 Welcome viewers to our ongoing program nuclear free future conversation coming to you from channel 17 Center for media and democracy town meeting TV here in Burlington, Vermont. We are still going through covert time we are remote from each other but close in our, our desire or our aim to get the message out about a nuclear free future. So, the title of our program is 76 years of nuclear fallout since from Hiroshima to today. So we're coming up to the 76th commemoration of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6 1945, and following August 9 Nagasaki. So, welcome to my returning guests from the 75th year that we commemorated last year, Kevin camps from beyond nuclear nuclear waste specialist. Welcome back Kevin thank you so much for returning. Thanks for having me Margaret. And Alfred Meyer from physicians for social responsibility. Thank you so much for returning Alfred. It's my great pleasure to be with all of you. It's a pleasure to see you today. And that's a word words are so strange, you know to use a pleasure, pleasure to see you it's, it's, and also miracles a miracle, what that we can go on in any way that this program is going into its 15th year. And it's, it's with gratitude to both the TV station channel 17 town town meeting TV center for media and democracy, and to my wonderful guests who represent the activists and the people who are getting things done out there that's you, Kevin camps and and Alfred Meyer so let's start off with the advisory that Kevin camps you sent me just just the other day, what about new US Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing coming soon. And Alfred please chime in on this because, of course it's it's a vital for positions for social responsibility also. So, Kevin, tell us what's what's happening something is imminent, and something's happening soon. Yes, our coalition. The other day put out this media advisory about the imminence of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing a high level radioactive waste dump in Texas but right on the border with New Mexico. And as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff is about to publish the final environmental impact statement and the final safety evaluation report for what's called interim storage partners consolidated interim storage facility. And a Vermont connection is that the same companies that want to open this high level waste dump in Texas are the same companies that are decommissioning Vermont Yankee so up in Vermont they call themselves north star. In Texas they call themselves interim storage partners, and some of the companies behind these names include waste control specialists, which is a national low level radioactive waste dump at the same location. And another company is called Orano, which used to be called Arriva, which was called Kojima before that. It's a French nuclear giant that has set up shop in the United States. So, once the NRC staff publishes those documents, then the NRC chairman has indicated that the commission, the currently three directors of the agency will act pretty quickly in approving the dump. And we're hearing that that final approval could happen in mid September. So that media advisory was just to get the word out to reporters to watch for all these shoes about to drop. And I just wanted to add real quickly to tie it into the nuclear weapons issue that, you know, New Mexico, which is a majority minority state has been targeted by the nuclear establishment. For the longest time in history of any place in the United States, it began with Los Alamos establishment in 1943, and one of those anniversary dates that we always have to keep in mind, in addition to Hiroshima and Nagasaki is Trinity, the first atomic blast in world history, which took place on July 16 of 1945. It was a practice run for what would follow in Nagasaki, because they were identical bombs they were plutonium designs. They needed to be tested at first because they were so complex to make sure they'd work. The Hiroshima bomb a uranium bomb was so straightforward that they knew that it would work, and they didn't even test it but ironically enough, there's more than one July 16 in New Mexico. There's also the church rock uranium tailing spill, which took place in 1979 in Northwest New Mexico. One of the worst radiological releases into the environment in US history, and just downstream is a Navajo Dine community. And that's their sole source of drinking water irrigation water for their flocks of sheep. And then just to finish on July 16 of 2018 in its ghoulish tone deafness, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced the beginning of the licensing for not the Texas dump, but a sister dump in New Mexico just 40 miles from the Texas dump. And that's called Holtec. And between the two consolidated interim storage facilities, a grand total of more than 200,000 metric tons of high level radioactive waste would probably get stuck there permanently, and that's more than twice what exists already in this country. And astounding information and Alfred, could you come in with the positions for social responsibility, and where you, your organization is on this issue. Yes, I will but I want to start out following up with Kevin's framing of this discussion. So this isn't actually a formal PSR position, but then I'll get around to why our organization feels that the health implications and these we're talking about long term, you know, 12,000 generation long impacts on all living things on the face of the earth. This is why nuclear weapons, nuclear waste and nuclear pollution are unique in the threats to our existence on earth. And even if a bomb were never ever used, just to possess them, harms those, the harms us who do possess them. And, but to pick up from where Kevin was talking about with the interim waste storage. It makes you realize that looking at these corporations is a good thing to do because it's a huge vast industry, which was constructed in the 1942 onwards in great secrecy because it was such a top level military secret everything was siloed. So, so many facilities around the country were