona Utah Colorado next slide and this is a picture of again how uranium how close it gets to houses so there's some houses right here you can't really see them but they're little dots in between some mines and then this was a mill so this is all operating mostly in the 70s and the 80s but what happened here is the world's largest uranium tailings built so on next slide I'm coming from an area that's dealing with a lot of contamination I didn't grow up in this area but she she lives in this area and they have kids you know they play there they live there all the time and they're currently impacted by past mining next slide that's still very present go ahead next slide so I just wanted to show you all those pictures because we're still dealing with the mess from uranium mining and now there's threats of new mining on one of our sacred mountains go ahead next slide and so right now specifically we're dealing with two sites of these are conventional mine sites go ahead next slide and so next slide this is a so specifically we are going to go through a couple of new threats of nuclear stuff and then I'm just going to wrap up here this is the Navajo Nation this is our tribal government area where we have what's called jurisdiction under it's the technical term for the jurisdiction is Navajo Indian country however I just wanted to be clear that like Chris was stating I'm Dine so I'm not Navajo the government is Navajo and then United States calls us Indian but we're we're not we're indigenous so anyways this is a site of a uranium mine at the Grand Canyon that wants to transport the uranium along this route to the only mill and the reason I'm bringing this picture up is because all of the stuff I just showed you the Navajo Nation because of all that stuff the Navajo Nation has passed a law saying no more uranium mining and a law that says no transport of radioactive materials unless it's for cleanup or for medical use so even though this road goes right through Navajo Nation we're saying you know you you can't haul through our res you know haul no you can't take this uranium ore through our communities again but our tribe has stated to us they can't do anything about it because these are US highways and federal highways so next slide so um that's gonna I'm gonna connect that to the issue of what we're talking about tonight which is nuclear waste this is a map of New Mexico and all these tiny dots are different types of extractive industries and different place different types of contaminating activities such as oil and gas mining fracking and that kind of thing here in the southeast the legislators of New Mexico want to build what's called an energy sector and it's and it's overlapping the one of the largest oil producing areas in the country there's a lot of underground caves and the geology there it's just really not suited for what they're doing here here in this part of the in this part of the state is where they want to build this centralized interim storage being proposed by Holtec so next slide and so this is a map of all the reactors in the country and the proposal for Holtec is to bring over 173,000 tons of waste but then there's another site just about 40 miles away called waste control specialist that wants to bring 40,000 tons of high-level radioactive waste go ahead next slide and so here's a map of the Navajo Nation again and these are these are all the railroads in in the South in our two states of Arizona and New Mexico and so the site is right here which is Holtec and there's WCS Holtec is only 12 miles north of WIPP which is the Waste Isolation Pilot Project where they store waste from weapons already so in New Mexico we have like nuclear facilities around Los Alamos and at Sendillo Labs and we have all this uranium mining with tons of things but what we're dealing with now is this proposal and specifically for Navajo Nation I'm working to get to get some awareness about the transport possibly through this right here this is where the railroad goes through but because of the lack of jurisdiction on the rails again my tribe we're not able to stop it with our law so I'm coming out here to talk with you guys all next slide and to basically just you know explain that us our folks in New Mexico so as a New Mexico resident and as a Navajo Nation member of the the tribe we don't want it and so we're we had a lot of opposition to these mines I mean I'm sorry to this proposal for the waste because of our experience with the mines and so what we're wanting is to our organization nuclear issues study group we want to have some real dialogue between people living near reactors and and and us to see well what can we do about it because we do know some places the waste has to move like and Santa November California because it's so close to the ocean so we know there's no one size fits all solution but um yeah so I'm just I'm just here to give you guys a glimpse of what we're dealing with out home at home but now we got all this new stuff and people don't really understand what it's about because we don't have nuclear reactors so anyways I wanted to say thank you and thank you Leona when we're through with the speakers we are going to be having a pretty long question and answer session so keep those questions ready our next speaker is Kirsten Ruder and Kirsten is going to more fluently give you the name of her organization I'm merely going to give you a English translation the citizens environmental initiative in Borlaeben Germany or in the environments of Borlaeben Germany I had to tell you I've been a anti-nuclear organizer for a long time and part of what we have to do to get ourselves up going in the morning is get motivated and one of the things that has motivated me for decades is the activity around opposing the transport of high level nuclear waste to Borlaeben Germany so please welcome Kirsten Ruder to share some of their insight there and thank you very much for inviting me for inviting us the name of my initiative is and it's more than 40 years old so I have a PowerPoint but I won't show it I have these cards with me with my email address and I have enough for everyone to give one so who wants my PowerPoint take a card and you can have a look at it there are also some pictures in it and many information in English language we did it and in the end we're going to take some minutes to have some photos I have a slideshow that I can show you and I want to talk want to give you a brief overview about what is the world in place about and especially talk about the transports and the final deposit search we have in Germany since some years going on so I want to say I'm also organized not only with the government but also in a campaign called don't use the climate and we're working on the world climate summits to prevent the world summits summit climates from from nuclear power because there are many forces going for it so our nuclear site volume was declared in 1977 to be a nuclear center and this is a funny story I mean it's a sad story or an angry story but our Prime Minister pointed out with this finger on a map in the eight o'clock evening news that what he was going to be nuclear center so this is famous everybody knows this photo in Germany and from one moment to another we have really big protests because two years before in 1975 there had been some plans to build up a nuclear power plant only five kilometers away from Berlin but these plans were cancelled so people like were getting big ears when they heard about all nuclear center volume there was already some small kind of organization people had tried to talk about things and like in between one week or two people founded Berlin it's at evil and we're really able to start protests from the first moment on I think this was quite important so in the coming years we had many protests there was no nuclear plant yet there was no interim storage there was no exploration site for a final deposit there was a lot to lose and a lot to win and we had many many supporters from all over the country it was not only the people from the region which was very conservative many farmers many Christ Democrat voters and low-populated and many people without jobs and right next to the border of former East Germany so Germany by this time was divided and we were like in the very last end of West Germany East Germany all around us so one idea was if there would be an accident they could just close the area that's it so these were the points of deciding to put a nuclear center there it wasn't an exclusively political decision without any science and that's the point that started in the 70s but it's continuing until today so the first I mean they built some they built some nuclear plants like we did never have a power plant but we got an interim storage we have three of them that are central