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Envision a World without Nuclear Weapons

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Where do Colorado candidates stand on this issue?

May 11, 2018 By Bob Kinsey

The plan to revive Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility will involve movement of nuclear waste from power plants through Colorado. That is the immediate issue. The long term issue is the fact that nuclear power is being touted as a cost effective alternative to fossil fuels but the cost of long term storage of nuclear “waste” is not included in this cost per kilowatt hour. Nor is the cost of liability for clean up from a power plant disaster. Who is the bearer of this cost? YOU ARE. (Check out the Price-Anderson Act) And this also includes the cost of long term storage of nuclear “waste” from the production of new nuclear weapons. (The National Security Administration (NNSA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) now plan “capitalizing” a new production system at two locations for up to 80 Plutonium Pits per year. This is a part of a 1.2 Trillion dollar “modernization” of our nuclear bomb capabilities. Useable nuclear weapons to come.) Yet the nuclear industry–military and civilian– have yet no clue how to responsibly care for all their plutonium waste for the next 240,000 years. Scientists, by the way, say there is no evidence that the current supply of plutonium pits is in anyway losing effectiveness over time and certify their reliability for at least 80 more years. Yes that includes all the decommissioned warheads in storage.

Nuclear waste issue divides candidates
By Michael Coleman / Journal Washington Bureau
Friday, May 11th, 2018 at 12:05am
WASHINGTON – A U.S. House vote on Thursday to revive Yucca Mountain as a
repository for nuclear waste in Nevada revealed the different views of
two candidates for governor of New Mexico on storing the waste
temporarily in the state.

The House approved legislation 340-72 that would jump-start the
long-mothballed nuclear waste facility in Nevada, despite the opposition
of Nevada lawmakers. Under the House bill, an interim storage site would
be created to store the waste before it is permanently disposed of in
Nevada.

Holtec International has applied for an interim storage license for a
site in Lea County in southeastern New Mexico. The Eddy-Lea Energy
Alliance, a long-standing consortium of the cities of Carlsbad and
Hobbs, and Lea and Eddy counties, is backing the move, with some
community support. Backers of putting an interim storage site in New
Mexico point to economic development and jobs that would result.
Opponents cast it as a safety hazard that expands New Mexico’s role as a
nuclear dumping ground. The nation’s nuclear industry is in search of
new places to put spent nuclear fuel, which is being housed in makeshift
sites at reactors around the country.

Rep. Steve Pearce, a Republican running for governor of New Mexico,
voted for the bill Thursday. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat
also running for governor, voted against it. Pearce characterized the
bill as good for national security.

“This project, with community support, would continue to cement New
Mexico as a national leader in nuclear energy production, development
and disposal,” Pearce said after the vote. “I’ve always supported an
all-of-the-above energy plan that unleashes America’s domestic energy
production, and a part of that includes safely storing spent nuclear
fuel to advance our nation’s defense strategy.”

Lujan Grisham said that if Holtec was licensed as a temporary storage
facility and then Yucca Mountain never opened, New Mexico would be stuck
with the waste.

“This bill will only create more uncertainty by creating a dangerous
loophole that could permanently strand nuclear waste in New Mexico
without any guarantee that a long-term strategy will eventually be
agreed upon,” Lujan Grisham said. “Storing and transporting nuclear
waste is incredibly dangerous. Singling out New Mexico and Nevada, and
making massive policy changes based purely on political considerations
is completely irresponsible.”

The nuclear industry has said temporary storage is a critical need
because reopening Yucca Mountain would take years or even decades.

Don Hancock, director of the Nuclear Waste Safety program and
administrator at the Southwest Research and Information Center in
Albuquerque, said the bill approved by the House on Thursday would
expand potential nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain from 63,000
metric tons to 110,000 metric tons. He also said it would shift
temporary storage costs from private industry to taxpayers.

The bill now goes to the Senate and Nevada’s senators have vowed to try
to derail it.

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Disarmament Quotes

A world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons…. Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to humanity and our habitat…. Others subscribe to Churchill’s assertion ‘Peace is the sturdy child of terror.’ For me, such a peace is a wretched offspring, a peace that condemns us to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety, a peace that codifies mankind’s most murderous instincts….The beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste.

General Lee Butler Former Commander, Strategic Air Command, April 28, 1996

We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal ... 

George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, January 4, 2007

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending he sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --spoken to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 1953

Dwight Eisenhower US President 1953-1961

Now, understand, this matters to people everywhere. One nuclear weapon exploded in one city -– be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague –- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be -– for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival. 

Former President Barack Obama, April 5, 2009

Elimination of nuclear weapons, so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not. 

Robert McNamara Former U.S. Secretary of Defense

“Everything I did at Kings Bay was a result of my faith and my commitment to challenge the idols whose only purpose is to destroy human life on an unimaginable scale. I went to Kings Bay to use my body to refuse to bow down to these idols. I went to try to bring attention to the idolatry that it is requiring of our nation and its people. I went in a spirit of prayer and repentance. I went in hope that this witness might invite other people to reflect on the obscenity and on the idolatry that it is before God.”

Liz McAlister Kings Bay Protestor 2019

We are prone to self-righteousness if we call ourselves peacemakers, and yet do not perceive how the peace issue cuts through all the economic and social issues that we often try to keep separate. If the race for nuclear arms is encouraged by our fear of losing the affluent ways of life that we have taken for granted, then we must see how our fears and desires have left so many other human beings naked and hungry.

Malsolm Warford "The Church's Role in a Nuclear Age

Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. We scientists recognise our inescapable responsibility to carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of atomic energy and its implication for society. In this lies our only security and our only hope - we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death. 

Albert Einstein, January 22, 1947

We seek the elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. 

Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 21, 1985

It is my fervent goal and hope…that we will some day no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth. 

Ronald Reagan, October 20, 1986

[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

5-Star Admiral William D. Leahy Chief of Staff to President's Roosevelt and Truman, leader of Combined US-UK Chiefs of Staff during WWII

It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason. 

Mikhail Gorbachev, 1995

There are still thousands of warheads loaded on operational systems and standing on high states of alert on virtually hair-trigger posture. And you have to ask yourself: Why is that? Who is the enemy? What is the threat? 

U.S. General Lee Butler Former Commander in Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command in 1991-92

Over the past 15 years, the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons has been so much on the back burner that it will take a true political breakthrough and a major intellectual effort to achieve success in this endeavor.

Mikhail Gorbachev, January 31, 2007

So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see... 

Mahatma Gandhi from The Essential Gandhi, Louis Fisher, ed.

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