open but nobody knew how they all linked together, except for very few people. And vast amounts of money were put into it and it created an industry in the 40s, the same size as that then automobile industry. And I think with automobiles we appreciate that you know a car is so many things it's it's the seats you sit in the steering wheel and the handles and the knobs of the radio and you know so on so forth it's it's fast. And that's what we're up against, or that's what's going on and their Achilles heel has always been waste, and they're purported the actual. I think you could make an argument. Kevin tell me if you would disagree with this but the 1982 of the Waste Policy Act actually set up a fairly scientifically sound process for choosing a location for a deep geologic repository and looking primarily at granite formations around the country some salt formations but and it was to have one in the east side of the country one of the west side of the country actually most of the irradiated so called spent nuclear fuel is in the east coast. But anyway, this was short circuited in 1987 with an amendment to that act, which just in Congress's wisdom, Nevada at the time being quite weak state politically and very few people living in it. It's the Yucca mountain, which is made out of soft chorus volcanic material, located in the area of seismic and volcanic activity. And wouldn't you know it happens to be over a very important aquifer source and drinking water for agricultural people animals. And one of the reasons it is a failed project and dead is that it was, you know, not a sound process. But getting rid of the waste is so critical. Not far in my background here in Maine, about eight miles as the crow flies over in Wisconsin Maine are 56 tasks of high level nuclear fuel at the main Yankee. So this isn't a significant problem. And my particular viewpoint is that the point of the whole nuclear enterprise is to make nuclear weapons. And so when we're talking about commemorating Hiroshima, and the horror that was wreaked upon humanity by that by the United States of America, that, you know, that's the point of this whole endeavor and that the nuclear power is really just a cover of weapons. It is a product by product of not say a product of the 1953 Eisenhower Adams for peace program, which was an endeavor to put a happy smiley face on the horror that the atom represented through the bombings. And we actually our government set up nuclear programs around the world and in tens of countries. You know, spread nuclear knowledge and this vast promise of, you know, electricity to cheap to meter. But anyway, for PSR. And then let me just round out here for the moment. PSR realizes that the nuclear fuel chain is horrifically polluting and damaging to people all along its many steps. It's it like fossil fuels as an extractive industry, an extractive industry requires a sacrifice of people and places. And it's a connection to DNA at church. So many of the uranium mines are DNA land is like 15,000 or so just abandoned holes in the ground with huge piles of radioactive dust out back from where the people live. It's a horrific story. But I think we need to really work to make sure there's no money for nuclear power in the upcoming infrastructure and jobs bills that this is a completely misguided effort. And it actually obstructs and prevents us from moving to the, an upgraded different design electrical system. So I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you so much Alfred and but Kevin, could you go back to what what Alfred just mentioned the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and, and what what strikes me very as we're talking right now is how we can't unravel the past that once something is done that there's no going back to fix it. But could you address the what happened with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Well, Alfred's description was spot on. I mean, there were supposed to be two dumps in this country, one in the east one in the west and indeed 90% of the waste is in the eastern half of the country, 75% east of the Mississippi. And so the states that were being looked at in the 1980s the early to mid 1980s included Sobego Lake and Maine, a couple sites in New Hampshire, seven sites in Vermont, this was granite formations. Other states being looked at in the east included Michigan and Wisconsin and Minnesota. And through raw politics, those more populous more politically powerful eastern states said, no thanks not us, and they actually got instituted into law that granite could not be looked at anymore, even though it's probably the best geologic medium for this purpose. So the western states that were left were Texas and death Smith County, Washington State near the Hanford nuclear reservation and Yucca Mountain Nevada, which is Western Shoshone Indian land, and Washington State and Texas were powerful states in fact, between them they shared the house majority leader and the speaker of the house at the time, and had so many more members in the US House of Representatives and so kind of long story short, they messed with the wrong rookie senator when they passed what's become known as the screw Nevada bill. His name is Harry Reid, and he's still with us he became Democratic leader of the Senate. And the good news, in a lot of ways, is that Nevada fought off the Yucca Mountain dump for the past 33 years and they had a lot of help. I mentioned the Western Shoshone, they've been engaged in the battle the whole time, they do not consent the state of Nevada does not consent. And they've been joined by more than 1000 environmental groups over that past 33 years, and that dump has been stopped dead in its tracks. Ironically enough, the consolidated interim storage facilities and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission still assume that Yucca Mountain is going to be the dump site that's how they get away with calling their schemes interim, because it's only going to be there for 40 maybe 100 years then it's going to go to Yucca. Well, it's not going to go to Yucca. Even the Biden administration