interim storages in Germany we have some that are beside a nuclear power plant they will build around 2021 but before we have three sites one at Greifswald one at Arles and one at Gordien so the high radio tiered nuclear waste was brought from the nuclear power plants one possibility directly to these interim storages but central ones or the nuclear waste was taken from the nuclear power plants and brought to the reprocessing in France the Hague and Great Britain Sellerfield they wanted to build a reprocessing at Gordien as well but they could not because of resistance so it was good for us we did not get reprocessing and it was bad but the nuclear waste was brought to France and Great Britain and then after reprocessing it brought back to Germany and brought back to Gordien the first nuclear transports that took place were low and medium radiative waste transports also through this interim storage that was an 85 and the resistance was really big against it we had human chains of I don't know 30 40 kilometers and we had really big manifestations and as I said always with a lot of support from all over the country and also international and it did not help to prevent high radiative waste transports they started that in 95 and they needed a lot of police it was getting a real violent period of time for Bendland and my people because they really needed like 35,000 policemen it's all you have in Germany so it was always a good time to go to south of Germany and to Robert Bank because they had the police over there and we had certain transports of these in total a hundred and thirteen castor casts that are standing in the middle of the woods in a potato barn it's the same buildings the farmers use without any filters without any construction that would prevent terrorist attacks or prevent any plane falling down or flew in so these protests were bigger and bigger and bigger and in the end we had another political decision but they are not going to be any more castor transports to Berlin so the last one was in 2011 in 2010 we had the political situation that Chancellor Merkel wanted a lifetime extension for nuclear power plants and then Fukushima happened in 2011 and then everything was rolled back like okay we're gonna phase out but in this year 2010 2010 we had 50,000 people coming for a demonstration in our region and we only have 50,000 people living in the whole area so that was real the biggest we ever had and after that we have the decision of phasing out all nuclear power plants the plan is to have finished this in 2022 and I hear some voices from the nuclear lobby still like oh we have these new generation reactors and oh did you hear about climate change what a bad thing we have to take it for serious and then you think so what but it's not gonna work without nuclear so they are planning some things we don't know exactly what but we have to be really very updated and be aware that they might try to install something else after that after the plant phase out and still if the nuclear power plants are paced out by 22 then we have two more nuclear plants that are enrichment of your uranium and a fuel production these are at Bruno and Ling this is North Rangostavia and Lower Saxonary it's both at the border and they don't have any plans to face out these facilities like they have with the nuclear power plants and they are delivering these fuels for the nuclear power plants like into the whole world but especially to some nuclear power plants near the border in Belgium and in France to Kattenholm, Passenheim in France and Duhl and Tianche and these nuclear power plants are in a very bad state maybe from the beginning it was found out a couple of years ago and if they were not delivered by these plants from Lingen and Gronau they could not be run anymore so it's not very honest to say we are having a nuclear phase out if these things are going on so we have still a lot things to do and to quite a lot to make it sure that we're really facing out everything and then we still have the waste so in Germany we have a process that is going on because of the political decision not to bring any more high radiative waste to Goallim there was the decision of stopping the exploration at the Goallim site that has been explored that have been explored for more than 20 years quite some money put in like 1.9 billion euro and then there on the first view there is nothing they do not have any experiences they do not have any idea what a permanent solution might be but we have two experiences for salt mines we have two final deposits that were only for low and medium radiative waste and they are called Ase and Morstein and they are both disasters terrible disasters. Ase 12 cubic meters of water float in every day and they have to pump them out and it's filled with nuclear waste so it's a serious problem and the Morstein site is not so much known than the Ase site but they have the same amount of problems the salt is breaking down and just falling onto the nuclear waste and it's not it's not safe anyway so we have these two experiences and we don't think it's a good idea to just dig a big hole and then put the nuclear waste in and fill it and then you're rid of the problem but would not work but will not work we have these experiences with Ase and Morstein so now we have a commission in Germany they shall set up the process how to find a way first to decide what is the way to find different places that could be compared to each other and then find the best solution of storing nuclear waste and the whole process is running for about four or five years now and there is no idea when some site might be decided and getting started to be explored we still think they are gonna take back volume because they did not fulfill it it's only like they are having a break with it and they might take it because I don't know it's kind of their baby they always wanted it and it's a big question if we're gonna have a different situation now that we won't have political decisions well you have the fewest people who are voting in an area and then you dump the nuclear waste because you have nothing to lose or if you take the safest place but then maybe you're very unpopular if you're saying well you take this place it's it's a really hard decision but our demand is that first of all we have to get scientists who are really independent because at the moment we do not have any of them like we have universities and people are studying there but they are fed by the nuclear industry they raise their own scientists and they are thinking in their way and they are behaving in their way they are developing in their way they are not independent we need independent scientists this is the first step and then we need a discussion in society because we're talking about 40,000 generations this is such a long period this is such nobody can imagine and we need protests we need resistance if we would not have protested we would have a reprocessing we would have a conditioning facility I'm sure we would have a final deposit with lots of high-radiative waste in they would have taken it and that's it telling the people well it's better to have it outside we have it now outside it's standing there in this potato barn it's not a good solution but we cannot demand for anything like bring it somewhere because there is no good solution at the moment so we have to be a little patient and what we are asking for is also to have better concepts for this into installages right now they have to put some money in and make them a little more safe than they are now and if they phase out right now then maybe we can trust into a process that will bring us the best of all the best solutions so I will really encourage I want to really encourage everyone to care about this problem and to talk with your people with your neighbors and with your family and with your the people you are playing bridge with and what what else just talk about this because it is such a long time that we're going to handle this nuclear waste and the younger people should not not know anything about it or forget about it we should all take care about it although we never wanted to produce it and it's worth protesting because otherwise the nuclear industry will not give away their profits we have to take them away from them thank you very much I just want to give you some impressions like we really have protests that are very creative and like it's a very serious topic but people still are happy to have each other and go through all these hard times what we recognize is that the companies always take the very beautiful the most beautiful places like natural clubs as we have one and our symbols the X because we did not know what would be the day the first nuclear waste would come to the region so we call it the day X and from then on we have all