 Welcome viewers to our ongoing program Nuclear Free Future Conversation coming to you from Burlington, Vermont, from Town Meeting TV, Channel 17, Center for Media and Democracy. We are all remote now and this program is coming to you from Zoom. I'm your host Margaret Harrington and the program is, of course, Nuclear Free Future Conversation. The guest, welcome our wonderful guest, Chris Williams from the Citizens Awareness Network and from the Vermont Yankee Decommissioning Alliance. Welcome back Chris. Thank you. Thank you Margaret. Yeah it's good to see you and we are we agreed on a title for this timely program. It's called the title is the hazards of high-level nuclear waste at Vermont Yankee. So you're bringing us up to speed, Chris, because a lot has been has been going on. There is the so would you speak to the the issues that are current and related to what we're interested here in Vermont is in the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel. We're aware the citizens of Vermont are aware and those who are concerned about the closed Vermont Yankee, what exactly is the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel? Well as everybody knows things have quieted down quite a bit with regard to Vermont Yankee because it went as the industry says cold and dark at the end of 2014. Since then many of us have been monitoring the closure and the decommissioning activity at the plant. For many decades there was a panel called the Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel which met frequently and got reports for legislators about what was going on at the operating Vermont Yankee. With the closure the legislature updated the Vermont State Nuclear Advisory Panel and transformed it into the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel and the the Citizens Advisory Panel includes has included people appointed by the Speaker of the House, the President Pro Tem of the Senate and the Governor. And so we had citizens as well as members of state government including the Vermont Department of Public Service, the Vermont Health Department and and other entities including the owners of the plant which for the longest time was Entergy and is now North Star. And what the what the Commission or the panel does they meet regularly now they're down to about four meetings a year is act as a forum for not just the local community but the broader community including the states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire as well as the rest of Vermont. And it's an opportunity to ask the company questions as well as asking representatives of different state departments questions regarding the status of decommissioning at Vermont Yankee. And lately one of the questions that has been asked by a lot of different members of the public has to do with the high-level nuclear waste that's stored on the site, the spent fuel rods. Right and Chris what is the main issue about that? Is it about transporting the waste to points West? That's part of it. I think it's important for everyone to recognize that what we're dealing with here is a large amount of a very long lived radioactive, excuse me, radioactive waste stream. These are the irradiated fuel rods. They're now stored in 58 casks on site. These are sealed containers surrounded by concrete and they're sitting on a concrete pad if you will a parking lot kind of a fair. There is no repository at this point to take those those fuel rods and we're not alone there are fuel rods sitting in casks and in pools at a hundred sites around the country. What's significant right now is that there have been ongoing proposals to create what are called centralized interim storage facilities which they allege are temporary. One is proposed for West Texas and Andrews County and the other in New Mexico. The owners of Vermont Yankee North Star are also the principles of the people who run the dump and the proposed high level waste site in Andrews County, Texas waste control specialists. There's been a lot of dialogue about moving our waste, the waste created here in Vermont, to the site in Texas. This is being proposed more as a business plan than sound public policy. And so many of us think it's very important that this issue was raised and fully discussed before the nuclear decommissioning panel, the citizens advisory panel, because there are issues regarding environmental justice. Many, many people, including many powerful politicians in both New Mexico and Texas want nothing to do with our high level nuclear waste and we shouldn't be moving it to a temporary site. We should be looking for a permanent site based on sound public policy and science and I'll stop for a minute. Okay, well, you just brought up to me the word ownership comes to mind. So actually, Vermonters own this nuclear waste, and we also own responsibility for it. And so that the citizens advisory panel is there to give us information to discuss the issues. And do they have the power, Chris, to come to a conclusion or to what does their advice go to? Where does it go to the Vermont legislature or where? Yes, they they they issue advisory opinions to the legislature. They have written to our federal delegation regarding in 2015. They signed on to a letter with the other Yankee sites in New England, Maine Yankee, Yankee Row and Connecticut Yankee, seemingly supporting this concept of centralized interim storage. It kind of came across as, you know, anywhere we don't care where it goes just get it out of Vermont. And many of us see that as being extremely irresponsible and downright uncaring when it comes to these other communities. And it's our responsibility. Since we benefited from the electricity, seemingly benefited from the electricity created in producing these spent fuel rods, that we now, you know, take responsibility for what we had a part in creating and do the right thing. We need a sound public policy decisions and discussions. We need to base them on science. And at this point out, we really need to be patient because we really need a process if we're going to guard this material safely for hundreds of thousands of years. That's what's at stake here. So we have to do it and we have to do it right. You know, Chris, the the F 35s are roaring across the skies here. And I didn't hear the the end of what what you said are. But I think that you segwayed into how we as not members of the panel, how we we can as taking Vermonters taking responsibility. Well, how can we? How can we besides a program like this, and your many different organizations you belong to? How can we make our voices heard? And how can we act upon what we have learned? Well, there are websites you can visit for Citizens Awareness Network, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, which is n i r s dot o r g to learn more about these proposals regarding centralized interim storage of the spent fuel. It's also important that after you've learned more about the issue that we communicate with our politicians. In particular, Peter Welsh, Congressman Peter Welsh has been very supportive of this concept. And I along with many others have tried to convince him that moving this this waste temporarily to a to a site is irresponsible and dangerous, that we ought to be