recognizes that Yucca is not going to happen. So it's just dilemmas and confusion and deception and to bring it to the present. Just last week, the Texas State Legislature Democrats, more than 60 of them said, we do not consent to this dump in Texas. David Abbott, who's a very conservative Republican to put it politely, has said he does not consent. Texas does not consent to the dump targeted at it. New Mexico, which is largely Democrat in terms of elected officials at this point has said they do not consent. The Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm, a former governor of Michigan, a former attorney general of Michigan, is talking about consent-based siting for consolidated interim storage facilities. Well, if she's being sincere, then these sites in Texas and New Mexico and Nevada have to all be taken off the table because they do not consent. That's where we're at. Right where we were in 1957, when the first commercial irradiated nuclear fuel was generated at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, we do not have an answer to this very serious high-risk problem that will last forever. So we're kind of in a pickle and we need to stop making it. We need to shut the reactors down like the people of Vermont demanded at Vermont Yankee. And one part of the good news of that is that no more high-level radioactive waste, for which we have no answer, will be generated anymore. That's what we need to do. But, Kevin, bringing up again the decision that's, it is a decision that's going to be made in the very near future by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. What is your fear of that? What is the main, and what is your prediction of what's going to happen? Well, as with Yucca Mountain and as with previous consolidated interim storage facilities, like the one that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission actually licensed at the Skull Valley Go-Shoots Indian Reservation in Utah, we will not stop fighting. Even though they licensed Skull Valley for one of these parking lot surface storage dumps, they never got away with it. The state of Utah rose up and put a stop to it with allies across the country along the transportation routes. We will do the same. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a rubber stamp agency. They do whatever the industry asks of them or tells them to do, and they do it consistently. So we knew from the start several years ago that the NRC would license these facilities, despite it all. And so we have prepared. We are ready to go to court as soon as these licenses are granted. We already have our paperwork filed with the second highest court in the land, the D.C. Court of Appeals. And we will fight tooth and nail in the courts. We will fight tooth and nail in the streets and along the transportation routes and we will stop these dumps come heller high water. But that leaves us with the dilemma that Alfred mentioned that there is high level radioactive waste around this country on the seacoast with rising sea levels and evermore extreme hurricanes and winter storms. There's high level radioactive waste 40 miles from where I sit on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. And you name the river you name the the ecosystem in this country that is being put at risk by high level radioactive waste that we have to figure out how to safeguard how to secure how to isolate from the living for at least a million years into the future. That is the curse on all future generations that nuclear power has brought to us. But as I say, I'm suggesting that you could add to that very eloquent description, Kevin, that that's in pursuit of nuclear weapons. That it's as our dear friend, Mr. Keegan says, you know, electricity is an incidental byproduct of the actual endeavor. And the Atlantic Council, which is a very top flight, you know mainstream think tank in Washington DC has quite a number of reports on the connection between nuclear power, national security and one of them. The figure of $42.8 billion that the commercial nuclear industry assists the weapons production industry with or enterprise fashion call it the enterprise. In 2017 X Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz published a report that talked about how nuclear power is an essential enabler of national security. And he talks about how many companies directly affiliated with weapons production of nuclear power but it that all ties into the weapons are located in which states and as I mentioned earlier this is a vast industry. And if I also if I could just chime in on your use of the Royal we Kevin that I really would invite all the viewers out there to join us. Kevin's organization is beyond nuclear.org. My organization positions social responsibility is PSR.org. If you go to those websites you'll find a vast trove of latest news items background papers and histories and things. Also opportunities to take action to learn more and it's really important that all of us really take part in this because the regulatory industry is not regulating it's it's not looking after us in any way shape or form we're in great danger. To move this stuff twice is twice as bad. That presumes that there would be an interim than a final storage but as Kevin noted the most likely outcome is that the interim will if so facto become permanent because it won't have any place to go. And meanwhile, you know, all of us should pay attention to any decommissioning efforts around where you live, because this is a quite new and Wild West territory of actions. And Kevin mentioned the financial kind of vertical integration of this industry of just moving this terribly dangerous stuff, you know, dumping it on somebody's land someplace and saying that that finishes the job. This does not at all that this stuff is as we've made it in a sense a little bit of the sun here on Earth, and we know not what to do with it. And as Kevin said stop making more number one. And then we should really devote these huge resources that currently are going weapons programs and put them into cleanup and environmental programs. And I'll let your