these big and small and every size yellow X's and we have the tractors they are important the police is always very much afraid of them I don't know why the farmers they have the most to lose they cannot take the land and move somewhere else they have to resist we have music groups like Samba and the 60 plus initiative that was the big manifestation in 2010 okay just take that if you want me to send you the powerpoint with all the things I spoke about thank you very much thank you Kirsten I didn't mention it before but after we finish up on Saturday in Flint Kirsten is going to be moving on to the Southwest where hopefully her organizations work will help to inspire and support the activists in New Mexico and West Texas when it comes to centralized interim storage our next speaker is Tim Johnson the executive director of the nuclear information of resource service he's based in Washington DC and is going to update us on the status of federal legislation that seeks to bring Yucca back and introduce centralized interim storage Tim thanks Chris and thanks to BYDA for organizing the event and having us here tonight as Chris mentioned I'm with the national organization called nears which was founded 40 years ago this year to to work with grassroots groups grassroots and nuclear groups across the country to build a national movement and we're going to need it to fight this issue so what I wanted to start with and sort of a basic level is to sort of talk about how we got to where we're at with nuclear waste and what you hear a lot in the you know from from the nuclear industry and from pro nuclear politicians is that the reason that we don't have a solution to nuclear waste is a political problem and it's actually just the opposite the reason we're here today with the impasse that we have a nuclear waste is actually because of dirty politics and back in the 1980s the US government started a policy they passed a law called the Nuclear Waste Policy Act which created a relatively rational process for how we were going to deal with nuclear waste as a country there was going to be you know there was going to be a principle of equity where there were going to nuclear waste dumps in different parts of the country so that not so that not one part of the country had to bear all the burden of dealing with this problem and they came up with a list of potential places where they could cite a nuclear waste dump or they could cite nuclear waste dumps and basically at that point the politics start and by 1987 there was a consensus in Congress that that there that that that no one wanted it and the only solution was to pick the least powerful state in the country where they could put it and so in 1987 they amended the law to name Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the only place to be considered for this first for the for a first nuclear waste dump and that a second nuclear waste dump wouldn't be cited or built until Yucca Mountain was full and that started a process whereby the Department of Energy started to do studies and Yucca Mountain to see how the dump should be built and whether it was going to be what the standards were going to be and what they found what the science found fairly within a few years was that this was a really problematic site and it's actually turned out that it's really an unsuitable site for nuclear waste. It's a really seismic area there's actually volcanic activity in the area the rock that's supposed to isolate the waste at Yucca Mountain is too fractured and let's water through too quickly and they had to continually lower the environmental standards for Yucca Mountain in order to get it to the point where they could move it forward in the licensing process. So and then by this point in Nevada the state of Nevada and the western Shoshone Nation which is on which Yucca Mountain whose territory Yucca Mountain is on have vowed to to fight the siding of Yucca Mountain to the end and so now we have a political reality and a legal reality which is that Yucca Mountain is never going to actually become a nuclear waste dump and rather than start the process over and let science guide the process for how we're going to deal with this waste the industry has decided that the most expedient solution is to site interim storage facilities in communities that will be promised that will only be there temporarily and depicts sites where they believe that the community is not going to be powerful enough to resist it and so that's how they've selected two Hispanic communities one in West Texas and one in New Mexico as the potential sites for these interim storage facilities to move the waste from sites like Vermont 82. Now this is not currently legal the industry itself is not going to take responsibility for the cost of doing this. It would cost hundreds of millions of dollars per shipment or you know per millions of million dollars per shipment just to get this waste from the reactor sites to these facilities and the industry the industry's goal is to not have to be liable for the cost of this waste going forward. So what they're proposing and both of these facilities you know in their license applications to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission specify that they will not operate these facilities unless the Department of Energy is paying the bill which is currently illegal. And so what they're trying to do is they're trying to create you know essentially ways to go around this go around the law to be able to make the taxpayers pay for the transport of this waste you know to New Mexico and Texas and this is and these are the promises that the companies like North Star are making the states like Vermont is that they're going to find a way to get around the law to do something that's currently illegal to move this waste to a place where even though they say it's a temporary storage site is going to be a de facto permanent dump site above ground you know in communities that are already burdened with you know with nuclear and other environmental problems. So you know this is an irrational policy that we're being presented. Now the way they're trying to do this is in a couple of different ways. There's a there's a bill in Congress that was that was passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year called HR 3053 and this is essentially the nuclear industry's you know sort of you know dream legislation. It would both force it would it would try to force Yucca Mountain on Nevada by essentially underbinding the state's rights to oppose the deciding of the dump and it would also legalize the creation of interim storage facilities like the ones at you know in New Mexico and West Texas. Now this legislation has passed the House. It has not been introduced in the Senate and our best hope this year is to is to make sure make that whatever happens in the elections in November that they do not try to sneak this bill through the Senate in the lame duck period between the election and the start of the next Congress. And so we're going to so Nears is going to be working with groups across the country to mobilize for that lame duck session to make sure that this piece of legislation does not get through the Senate. And so we're going to be preparing we're going to be sending out a toolkit of the groups across the country in the next couple of weeks to be able to start you know prepping people to talk to talk to your representatives talk to your senators especially about why they should not let this legislation fruit. But the industry is also doing year after year is they're trying to to use the appropriations process the budgetary process to get a foot in the door with these with interim storage. And so what they've been proposing for several years is what they call a pilot project to to a to site an interim storage facility a pilot interim storage facility where they would only move 10,000 tons of weights. Now that's hardly a foot in the door. I mean that's bigger than most people's closets. But what we've been able to do through you know through you know grassroots action across the country is to be able to pit the politics of the House and the Senate against one another. And so because the House of Representatives is crazy for Yucca Mount doesn't want to do anything it doesn't involve Yucca Mount. And the Senate has dealt with the deal with the reality that Nevada is going to Nevada is a swing state in the Senate and they can't afford to lose the Senate seat in Nevada. That the House of Representatives you know wants funding for Yucca Mountain in the budget and appropriations and and the Senate doesn't want Yucca Mountain to move at all that wants to move interim storage forward. And what's happened yet again just a couple weeks ago this year as we've managed to have it happen the last several years is