Posts belonging to Category Nuclear

Gallup and Church Rock, N.M. —The public is invited to two important events Saturday, July 16 to learn more about New Mexico’s unique position in the nuclear fuel cycle and acknowledge some of the painful history.  July 16 is significant for many reasons including the fact that the nuclear age was ushered in with the world’s first atomic detonation at Trinity Site on July 16, 1945.

The first event, the “Uranium Legacy Remembrance Day” takes place outside of Church Rock at the largest radioactive spill site in U.S. history. “Making Waves,” the second event, will be held in the Calvin Hall on the Gallup campus of the University of New Mexico.

“In response to many things including the Las Conchas fire burning on and around the Los Alamos National Laboratory now, the 66th anniversary of the Trinity Site, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in March and the 32nd anniversary of the Church Rock disaster (which also occurred on July 16), our community is organizing these two important events,” says Nadine Padilla, Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment (MASE). “The dangers of all things nuclear are forefront on minds worldwide. I’d like to thank Leona Morgan, Mike Butler, Teddy Nez, Robert Tohe and everyone involved for organizing these events. I hope the public can join us to learn more about these critical issues and help us find ways to protect our land and people from toxic uranium mining.”

URANIUM REMEMBRANCE DAY
Thirty two years ago onJuly 16, 1979 United Nuclear Corporation’s dam broke,in what is now known as the Church Rock disaster. More than 93 million gallons of liquid toxic waste were released into the Puerco River in Church Rock, N .M. Thousands of residents live with the lasting effects from this radioactive spill to this day. Teddy Nez and the Red Water Pond RoadAssociation have been working on remediation and healing from this catastrophe since that time.

In light of the renewed interest of uranium mining, the fires around Los Alamos and the recent disaster in Japan, the organizers felt it is especially important to host the event this year. The health effects of past mining and the Church Rock disaster will be remembered for many generations and is something the community is dealing with to this day. There has been no uranium waste clean-up in the past 40 years which impacts all of the areas around the spill including the Coyote Canyon, Standing Rock, Nahodishgish, Pinedale and Church Rock Chapters of the Navajo Nation.

Uranium Remembrance Day will start at 7 a.m. with a prayer at Teddy Nez’s home on Red Water Pond Road. People will then march to the site of the spill. Numerous elected officials and community leaders including Senator Lovejoy, Representative Ben Ray Luján and Clancy Tenley from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will be speaking about the health and environmental effects of the uranium. The first commemorative march took place in 2009 on the 30th Anniversary of the spill. That event ended with a proclamation signing by the President of the Navajo Nation Joe Shirley reinstating the 2005 Diné Natural Resources Protection Act which bans uranium processing on the Navajo Nation.

MAKING WAVES
“Making Waves,” takes place Saturday, July 16, 5-7 p.m. at Calvin Hall on the UNM Gallup campus and will address t he full nuclear fuel cycle and the resulting radioactive contamination. The event is hosted by community leaders and residents from New Mexico and Arizona living near nuclear activities.

“We are organizing this event to educate the public about the dangers of uranium mining and nuclear industry in the Southwest,” says Leona Morgan, co-organizer of the event and the Eastern Navajo Diné Against Uranium Mining Coordinator. “New Mexico holds an important and unique place in the nuclear fuel cycle. Unfortunately the nuclear industry has wreaked havoc on Southwestern communities; from weapons development and storage to uranium mining, milling,enrichment and disposal for more than 60 years. There are hundreds of families in New Mexico who have suffered health and environmental effects from the nuclear cycle and nuclear proliferation.”

New Mexico is home to Los Alamos National Labs, Sandia National Labs, Uranium Enrichment Plant (URENCO), Kirtland Air Force Base (AFB), Holloman AFB, Cannon AFB, the Trinity Site, and the Waste Isolation Pilot Project. In addition, there are numerous active and abandoned uranium mines and mills in all Four Corners states; New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah.

“Making Waves” will include screenings of short films and a panel discussion. Panelists include Robert Tohe from the Sierra Club’s Environmental Justice (EJ) office and Laura Watchempino from the Pueblo of Acoma. Tohe’s department works with tribes and community groups to protect their resources from contamination. Watchempino has worked for her tribe protecting and managing tribal water resources. She served as attorney for Indian Pueblo Legal Services in New Mexico in the 1980s and is currently working on the designation of nuclear free zones to combat the proliferation of the nuclear fuel cycle, from uranium mining and processing to the long-term disposal of the toxic radioactive wastes generated. Watchempino states that every part of the cycle poses dangers to the surrounding water, air, soil, human health and other life forms.