elected officials know and take part in, you know, local organizations but but please feel free to contact either positions for social responsibility or ban nuclear. And it's a very human thing to want to get rid of what is plaguing you around your house, right, like if the issue here of putting the Vermont Yankee nuclear waste onto what Kevin, Kevin has described, and on other programs here and the way on beyond nuclear on trains and on on on on trucks on ships and transporting this very high level waste and low level waste also out west just to get it out of here. And there are many people who who just want that even if they were activists in the in shutting down Vermont Yankee it's just get it get it out now. We're used to the idea of you throw away trash, you know, and maybe a truck comes and picks it up in your neighborhood and, and it's gone. But this stuff never goes there is no way you can't throw it away it's, it's, you know, the misleading term of spent nuclear fuel the fuel rods that have been visioned for a couple of years or so. spent it's like your gas in your car you put gas in the tank you drive around for a while there's empty you need to put more in that's, you know, the gas is spent, but with nuclear fuel, those irradiated fuel rods are horrifically hot in both temperature and radiation and will be for tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands even some of the isotopes. And tens of millions of years, the half life, you know, I mean it's this is such a preposterous endeavor and it's been the centerpiece of our nation security pro planning, you know, and the nuclear threat and so called deterrence and I mean, I'm no fan of the North Korean government and its leaders, but to me after George W. Bush identified North Korea is one of the three parts of the axis of evil. We invaded Iraq so I guess we kind of mean what we're saying. The fact that they would develop nuclear weapons as a defensive measure, we're just upping the ante at a time when our conventional forces are bigger than anything else on the world. But of course we have military bases spread vastly throughout the world I get the number of hundreds of bases, foreign bases loaded with our troops. And Kevin, can you the start treaty comes to mind the strategic. Would you talk about the start treaty which which just stopped in February right of 2021 what is what's going on with that. A lot of treaties about nuclear weapons between the United States and the former Soviet Union now Russia have expired. There is some hope that Biden and Putin may sit down like Reagan and Gorbachev did decades ago, and restart some of these treaties backup. It's a very hopeful treaty, and this is the global grassroots essentially the anti nuclear weapons groups the anti proliferation groups, the Hibakasha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the downwinders, including in New Mexico but also Nevada, Utah, and so many other places in this country alone and hammered out the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons just a few years ago. This past January 22nd that treaty went into effect internationally, because more than 50 countries had ratified it. The United States and all the other nuclear weapons powers have stood aside, they do not regard it as a lot that applies to them. So fair to say now just like with chemical weapons, biological weapons, landmines, these weapons systems that are unacceptable in a civilized world nuclear weapons are now regarded that way under finding international law as well so if the United States wants to build a rogue country and behave as an international outlaw in the eyes of the world I guess that's its choice but we really need to sober up, wake up and join the world community before it's too late. And I'll quote Henry Kissinger on this one, you know, the man who built his entire career based on the power of nuclear weapons ultimately and the conventional military that Alfred mentioned. In 2007 was joined by a number of others, a bipartisan group that became referred to as the four horsemen of the nuclear apocalypse to say that we need to abolish our nuclear weapons. The United States needs to abolish its nuclear weapons to set an example for the rest of the world, because the only existential threat that the United States faces is nuclear weaponry aimed at it by countries like Russia. I'll take it from Henry Kissinger on that one. We had better abolish nuclear weapons before they abolish us as a species and as a planet. And as a little backstory about that United Nations treaty the prohibition, the treaty for the prohibition of nuclear weapons. And then I want to share this again with the viewers to encourage them to join, join this effort. The whole concept actually came up with from a small group meeting, mostly women actually and one Australian male physician. And they came up with the concept of not going the typical nuclear pathways of the United Nations because that would go through the Security Council and the Security Council. And that's five permanent members with veto power or guess what nuclear weapons states. So even at the UN, you know this committee which it has unusual extraordinary world decision making power is permanently headed by nuclear weapons armed countries. So this effort, instead, went to the General Assembly. And as it to me it feels like democracy broke out at the United Nations because all it's all the small countries that have no nuclear power or nuclear weapons programs whatsoever. So these are the ones that are going to suffer from the famine created by the nuclear winter ship some small collaboration, take place with nuclear weapons. And so it was all the kind of the common people that the ordinary countries that 122 or so that signed it. They were able to make this move forward and at the time that moving forward, wouldn't you know, the United Nations, UN ambassador, the French UN ambassador and the United Kingdoms, UN ambassadors all held a press conference denouncing this treaty that this would impair the great progress towards disarmament that they were making under the current setup. And