that they've created zero funding for these nuclear waste projects through the appropriations process. Now the problem is that if the Democrats swing one or both chambers of Congress next year this whole dynamic could change because the Democratic Party has been supportive that their senators in the Democratic Party have been supportive of interim storage the interim storage process. And if we're going to stop this we're going to have to you know to really work hard to lobby senators like you know like you know like Leahy and Sanders to hold the line against this and not just in Vermont but in states like Massachusetts you know where Senator Warren has not been a friend of ours on this. So we're going to need to be doing organizing throughout the country you know for the next several years you know to be to build resistance and opposition to these crazy nuclear waste storage plans. But we're also going to need to be working on you know working on our senators to make sure that this doesn't happen. So that's sort of the general message is that you know we are here with nuclear waste because of a political problem and that we need the science to come first. And we're going to need to organize like hell to make that happen. Yes I'm told that there is a petition about this issue on the back table which people should of course sign and get it all get all your friends to do it too. Thank you Tim thank you Tim. I want everybody to please support the nuclear information and resource service. We've got a big job and there's never enough money. So and I RS dot O R G your support is appreciated. Our final speaker before the question and answer period is Deb Katz. Deb Katz is the executive director of the Citizens Awareness Network and has led a lot of fights here in New England to close nuclear power plants as well as to get our governments on different state levels and the federal level to deal responsibly with nuclear waste. And here we are again. So please Deb Katz. I've been here a lot right. And I'm back. And it's sort of bad news doesn't mean I'm going to want you to do something. You've been sort of out of it for a while because we close the new. It's been snoozing dealing with gas all sorts of other stuff. But now we're here and we're here for a reason. So I'm going to talk to you. It's really hard listening to these people talk because it sort of makes me want to kill myself. Right. It sounds so hard and difficult. And yet it's something we need to take on. And we're in the process of trying to get people to engage in a way to understand that this is the fight of our life. That this is it. So I'm going to sort of give a little background, which is, you know, as nuclear reactors shudder due to poor economics, expansion of gas and renewable energy communities as well as states face the thorny issues of cleanup and with disposal of this terribly toxic waste. Now, shouldn't we be happy when a corporation offers to rid our communities of nuclear waste as quickly as possible? I mean, isn't that what we're supposed to do? Be grateful. And the simple answer, sure, it's true. Let's get rid of the ways. But nothing simple with nuclear power. This is complicated. The failed policy of the nuclear industry and the federal government are exposed and decommissioned. There is no scientifically sound or environmentally just solution to this deadly waste. There are only bad ones and terrible ones. The task is to choose the least destructive to the human to human health in the environment. And that's not easy. The Trump administration is attempting to resurrect Yucca Mountain, a failed federal boondoggle found to be wholly inadequate to the task. But the industry and the administration aren't stopping there. The industry is lobbying to create centralized interim storage in West Texas and New Mexico. It intends to absolve itself of its responsibility for its toxic waste, both its low levels and high level ways. Centralized interim storage won't meet the strict standards that failed that Yucca Mountain failed on. And this is a terrible idea to target the southwest for our problem. And many it's got you've got to understand many legislators in New England and across the country supported this legislation, including New England legislators in the House in Congress. What the industry wants to do is make their problem disappear. So what's our responsibility? Do we have any responsibility? The communities targeted for nuclear waste are working for rural people of color and Native American raising issues of environmental racism. In nuclear power inception, rural low income communities were targeted to host reactors. Now reactor and waste communities are pitted against each other. It is but it is essential that these communities work together that we organize together. And that's why we are holding this tour. The issues that played high level waste disposal exist in the sighting and running of low level waste dumps as well that are utilized to clean up shuttered reactors, decommissioning funds established to cover the cleanup costs and paid for by ratepayers are systematically underfunded. The energy refuses to require nuclear corporations to adequately fund cleanup. When reactors were owned by utilities, there was a captive rate based to cover escalating costs. With merchant plants, the costs are borne by the corporation. So let's talk about energy and now whole tech in the future of decommissioning entities desire to sell Vermont Yankee as an example of the industry's attempt to absolve itself of its responsibility as it's whole tech's desire to purchase the failing pilgrim reactor. These will set dangerous precedent. North Starnett's partners have neither the expertise nor resources to clean the site up responsibly. Whole tech manufacturers cast but has no track record on cleanup. Waste control specialist entities partners intent on establishing centralized interim storage in Texas, whole tech in New Mexico. WCS has never made a profit in the waste business until recently was failing losing millions in an attempt to resurrect itself and tried to merge with energy solutions a waste company in Utah. After that failed, it was infused with money from laymen, which is a head for cleanup of nuclear sites is seen as a business opportunity for corporations willing to risk figuring out how to make a profit cleaning up merchant plants with underfunded decommissioning plants. North Star and whole tech present themselves as white nights coming in to save reactor communities. And to the matter, states from becoming nuclear waste. Of course, these sites have always been nuclear waste up. So it's just been hidden under the thin veneer of technological advancement to deflect from their limited experience in nuclear cleanup. They propose a rapid dismantlement of the reactor sites with the added inducement of the imminent removal of the high level ways to the southwest. So what's the rush? This is a seductive and potentially irresistible proposal for states fearful that shuttered reactor sites would become their responsibility for cleanup as well as guarding the high level nuclear waste. This is not insignificant. Cost for guarding the waste is substantial. $5 million a year with utilities. This is borne by ratepayers. We're still paying for the high level ways to Yankee road to the tune of five billion a year, a million a year in our electric bill. But merchant owners have no fault leading to their white night scenario. After all, waste could remain on site for decades. It could be for 100 years if they don't actually act responsible. So what is right action in this complex and market environment? What can we as citizens do? This toxic waste should move once. Why play Russian roulette with our failing interest infrastructure? reject. We must reject centralized interim storage and Yucca Mountain and advocate for hardening of reactor sites. What can be done to protect reactor communities must be to harden the waste on site. This includes expanding the distance between cast double walling them, creating a barrier to protect them from acts of malice. Not a wooden fence like has been done at Vermont Yang. I actually suggested they paint cows on the fence to make it more bucolic to go along with Vermont. We must advocate for a scientifically sound and environmentally just solution to all nuclear waste. We have to recognize our responsibility in this chain of nuclear waste and sacrifice can advocate for deep geological burial of this waste. But to do that, we need sound science and we need environmental justice. We are asking you to contact your senators at this point to ask them to both know on these parking lot dumps that are targeting Hispanic and native communities in Southwest parking lot dumps is not the solution. It's a get out of free card for the nuclear industry. So these