Organizers of these events are currently addressing requests for permits for uranium mining in and around the Grants mineral belt and stand united that they should not be granted in the aftermath of the health and environmental devastation in New Mexico. These groups are committed to see the United States transition from dirty and unsafe energy sources into renewable energy and embrace a clean and safe future.

These events are organized by members of the Multicultural Alliance for a Safe Environment. www.masecoalition.org

WHAT: Uranium Remembrance Day
WHERE: 29E Red Water Pond Road, (.5 miles west off end of. Rt. 566, 11.5 miles north of Church Rock)
WHEN: 7 a.m. Prayer; 8-10 a.m. March to site; 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Program
INFO: Teddy Nez, 505-879-2910, tntnez@yahoo.com

WHAT: Making Waves
WHERE: Calvin Hall, University of New Mexico – Gallup 705 Gurley Ave. Gallup, NM 87301
WHEN: Saturday, July 16, 2011, 5-7 p.m.
INFO: Leona Morgan, 505-879-8547, leona.morgan@yahoo.com

INTERVIEWS AND IMAGES ARE AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST

CONTACT:
Jennifer Marshall, 505-231-1776
jennifer@jmarshallplan.com
www.jmarshallplan.com

You’re invited to learn more about the current uranium projects going on in the Four Corners area and to discover what you can do to protect our land, our water, our air, and our people.

The Making Waves event will feature two short films on environmental justice struggles in Japan and the Southwest, followed by a panel discussion with speakers from areas affected by the nuclear fuel chain.

see attached flier for more information

When: Saturday, July 16th
Where: Red Water Pond Road Community
0.5 miles West of the end of State Road 566, 11.5 miles North of rock
What: March from Red Water Pond Road to the site of the 1979 Uranium Tailings Spill 7-10 AM
Statements from elected officials and community groups and luncheon 10 AM
Screenings of short environmental justice films, followed by panel discussion Calvin Hall, UNM Gallup 5-7 PM

MAKING_WAVES_July16

Updates on the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico and a nuclear reactor plant threatened by flood waters in Nebraska.

From Huffington Post

By Juergen Baetz, May 30, 2011

BERLIN — Europe’s economic powerhouse, Germany, announced plans Monday to abandon nuclear energy over the next 11 years, outlining an ambitious strategy in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster to replace atomic power with renewable energy sources.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said she hopes the transformation to more solar, wind and hydroelectric power serves as a roadmap for other countries.

“We believe that we can show those countries who decide to abandon nuclear power – or not to start using it – how it is possible to achieve growth, creating jobs and economic prosperity while shifting the energy supply toward renewable energies,” Merkel said.

Merkel’s government said it will shut down all 17 nuclear power plants in Germany – the world’s fourth-largest economy and Europe’s biggest – by 2022. The government had no immediate estimate of the transition’s overall cost.

The plan sets Germany apart from most of the other major industrialized nations. Among the other Group of Eight countries, only Italy has abandoned nuclear power, which was voted down in a referendum after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

The decision represents a remarkable about-face for Merkel’s center-right government, which only late last year pushed through a plan to extend the life span of the country’s reactors, with the last scheduled to go offline around 2036. But Merkel, who holds a Ph.D. in physics, said industrialized, technologically advanced Japan’s “helplessness” in the face of the Fukushima disaster made her rethink the technology’s risks.

Phasing out nuclear power within a decade will be a challenge, but it will be feasible and ultimately give Germany a competitive advantage in the renewable energy era, Merkel said.

“As the first big industrialized nation, we can achieve such a transformation toward efficient and renewable energies, with all the opportunities that brings for exports, developing new technologies and jobs,” Merkel told reporters.

The government said the renewable energy sector already employs about 370,000 people.

Germany’s seven oldest reactors, already taken off the grid pending safety inspections following the March catastrophe at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, will remain offline permanently, Merkel said. The plants accounted for about 40 percent of the country’s nuclear power capacity.

At the time of the Japanese disaster, Germany got just under a quarter of its electricity from nuclear power, about the same share as in the U.S.

While Germany already was set to abandon nuclear energy eventually, the decision – which still requires parliamentary approval – dramatically speeds up that process. Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen said there are no provisions that would allow a later policy reverse.