figured figuring out where it should go and use science and good public policy, and then only move it once. So communicating with Peter Welsh is important, as well as Bernie and Patrick Leahy. In addition to that, it's important that we let our opinions be known to the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel. And at each Nuclear Decommissioning or Endicap Panel meeting, there is an opportunity for the public to comment. And many of us do that regularly and routinely. In the age of COVID, we're now looking at the panel meeting remotely on a digital platform, which means, actually, that more people in the area, many people from Burlington who, not a lot of people drive from Burlington to Vernon to go to these meetings, but people from Burlington or Montpelier or any other part of the state now have the opportunity to be able to access the digital platform of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel and make their feelings known. And I would hope that here on the program you can put the website up for the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel. The next meeting is on September 21st, that's a Monday, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. We don't know the address for the digital address for the digital platform yet, but it will be available at the Department of Public Service Endicap website. Okay, great. Now, Chris, could you enlighten us about the time frame? Is it, did you say, am I correct in understanding that you said that the panel already has agreed with Congressman Welch that it's good to transport the waste out west? Seemingly, they signed on to a letter agreeing that centralized interim storage was a preferable option for nuclear waste here in New England. That's by no means a definitive position or a position that will, you know, see us packing up the waste and moving it anytime soon. For the most part, it's a federal action. And right now, there are hearings going on in both New Mexico and Texas with regard to the environmental impact of creating these high-level parking lot dumps. But the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which guides all of this activity, prohibits the creation of centralized interim storage sites in the absence of a permanent geologic repository being identified. So the companies like North Star and Waste Control Specialists are trying to work around the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and create a pilot project which has had problems. Congress has gone back and forth and now Congress is in, as we all know, a very precarious position with regard to creating any positive public policy on many issues because of what we're all facing right now with the pandemic and so forth. But right now, pending in Congress is a bill called HR 2699, which is the Nuclear Waste Policy Act Amendments of 2019 and 2020. That would be the bill that I know I'm going to ask Peter Welch not to support. And if he hears from enough people, maybe he'll listen to his constituents and not support it, it would amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to allow for the creation of a centralized interim storage facility, even if there wasn't an identified permanent repository, which is bad public policy. You just don't want to move this dangerous material twice, which brings me to the last and most important issue for Vermont itself is we should be fortifying and hardening the storage site in Vernon, because it's even if all of the nuclear industry's dreams came true, this material is not going to be moving any place anytime soon. So we'll harden that site and monitor it carefully. Chris, could you enlighten us what would be the steps to harden the site and what would be the process for that? The most important part of the hardening would be placing berms, earthen berms, tall earthen berms around the parking lot or pad, storage pad, that the casks full of this waste now sit on. In addition, you would want them spaced properly, you would want full-time 24-7 monitoring, which in our digital world is not an impossible feat. We would just want to make sure that the monitoring is carried out by responsible parties like the department of the Vermont Department of Health. Chris, at this point, who would pay for that? So who, if it's possible to do that, who would make that decision? Would the federal, would the feds make it or would the state government make it? To be honest with you, the the responsibility for it would lie with, as I understand it, with the owners, with North Star. And North Star has access to our money, meaning, you know, the decommissioning trust fund. The cost of hardening that that storage pad is not exorbitant and I'm certain they might be able to get a special permission from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to access the decommissioning fund to do that. Well, Chris too, I know this is going, this is a short program to activate Vermonters and you've given us many links to move forward on this. So could you give us some closing advice on this issue as we are, I hope, hopefully we're in the last quarter of the pandemic, but nobody really knows what is going to happen in in the near future. Well, it's unfortunate that a lot of the proceedings with regard to establishing these sites in New Mexico and Texas are going forward virtually instead of having robust public meetings. The people in New Mexico and Texas have asked repeatedly to just put it on hold for now and wait for better times to have what is an incredibly difficult discussion for the people living in those communities. We need, as a community here in Vermont, to be very aware of the environmental justice ramifications of what's going on here. This doesn't have to happen now and this doesn't have to target these communities if we as Vermonters don't want it. We should be taking responsibility for the waste that we created. We should be storing it safely and we really need, you know, to embrace the science and sound public policy that it's going to take to get us, not just as Vermonters but the entire country, to come up with an adequate and equitable solution to this problem. And it's bad news everywhere you turn when you talk about this kind of high-level nuclear waste. There really aren't any good solutions so we've got to find the best ones that we can and fight hard to see to it that we don't cut corners, that we don't kick the can down the road, that we in fact, you know, responsibly embrace the problem we've created and and do the right things. Thank you. Thank you so much Chris Williams and we will continue this discussion as the issue is not going to go away soon and thank you for your many, many decades being a peace activist and anti-nuclear activist. You are a hero to many of us, Chris Williams, from Monday He Decommissioning Alliance Citizens Awareness Network and the other organization. The Nuclear Information and Resource Service, NIRS.org, based in Washington DC and thank you for this program, Margaret, and your commitment to to keeping the public informed on these important issues as boring as they may be sometimes. Oh, but as time leak, okay, on onward together. Thank you, Chris Williams. Thanks, Channel 17, Center for Media and Democracy. Till next time.