tours are starting now and we will continue to do them to educate people to help organize to begin the process of taking on a failed industry and a government that isn't complicit in helping them basically advocate that responsibility. And this is a call to action the beginning of a call. And we started in Montreal, the way we did with our call to action to shutter the new. So remember, we did that. Thank you, Deb. I'm gonna ask Deborah Stuller off. Come on up. Deborah is going to have an exercise here to engage the audience in these issues. So here you go. So you've been sitting for a while, and you've sort of taken in all of this information. It's time to sort of do a little bit of a cognitive exercises with your neighbor to just if you turn to that person, having heard the speakers talk to your neighbor about what are your thoughts about moving the high level nuclear waste to the Southwest? And what are your thoughts about taking care of the nuclear waste, keeping it in our backyard using scientifically sound methods. And yeah, so just take a few minutes just to so you can digest what you've thought and talk to your neighbor about what what you've sort of taken in just now is the sort of salient points that you might talk about with somebody else. And then I'll have another question for you. Yeah, well, I'm gonna wait till I I'll tell people you're going to have questions if you want to ask them afterwards, that would be great to ask them. I see lots of great conversation going on now, which is absolutely fine. I know you don't want to stop. So I want you to just think about also, what more information do you need to have or do you need to hear? And as you're thinking about those questions in terms of what more do you need to hear and what more information do you need to have? We can open up the question and answer period to the to the panelists. So that's what we'll we'll do now. I'll just say that also Robin is going to be passing around a petition for to ban nuclear weapons. And maybe also Nancy, if you could pass around the petition around h3305, I always get the numbers mixed up 3053. That would be great. I'm also going to say that when we're finished, if you guys if you have any energy to help us put the chairs away when we're finished, that would be awesome. So I'm just going to open up for questions now. So yeah, does anybody have any questions? You had one that you wanted to ask. Excuse me, guys, john, could we we're back here now? We're sort of having questions. So what is the time duration that we do I said we want to leave it at place? Okay, what's the time duration of that? Are we talking 10 years? 1000 years? That's kind of that's the question was, how long is the ways going to be on site? I mean, this is a really hard thing to answer. It can't stay on site forever. The waste, the high level waste can't be by water by water. That's why the idea of putting it in the desert or the idea of Yucca mountain originally was that it would be separated from water because if it's exposed to water, then it begins to deteriorate and it begins to get off radiation won't necessarily explode. But so that the the idea of we call it Haas hardened on site storage is in a certain sense was developed at a summit that can organized in Connecticut. Basically, after 9 11, which the sense that the high level waste and fuel pools was basically as the National Governors Council said a pre deployed weapon of mass destruction. This is not can saving it. This was the governor. And the issue of getting the fuel out of the pool is essential at all reactor sets. What to do with it after that, we have advocated for hardening on site storage, which includes a double walling of cast, the ability to berm it in the cast being separated, not by six feet, but by 20 feet. So an an act of malice is it's really hard for them to think of doing it. The struggle in this is to actually then get whether it's the government or private enterprise to decide that they have to take up the issue of dealing with it. At this point, they sort of want to take up the issue of dumping it in the Southwest to make their waste problem disappear, not because they're trying to solve it. It's really hard for reactor communities to accept the way staying there. And I live between two high level nuclear waste dump. So I understand that completely. I do not want that stuff around. It destroyed my community. It destroyed the health in my community. At the same time, I can't with conscience, except that waste that destroyed my community, I will send somewhere else to destroy someone. And so you're in this terrible predicament. It's the nuclear industry creates a moral dilemma, a state of constant ambivalence. And being in, you know, wanting to act out of bad character to save yourself, and trying to actually take his principled stance, or more of a moral stance that says, No, this isn't the way they have to do it right. They haven't done a lot right. But they have to do this right, because this is the most I'm not gonna curse because I'm gonna be good tonight. This is the most dangerous waste that's ever been created. And they've advocated that responsibility and the pressure we need to put on senators and legislators and house reps all over again, is that they have the bloody will do it right for once and not be cowards. And I can't guarantee we'll win this fight like I couldn't guarantee we were going to win for my Yankee. But we can show us how make them miserable in the process that have to start dealing with this in some realistic way. So I can't say should stay 10 years. They're not getting it out in 10 years. I'll guarantee you that that's not happened. Could it be 20 or 30? If they actually work hard on this and someone comes up with pilot programs that are worth trying? Maybe some of it can move. Is it going to stay there for 40 50 years? Yeah, possibly. And that's why North Star and whole tech wanted to hell out so that they don't they don't have to spend $500 million babysitting waste that they're basically trying to sort of use a pyramid scheme to get rid of and get the great payers to pay for it again. So I hope that was clear. That before we get totally comfortable. Okay, come on up then. My name's Mary. I'm from Southern California. I stay here. I stay here for a month. Lucky you call us to get away from there. I'm 12 miles. And my question is, how do we hard store waste right there on the beach? Why don't the questions get easier? Let's just make this easy. How do they store it? Look, the waste can't stay there. I mean, that's a reality. I mean, I'm not a fanatic. I don't say this is the way and nothing can do anything else, which is insanity. So there has to be degrees of adaptability. Like at Vermont Yankee, it would be good if they could double wall the casks and make them 20 feet apart. But the site is 100 acres. And there are 58 damn cast, which means the best they can do is put a lot of earth, basically burming in the casks because that's the best they can do. And the reality is they're not going to take the cast apart and double wall them. I would love it. But they're not going to pay for that. But what they could do is berm it in, which is pretty cheap. So that waste does need to move. The question is how far it needs to move. There's a military base across the road. Those sites are highly contaminated to begin with. So if the way sat there, it is a reasonable interim solution. Not a happy solution. People aren't going to like it. But it at least keeps this process of targeting vulnerable communities and half asked ideas from going forward. And that's our responsibility, which is to get the government to do the job promised it would do. This is the commitment they made and we need to hold them to it. And all the industry job is the way to relieve themselves, you know, of their the failing nuclear industry that they want to resurrect on the back of a bunch of parking lot dumps in the Southwest. You want to say something? I actually grew up next to Santa November. I spent my childhood driving by that nuclear power plants. And, you know, it wasn't a good site to build a nuclear power plant either. And people lived with it for 30 years. You know, what Deb says is right. I mean, you can't store nuclear waste on the beach in California forever. But, you know, every single community where there's nuclear power plant has the same issue that, you know, they were all built next to water. Every community has reasons why the waste shouldn't stay there. And the reality is it is going to be there for a while. And, you know, rather than do these crazy schemes of moving it around the country and putting it in parking lots in West Texas and New Mexico, you know, we need to we need to focus on, you know, a real long term way to deal with the waste. And, you know, in the