“We don’t only want to renounce nuclear energy by 2022, we also want to reduce our CO2 emissions by 40 percent and double our share of renewable energies, from about 17 percent today to then 35 percent,” the chancellor said.

Merkel said the cornerstones of Germany’s energy policy will also include a safe and steady power supply that doesn’t rely on imports, and affordable prices for industry and consumers. The plan calls for more investment in natural gas plants as a backup to prevent blackouts, the chancellor said.

Germany’s initiative received a skeptical reception abroad.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, whose country relies on nuclear power to produce 80 percent of its electricity supply, insisted “there’s no way” for the European Union to meet its emission-cutting targets without at least some nuclear power.

“We respect this decision, but it doesn’t cause us to change our policy,” Fillon said. France operates more than one-third of the nuclear reactors in the EU.

Sweden’s Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren also criticized the German decision, telling The Associated Press that the focus on an end date was unfortunate and could drive up electricity prices across Europe.

Germany, usually a net energy exporter, has at times had to import energy since March, with the seven old reactors shut and others temporarily off the grid for regular maintenance. Still, the agency overseeing its electricity grid, DENA, said Friday that the country remains self-sufficient and that its renewable energy production capacity this spring peaked at 28 gigawatts – or about the equivalent of 28 nuclear reactors.

Many Germans have vehemently opposed nuclear power since Chernobyl sent radioactivity over the country. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets after Fukushima to urge the government to shut all reactors quickly.

A decade ago, a center-left government drew up a plan to abandon the technology for good by 2021 because of its risks. But Merkel’s government last year amended it to extend the plants’ lifetime by an average 12 years – a political liability after Fukushima was hit by Japan’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Environmental groups welcomed Berlin’s decision.

“The country is throwing its weight behind clean renewable energy to power its manufacturing base and other countries like Britain should take note,” said Robin Oakley, Greenpeace UK’s campaigns director.

German industry said the government must not allow the policy changes to lead to an unstable power supply or rising electricity prices.

Hans-Peter Keitel, the president of the Federation of German Industries, urged the government not to set the exit date of 2022 in stone but to be flexible if problems arise.

Switzerland, where nuclear power produces 40 percent of electricity, also announced last week that it plans to shut down its reactors gradually once they reach their average life span of 50 years – which would mean taking the last plant off the grid in 2034.

Germany’s decision broadly follows the conclusions of a government-mandated commission on the ethics of nuclear power, which on Saturday delivered recommendations on how to abolish the technology.

“Fukushima was a dramatic experience, seeing there that a high-technology nation can’t cope with such a catastrophe,” Matthias Kleiner, the commission’s co-chairman, said Monday. “Nuclear power is a technology with too many inherent risks to inflict it on us or our children.”

___

Geir Moulson in Berlin, Malin Rising in Stockholm, Colleen Barry in Milan, Jamey Keaten in Paris and Cassandra Vinograd in London contributed reporting.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011– Indians & Energy:
A new book called “Indians & Energy” explores the ways people have transformed natural resources in the American Southwest into fuel supplies. Not only do Native Americans possess a large percentage of the Southwest’s total acreage, but much of the region’s coal, oil and uranium resources reside on tribal lands. Tribes are also being encouraged to develop solar and wind power as energy resources. What will guide our decisions as we move into the future? Guests are environmental anthropologist Barbara Rose Johnston, and Garrit Voggressor of the National Wildlife Federation.

Native America Calling is a nationally syndicated public radio program based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Listen locally on KUNM 89.9 from 11 AM to 12 PM, daily.

To find a station near you, click here.

Listen online at nv1.org or mytribetv.com

More Information about the book, Indians & Energy: Exploitation and Opportunity in the American Southwest:

(from Amazon.com)

Indians & Energy explores the ways people have transformed natural resources in the American Southwest into fuel supplies for human consumption. Not only do Native Americans possess a large percentage of the Southwest’s total acreage, but much of the nation’s coal, oil, and uranium resources reside on tribal lands. Regional weather and climate patterns have also enabled Native people to take advantage of solar and wind power as sources of energy; however, complex issues related to energy and Indians transcend the region and the nation. The contributors believe that the lessons of the Southwest can illuminate broader trends in other places. Their intent is not to end but to join the conversation and encourage others to do the same. They consider the intricate relationship between development and Indian communities in the Southwest with the hope that an understanding of patterns in the past might be useful in guiding policies and decisions in the future. Published in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University.