Beyond Nuclear Bulletin
February 2, 2023
NO NUCLEAR WAR
Support the resolution

With the growing risk that the war in Ukraine could involve the use of nuclear weapons, Beyond Nuclear has signed a letter of support for H. Res. 77, introduced by US Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR).

The resolution calls on the United States to embrace the goals and provisions of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and to adopt Back from the Brink policy prescriptions including: nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements with Russia, China and other nuclear armed states; renunciation of first use of nuclear weapons; cancellation of the US nuclear arsenal “upgrade”; and an end to sole authority of the US President to launch nuclear weapons.Your group can sign on.
DEVIL NUKE WON'T DIE
CA Nuke wants tax dollars to reopen

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has rejected Pacific Gas & Electric’s (PG&E) request to resume the federal review of a twenty year license renewal application for California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear station that was allowed to lapse in 2016. The company is now seeking to renew the operating license with financial support of the Biden Administration’s Civil Nuclear Credit Program passed by Congress in 2022. With NRC’s rejection, PG&E intends to resubmit an application with updated safety and environmental analyses in December 2023. The reapplication will face legal opposition. The NRC is presently reviewing a utility exemption request to allow the reactors’ continued operation during the application review process beyond the reactor expiration dates in November 2024 and August 2025.
MOBILE CHORNOBYL
A Tale of Two Baltimore Tunnels

President Biden was just in Baltimore, touting billions of dollars for repair of a 150-year-old rail tunnel, the Baltimore & Potomac. The nearby Howard Street Tunnel, around 130-years-old, experienced an infamous rail fire in 2001. The tunnel is a potential route for high-level radioactive waste transport, but luckily no irradiated nuclear fuel was aboard that day. Dr. Marvin Resnikoff, commissioned by the State of Nevada, studied what could have happened had a Holtec container of spent nuclear fuel been in that fire. Depending on how long residents remained in contaminated areas, between 9 and nearly 32,000 people would eventually have died of cancer. Cleanup would have cost nearly $14 billion (more than $23 billion in today's dollars).
DOE & NUKE WASTE
Agency 25 Years in Arrears

Jan. 31, 2023 marked a quarter-century since the U.S. Department of Energy first partially breached its Standard Contract with nuclear power industry owners of high-level radioactive waste (HLRW), commercial irradiated nuclear fuel. Federal courts have awarded those spent nuclear fuel title holders damages ever since, which are paid out from the U.S. Treasury's Judgement Fund using taxpayer dollars. Currently, $2.2 million per day, or $800 million per year, flow from taxpayer to nuclear industry, with no end in sight. This is supposed to compensate private owners for storage costs until DOE takes title, but so many corners are cut on wet pool and dry cask storage that most to all the funding, shockingly, represents pure profit.