process, we need to make sure the reactor communities are protected as best we can for as long as the waste is going to be there. Now, whether we start shipping it to West Texas, New Mexico, you know, or, you know, or we focus on, you know, a real long term solution, the waste is still going to be at reactor sites for 40 or 50 more years and all likelihood, because it's going to take a long time to move it. And so, you know, we might as well protect it as best we can where it's at. And, you know, and there might be site, there might be places, you know, like San Onupre, where the pace of, you know, sea level rise is going to is going to, you know, it's going to make it, you know, necessary or advisable, you know, to move it somewhere close by where it's going to where it's going to be better protected, you know, for the interim. But that's not what's happening right now. What's happening right now is a mad rush to simply start dumping this waste in communities where it doesn't belong. And, you know, we need to put, we need to put the brakes on that process. If we're going to have anything like, like, you know, like a like a responsible solution, then it'll be your way. Robert? And I'll give sympathy on that. Has anyone made a comparative cost estimate between taking all the waste around the country to these sites? In my mind, that is an enormously expensive project, putting it into those type paths and carrying it to communities that will all say, no, we don't want it. No, it's not going to happen, even if they had the money. So let's just face the fact that it's cheaper to do to keep it here. I mean, I meant that as a question. I'm like, it's a good statement. You don't need us to say anything. You did it. Question, answer. Cynthia, come on up. Cynthia from Calis, Vermont. I have many questions, but one to Deb, which is, do you feel the kids are any safer that live in Vernon and go to the school across the street from the reactor now? And I want to know more about Elizabeth Warren, because I I've always liked her and I'm hearing she accepts money from nuclear power industry. And I want us to get some of these, these shirts that they know hall high level waste, just like that. Okay, maybe your wish will be someone's command. I can't say for sure. So are the kids safer? These are just terrible questions. They really make me want to drink. I mean, the thing with the Yankee road fight, we could give a positive story about what people could do. And yet the questions that come up, which are completely reasonable and understandable, are all about terrible things. And so the fact is that the high level waste being in cast is more secure that those children are across the street, which is an act of insanity that the school is across the street. There's no way around that. But Vernon chose that. And that's where they are. So they are a lot safer in terms of it. And the fact that it's in broadcast storage is a lot better than it being in a pool. It could be a lot better if the public service board as one of the conditions to agreeing to the sale because the potential is they will agree to it is to burn the damn fuel in that they could require and it's a cheap requirement and it could help in terms of securing that way. That would make it better because not only would it protect from acts of malice, but in terms of the issue, they call it the shine from the cast. There is radiation. The cast give off if it's it's why energy bought up all the houses along that road by the reactor because they were giving off too much radiation at the fence line. So they were able to move basically by eliminating the house. What an elegant solution. This is a technology of nuclear power. Just buy up the houses and you don't have a problem. So the idea of burming it in would actually help the children and help that community. And the community actually across the river because there are elementary school kids in New Hampshire as well, right across the river. So there are a lot of people affected by what's going on. I'm going to help or continue to answer the question about school. Because as I said earlier, I've been attending just about every meeting of the nuclear, the nuclear decommissioning citizens advisory panel for years now, ever since even before the closure. And they happen about every other month down in Brattleboro. And I never fail for the most part to raise the school across the street. We raised it about the fuel transfer. Now it's very valid. But I've raised it more than several times about the actual dismantlement of a nuclear power plant. Right across with a school right across the street. And I asked Scott State, who is the owner of North Star. I said, Are you are you serious? That you're actually going to tear this thing down while kids are across the street playing volleyball. And for those of you have the downer, I mean, it's right in your face, right across the street. This isn't an exaggerated claim or anything. He said to me, Well, you know, we've taken apart research reactors on college campuses. I said, Scott, you and I both know and I gotta tell you, these people take big things apart. They take big stuff apart. I said, This isn't a research reactor. Yes, yes, you're right. And I will get back to you. Here's my car. And I have his card. And he has my card. And I don't have an answer. I've also raised this with the department or the Agency of Natural Resources, which through its various divisions is responsible for public safety when things like paper mills are taken apart, or when you have a gas station with a lust problem, know about lust, leaky underground storage tanks. Right. This all fits into it asbestos, you know, remediation. This is a nuclear power plant. And I'm not getting the answers that I want. And we are not going to stop pressing because what it really involves, and this is what anybody this is what people don't want to talk about is something that a lot of communities are going through as school districts contract and merge. Yep, they have to tuition those kids out of that school across the way, you know, into Brattleboro or Guilford or wherever, they have to come up with a plan. They can't just keep ignoring the fact that there's an elementary school across the street. And hey, you know, we send our kids there. That's what Entergy said. We send our kids that we wouldn't put them in harm's way. Give me a break. Yeah. Yeah, at the fence line. So I could go on and on and on, but it's not my stage. Mr. Halage, come on out. Scott State is the CEO of North Pole. The owner is Jay The owner of the owner of North Pole. He's a CEO. Okay. All right. Thank you, sir. Yeah, you couldn't come up and say that. Can I answer about the t shirts? Yeah. Okay, so we're gonna make some more t shirts and we'll try to figure out how to take orders online or you could talk to me later. Our website is haul know.org. And so I just wanted to add something about the concern for the kids. We started a thing called the radiation monitoring project. And so even if the company or the government is measuring radiation, you should do it yourselves. So we have this project where we train folks on how to do citizen monitoring. So we provide these for free for people that want to borrow them and we do trainings and impacted communities, mostly dealing with uranium mining. So this project, you can go to rad monitoring.org if you guys want to learn more. And we also take donations for both rad monitoring and haul know. Yes, sir. Now you're gonna have to belt it out. The longer you start on site, the more the less reactive it comes. So in fact, starting outside for 50 years, making safer to transport some violence, where I've been drinking the water. Yeah, that's true. I mean, well, no, well, you have to I mean, it's all about perspective, right? I mean, you know, we're talking about nuclear waste here, it's going to be it's going to be dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. But you know, the the things that are most radioactive in the nuclear waste are, you know, isotopes like cesium 137 and strontium 90 that have half lives in like in the 30 year timeframe. So you know, yeah, the radio I mean, in 50 years, the you know, the radioactivity in the in the nuclear waste is going to go down quite a bit, but it's still going to be really, really radioactive and really, really dangerous. So, you know, it's sort of, you know, doesn't really matter from that perspective. Oh, yeah, sorry. So Elizabeth Warren. So I think Elizabeth warrants a good example of, you know, the Senate of a Senator who's, you know, following the party line right now, which is, you know, she she needs to be educated. She doesn't really know much. But she is, you know, she's good on a lot of progressive issues, especially, you know, regarding, you know, corporate accountability