Spokane Hearing: Hanford as a National Radioactive Waste The United States Department of Energy would like to use Hanford as a national radioactive waste dump meaning THOUSANDS of truckloads of radioactive waste will roll through Spokane en route to the Hanford Nuclear waste side near the Tri-Cities. 

Tomorrow you can learn more about this and tell the USDOE why this is a bad idea.

There is a public hearing planned for Tuesday, February 23 from 7:00 - 10:00 p.m. at the Red Lion Hotel at the Park.  Come join your neighbors and testify that this idea would be extremely detrimental to public health and the health of the environment for thousands of years.  There will be a pre-meeting workshop on site at 6 p.m. where you can get more information to help craft an opposition to this plan.  The workshop and organizing efforts for participation is hosted by Heart of America Northwest - a  regional non-profit public interest organization that has spent over twenty years fighting for the timely clean-up of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. 

The hearing in Spokane tomororw is the sixth of eight hearings being held around the region on USDOE's plans and "Tank Closure and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement." Gerry Pollet, Executive Director of Heart of America Northwest commented to us over the weekend that, "the bottom line is that this is the public's opportunity to comment on USDOE's plans to:

* use Hanford as a national radioactive waste dump, which includes over 17,000 truckloads of radioactive waste - many of which would come through Spokane;

* NOT cleanup the million gallons of High-Level Nuclear Waste which has leaked from "Single Shell" Tanks at Hanford.  The contamination is spreading more rapidly towards the Columbia River than USDOE claimed was possible just a few years ago.

* NOT fully empty the leaky High-Level Nuclear Waste tanks."

Gerry Pollet has been working for the cleanup of Hanford since writing and leading the 1986 Referendum to stop the use of Hanford as the nation's first High-Level Nuclear Waste repository. "We stopped that scheme - which led to the selection of Yucca Mt., Nevada, "said Pollet.  "Now, Yucca Mt has been dropped because its selection was never based on science. , Sadly, the levels of contamiantion flowing into the Columbia River already are likely far more than any levels that would happen from Yucca Mt.. It is going to take a serious outcry in our State to stop USDOE's plans and to get Governor Gregoire to use our State's authority to bar more waste from being dumped at Hanford."

The rest of our email correspondence with Gerry Pollet can be found after the jump.

DTE: Was USDOE excited to host these hearings, or were they reluctant?

HOANW: Heart of America Northwest asked USDOE to hold a hearing in Spokane, which USDOE has resisted doing for several years. So, it is really important for lots of people to attend and comment, especially since the trucks of radioactive waste directly threaten the health of the community in Spokane. City council Members Bob Apple and Amber Waldref have been leaders for many yers objecting to USDOE's plans to use Hanford as a national radioactive waste dump and to truck nuclear waste through Spokane. They'll both be at the hearing and workshop. The people of Spokane have to send a clear message to the Obama Administration that the plans of the Energy Department to dump more radioactive wste at Hanford while failing to cleanup what is already there, is unacceptable.  To try to deflect public opposition, USDOE has said it will wait several years before starting to truck radioactive waste to Hanford. We can't fall for such a ruse.

DTE: What do you make of recent news regarding President Obama's nuclear ambitions?

HOANW:  On the nuclear power front, we are disappointed in the notion of spending $54 billion to guarantee the loans for building new nuclear plants which are too expensive and risky for Wall Street to lend money for. the advocates for nuclear power are touting "reprcessing" of nuclear waste as the solution to not having Yucca Mt. as a repository. But, reprocessing is the same process of melting the used fuel rods in acid to extract the Plutonium which created the liquid High-Level Nuclear Waste sitting in Hanford's leaky tanks with no treatment in sight. If any region should know that this is not clean or safe, it is ours. I have been speaking at regional colleges and other forums about "the lessons from Hanford: nuclear power is not a solution for global warming."

DTE: What are your clean energy / renewable energy hopes for America and the world?

HOANW: If we made an investment with a quarter of the amount proposed for subisidizing new nuclear plants, our nation could match the German per capita use of solar, and we could meet all electrical demand for decades with conservation, solar and wind. There is nothing clean about nuclear waste - just look at what is flowing into the Columbia River today.

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