Enviro Close-Up: The New Nuclear Push, Part 2

Enviro Close-Up is hosted by author, investigative journalist, nuclear watchdog, and founding Beyond Nuclear board of directors member, Karl Grossman. Here is the write up for “The New Nuclear Push, Part 2” (see Part 1, here):

Enviro Close-Up #690, The New Nuclear Push with Kevin Kamps of Beyond Nuclear, Part 2: The program starts off with Kamps detailing how the nuclear industry, following its unsuccessful drive in Nevada to build what was called the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, is seeking to turn the southwest of the United States into a “nuclear sacrifice zone” with huge nuclear waste dumps in New Mexico and Texas. This, he notes, is despite the opposition of the state governments in both and the existence below, and stretching many hundreds of miles to the north, of the Ogallala Aquifer, the “biggest aquifer in North America.” Kamps says “the risks…are incredible.” The organization for which he is radioactive waste specialist, Beyond Nuclear, is with other groups challenging the nuclear waste dump drive in court. Kamps says indigenous Native American and low-income Black communities are being targeted for the waste dumps, that it’s “radioactive racism.” And he talks about the push as a power source of nuclear fusion, the process otherwise utilized in hydrogen bombs. Kamps addresses claims about thorium as a nuclear power plant fuel and says that thorium reactors would be even “more proliferation-risky than the uranium and plutonium pathway to The Bomb.” He speaks about nuclear power plants being targets in war—and this being demonstrated by recent events in Ukraine. He emphasizes how safe, green, renewable energy led by solar and wind could meet our energy needs. As to why so many in the government support nuclear power, a key reason, says Kamps, is their embrace of nuclear weaponry. And he speaks of what people can do to oppose “this juggernaut” of nuclear promoters.  View Full Program Here

[See Part 1, here.]