and that sort of thing. But when it comes to corporate accountability on the environment, she has not been a strong Senator. I had Elizabeth Warren's people call me for money. And I told them I wouldn't give him money because she was a one trick pony. So she's very good. She has a very good rap, but she has been really bad on the environment. And she will not touch nuclear. And she takes sort of she listens to Markey, but she doesn't really even go as far as Markey. And they could actually deal with the Pelgrin reactor, which is a failed reactor owned by Entergy, that is just losing money. It's on the watch list. It is the number one reactor on the watch list. It's been on the watch list for years. And they are mostly silent on this issue. And she's a real disappointment on she has not. But you got to understand that most legislators are silent on this. I mean, Leahy has supported Yucca Mountain. You need to know this. Your congressman supported HR 3053. Sanders had supported the Sanders is funny, like he was for the new but then he was against it. He was for Yucca Mountain, but he's against it, which is great. But he has not taken a position on interim storage. He actually submitted the legislation to set up a dump to set up the dump since Sierra Blanca, which is on the border in Texas, and the standard income in that communities. It's Hispanic needs $7,000 a year. He got that legislation through it's part of what health waste control specialists open the dump where our waste is going. So Sanders has a very mixed record. He may in fact come out against parking lot dumps. And that would be great. And he can get a lot of applause for that. But that's not where he is. So none of your legislators have a good position on this at this moment. But you're not alone. Because in New England, none of the legislators are particularly good. And that's part of the reason for this tour is to get people to start calling their legislators. Now, I know everyone thinks in calling their legislators, you won't know what to say. But they know less than you on almost everything. They really do, right? And when we were in the high level nuclear waste tour, and we went through Nebraska, you know, Tim was on that tour with us, Chris was on that tour, we stopped in a number of places, did our events, a press conference. Then I was back in DC with Michael married on the issues of high level waste, which was what we were focused on at that point. And the senator from Nebraska came up to us and said, And we talked about what we were doing. He said, God, I got a lot of phone calls on that issue. And I thought, What the hell are you talking about? You know, so much empty what we were doing in Nebraska. And I said, How many calls did you get? He said seven. But this is important for you to take in that seven calls, each call you make really affects legislators. And you know why? Because they like to work under radar. They like to do things that nobody knows is going on. So when you call them, it's like a deer in the headlights. They what they do matters. And their constituents know about it. And that makes them nervous. And we want new England legislators really nervous and getting more nervous day by day. Yeah, yeah, you got to do it. Okay, we're gonna continue to take questions. But I got to do what I got to do. That cast doesn't move without fuel. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna pass the camera. It's a mock cast. Okay, more questions, Robin. Two little questions has, has anyone put a legal definition on interim? So that when you say interim, you're saying, we will get out legally, we will be required to get out in such and such a time. But I'd like to ask, Christian, about Germany, because somewhere, I think I read that Germany had a better policy of wrapping up and and shipping the the waste. And you may have mentioned that earlier. But if you could just touch on what Germany is doing, that is good. On interim storage, you meant? Yeah, yeah. Well, the difference to the American system, as I understand it, is that Germany decided two things. One is to build centralized interim storages, three of them in Germany. One is Guarledon, one is Arhos, what is North Rhine Westphalia, and one is Lutmin, what is make them four parliaments, next to the Baltic Sea coast near Wostock. So this was one step. Another step was also because of political pressure and elections. We had a parliament or social democrats and Green Party in 2000. And between 2000 and 2001, the parliament decided or the government decided to build interim storages at some of the nuclear power plants. They did not exist before. Yes, right next to these nuclear power plants, another facility, what is interim storage? We were not happy about it because it delays the problem. The government was looking for a small solution, telling the people, oh, we're not going to transport these, but we're going to store them. But they don't have high level standards there. I mean, they don't have high level standards at Guarledon, Arhos and Lutmin, but this is not what we want. We are fighting for better standards in each of these interim storages. They have some different standards. They are not built all the same. But they are all not safe enough. And I could be spent more money on it. And it's it's really no solution like leaving it in this state. And then telling the society, all interested people that oh, we are looking for a final deposit solution, because they are allowed to storage these casts for 40 years. Yes, but they have no experience with it. It's the first time they are doing it. And it's only in it. It's only an estimated an estimated status they are expecting to happen 40 years. But even the people who I would not call they are friends of mine, folks, for example, people from the OCCO Institute. They are anti nuclear. But they are doing a job that makes it easier for the government to cheat us. I mean, sometimes work they have done has led to better results. So the transports were getting a little more safe than they were before. But this is not our goal. It's not our goal to have some people less getting cancer. It's our goal to face our nuclear. It's our goal to push the government for the best solutions and to start them now and not indicates. So these Institute people, although they are anti nuclear, they are not doing a good job on my opinion. But even they say that there is no experience on cast for high radiative waste. So we have now, for example, at Gordon, they started in 95 for the first transport. So these 40 years are over quite soon. And there's no plan what to do with it then. I think they're just going to expire these 40 years to 50 or 60. And we have no plan B at the moment. So maybe one one idea is that there are commissions that are starting right now. They work about interim storages as well. And it's because of our work of the anti nuclear movement. We started with conferences about nuclear waste. And I think it was 2009. When we met with the so called places of final deposits, what means us more Sweden, we have another site, Schacht Konrad, but it's just being built for media and low radiative waste. And go all in. So these four local groups were meeting for conferences about final deposits and about interim storages. And twice a year, we meet the conferences are big, like 80 people from 50 60 different groups, most of most of them affected by nuclear issues. And we have created a website and a very big book. So this book is not made new, but the website is actualized every week. And we have written down where is nuclear waste. And it's in more than 100 places. It's not these three interim storages or the nuclear power plants. It's more than 100 places that are having nuclear waste, different levels, but all have problems. Some are in the middle of, of cities next to kindergarten, next to schools, and nobody knows. So now the government is starting to talk also about interim storages because they are, they are realizing that these 40 years, they have, they won't be enough time to have any other plan for what to do with the place. This is all I can say at the moment. What is the military? We're going to have 48 nuclear clubs and aircraft carriers, not only our country, but all countries. What happens to that waste? You drop in the ocean? I have to admit I'm not an authority on military waste. I know that they have dropped it in the ocean. They had buried a lot of it at Hanford. They buried a lot of it in South Carolina. And not very far from where Leona lives, the waste isolation pilot project has taken some of the revenues from the weapons programs. And as was widely reported, if you didn't know about it a couple years ago, was it? They used organic kitty litter in the drums of highly radioactive waste, as opposed to regular kitty litter, and had an accident