I just hasten to note that that great progress is a complete rebuilding and of the nuclear weapons complex across Korea and across the world, and making whole new families and nuclear weapons. So, you know, it's the wrong direction this. Again, I think we're in a time in history where democracy could well be our, the answer to our problems and it's gravely endangered. So, time is is running out for our short program and I'm so grateful that you came again to us. Well, let's let's stop with your hopes and fears, if you if you would tell us what your, your hope is and what your fear is or maybe to to reverse that and what is your fear first and then your hope. And then we'll, we'll end with that with gratitude. So, Kevin. Yeah, I'm reminded when you mentioned fear, Martin Luther King gave a powerful sermon in Detroit in the early 1960s and I just happened to get a hold of an audio cassette copy of it when I visited the church they have a source into and there's peace center there and they had the audio cassettes for sale. And what he pointed out is that there is paralyzing fear and there's healthy fear paralyzing fear. Living in a urban downtown and you're afraid to be attacked by a cobra that probably is not in your apartment. That's a paralyzing fear that is unreasonable, not rational, but healthy fear exists to keep us safe, and to keep us healthy to keep us away from danger. So it's certainly reasonable and rational to be afraid of nuclear weapons and nuclear power and radioactive waste they are deadly and hazardous. So that's kind of what fuels our anti nuclear activism is having this healthy fear and taking action about it and that's where the hope comes from is taking the action. And so the hope is that, like Alfred just mentioned this $1.7 trillion nuclear renovation plan in the United States, which is really a nuclear nuclear weapons expansion plan can be stopped. It's not dead in its tracks. The same on the nuclear power side of the coin where, just as we speak, at least 10s of billions of dollars if not hundreds of billions of dollars could be thrown at the nuclear power industry for both new and old reactors. We need to stop that in Congress we need to stop that with the Biden administration but it's going to take a lot of work because the nuclear industry, its lobby is so powerful, they really have their claws into this country politically, economically. So those are the hopes and fears that we live with and work with every day. And before I close I just want to encourage folks to go to our websites and there you will find on the beyond nuclear website under the nuclear weapons tab is a listing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki operations around the country and around the world. So find one near you if there isn't one near you organize one there's still some time to organize you know a simple candlelight vigil on August 6 and August 9 and or invite some speakers and commemorate these important annual markings of these horrific, horrific nuclear attacks by the United States on Japan. And I know PSR also has a Hiroshima and Nagasaki events listing to thank you Kevin Alfred closing words please. Yes well physician social responsibility recognizes to existential threats to life as we know it on earth. One of them is nuclear catastrophe, the other is climate catastrophe, and I would suggest we're on thin ice in both regards. So I would say that my fear is that there will be some experience or multiple experiences of such catastrophes taking place when we see in China just a couple of weeks ago, a rainstorm which dumped eight inches of water in one hour. Eight inches of water in one hour flooded the tunnels the subways, you know, cause you know untold damage and death. But this is the new normal. And the heat waves, you know, Portland, Oregon, 116 degrees Fahrenheit, not the town I knew, but so so my fear is, you know, there'll be a ecological and or, I mean a nuclear catastrophe leads to an ecological catastrophe. So that's my worry. My great hope and Margaret I want to thank you for having a show like this and getting this word out to people because my great hope is working together with other people to take action to solve these problems and that we will realize that in fact, we are one world that the air we breathe, though the water we drink the, you know, chemical releases that we put into the environment affect all of us, and that we need to work and cooperate together. There are so many different ways we can do things we need to make quick radical transformation. We have less than 10 years to address the climate climate catastrophe like better turnberry says our house is on fire. We need to do something and there are things to do. But I'll just second what Kevin said, sometimes when people learn the field I work in. They say, Oh my, aren't you really depressed all the time I mean these are such overwhelming issues. And my ready, happy answer always is let me tell you about the fine people I work with on these issues, such as Kevin, such as yourself, Margaret that and this, this is our hope and salvation and it's, it can be done, but we need to do it. So go to PSR.org PSR has chapters around the country and if you don't find one near you contact the office and we'll get in touch with you. Thank you so much Kevin camps and Alfred Meyer. I, I was remiss not to mention that there's a Vermont nuclear decommissioning community advisory panel meeting on September 20 from six to 9pm. And it's supposed to take place in person, but also I believe you can plug in remotely. So Vermonters, please get involved with that and speak your piece. There are huge issues of environmental justice at stake in terms of both the low and high level waste that's being talked about there. So, I encourage people on September 20 if you can plug into that meeting. It's just 9pm, the nuclear decommissioning community advisory panel. Okay, thank you. And we will be there, Vermont will be there. And thank you so much both of you. Till next time and take care. Thank you channel 17. Thank you Kevin thank you Alfred. Goodbye for now. See you. Bye bye.