which released plutonium over a significant area in the southwest. But I let Leona answer. Add that the website, it's in southeast New Mexico, and it's about halfway between Carlsbad and Hobbes. And the site that I talked about, Holtec, that's only about 13 miles north of Wip. But Wip is an underground storage. It's supposed to last 10,000 years. It opened in 1999. And the accident that Chris is talking about happened in the first 15 years. So that was on February 14, 2014. So yeah, 10,000 years, and the site, the waste stuff we're talking about, you know, this is also going to be longer than 10,000 years. So who knows how soon it will take them to have an accident. But it's considered transuranic waste. And then this is one of the military waste facilities or waste facilities for weapons stuff. So things from the national labs, all of the uranium stuff I talked about. That's not even on the scale of low level or high level waste is mine waste and healing. So different, very low level radioactive stuff. Who's next? Mr. Halah. I'll have a question for the experts here a little later. But I want to make two points. One is, there's no point in transmitting waste twice, because you're basically doubling the risk. And that makes absolutely no sense. The risk of any single accident was over here castoring might not be large. But when you do it 1000 times you're multiplying the risk by 1000. And when you do 2000 times, you double the risk. There's no point in in transferring the high level waste twice. The other point I want to make, which Jim already touched on, is what's going on is there's going to be an overall social cost to clean up this problem. And what's going on is Wall Street is thinking about, I apologize, are thinking about how can we make a profit off of this? So by shipping it out of state is no more liability becomes the department of energy or property. And storage sites get paid on a cost plus basis, just like military contractors. Also, they're thinking about, you know, when the North Star deal first came out, I said, Oh, this was broken somewhere on Wall Street. And then after a while, it turns out North Star has been bought by what? A Wall Street private equity firm called JF Layman, which also bought waste control specialist so on and so forth. So the high power brains are thinking about, they're thinking about, Oh, we have all these old reactors, we need to decommission and thinking about how can we profit off of this while getting rid of the liability? And what Wall Street does, the way they think, they think about, how could I turn the liability into an asset? If you think about the way financial, that's what they're doing all the time. Yeah, I just didn't get so much credit. Well, these aren't high power brains. These are reptilian brains. Well, if you look up at, you know, the JF Layman, the former Navy Secretary, this is a very connected firm. No, but it does take a rocket scientist to figure out how they're gonna make a profit over and over all social loss. Okay. Okay, now I have a technical question that always puzzled me. Why do they think that they can put nuclear waste into salt mines and into salt? salts are basically two ions, they're playing together one positive, one negative, one a base, one an asset. When it comes in contact with a metal, it tends to split apart, would sense to curl the metal. And when it gets water in there, it obviously dissolves in water, so it's even more corrosive. So I always wondered, I believe Kirsten might answer this, they did put a lot of nuclear waste in central Germany somewhere in underground. And then they had to kick it all back out. cost of something like 5 billion euros. Is that correct? And somewhere in central Germany in the 60s, they started this. Yeah. We had uranium mining in Germany. I did not mention this. It's called the Bismuth. And it was when Germany was still divided in former eastern Germany. And the uranium taken out was especially for Soviet Union to build nuclear bombs. And it was closed. I'm not sure about the exact date. It's also my presentation. They started closing it with all these procedures and all these environmental issues in 1991, 1992. And it took some years. And it is still getting cleaned up. And it costs, like every year, they go 1 billion euro higher. They don't know how much it will be. And they will not be ready in between the next 20 years. So from the 90s to now, and then 20 years ahead. But I don't know if this is what you meant, because that's not nuclear waste. That was uranium mining. What they are planning to do is to get out the nuclear waste of us. There was a special law that was written for the asset situation. And I went to the Bundestag like 10, 12 times listening to it, trying to get our advocates in discussing with them. And in the end, they did what I was afraid of. They did a law about it. And now they do not get the waste off again. They say it is too difficult. We are trying. We have to first do this and that and that. It's like maybe five, six years ago, this law was made. And now it is legal to leave the waste in. This is the other side of the metal of this law. Before it was only for science. That was never meant to be a nuclear waste dump. They only used it, but they did not have any legislation for it. Or any legal basis for this. And they are planning to get it out. But they did not take a single ground back. The website is in a salt mine. And the idea, I mean, I am not a scientist, but the idea is that it is protected from water, that it is impermeable. But the idea, okay, so you have these big empty rooms, the size of football fields. And they put the waste in 55 gallon drums in a ring of like two stacks. I think there are seven. And then they put that inside of another container. And they push the waste against, you know, they try to stuff as much as they can into each pad, is what they call it. But the idea is that the salt would fill in all the empty space and permanently seal it off. But we wonder what happens if it keeps compressing, and then, you know, we don't know what will happen. But that's the idea is that the salt will naturally enclose it forever. That's the idea. So, you know, what, what you're asking about is this, you know, idea that one of the good, what one of the good geologic mediums to put nuclear waste in is a salt formation. Because, you know, what they what, you know, what the industry says is what what Leona was describing, which is that you dig a hole in the salt formation. And then over time, that, you know, that the salt creeps back in and fills it up. And then, you know, their idea is that you put the nuclear waste in there, that the salt's going to creep back in and then seal the waste in there. And it's going to, you know, it's going to hold it there for a long period of time. But the industry, you know, seems to not want to recognize is that you have salt formations for one reason. There used to be an ocean there. And so, you know, and so when the ocean went away, it left a salt formation, but water can always come back to where it was before. And that's essentially the danger of using salt formations is that, you know, is that water can come back in. And what they found, you know, through the investigations of the Gore-Leven repository site, which is also a salt, would also be a salt, a salt repository, is exactly that that the water is already intruding into the site where they were going to put this waste. And, you know, and with with the website, you know, the fracking industry, the oil drilling industry are drilling in the same area. And there's a danger that, you know, that they're going to basically drill into that salt formation. And then and that could then basically disrupt the entire whip dump. And now that's what's happening today, because of what's happening with, you know, with fossil fuel industry today. Now, this waste is supposed to stay isolated for thousands of years. So who's to say that, you know, a hundred years from now, 200 years from now, that people aren't going to be drilling for something else there? Okay, it's, it's after eight. So it's got a, it's my call here. We're gonna, you've had enough good news tonight. I just asked one question. Yes. So I understand the high level waste is taken out of the tools and put in the cast. Is it also inside concrete now? Yeah. Yes. The metal casts are then encased in a, in a collar of concrete. But there are vets. So, right, and thank you all for coming. And I want to thank the folks at the YDA who made sure we were set up here tonight and did all the hard work. And we'll be back. And remember, you know, four years ago, after a lot of hard work, we had a series of celebrations. Well, now we have to do our followup work. And thanks everybody for coming. And next meeting, drag some, some folks along with you.