WASHINGTON - Critics of the new federal energy bill point out that it provides billions in tax incentives to industries, while reviving the nuclear industry intent on dumping radioactive waste on Indian lands. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has already approved in situ uranium mining on the borders of the Navajo Nation, which banned uranium mining and processing in April.
However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency delivered good news with a proposed new standard for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility on Western Shoshone ancestral land: protection for the people for 1 million years.
With more scrutiny placed on the Yucca Mountain facility, efforts have been accelerated to create a temporary nuclear waste dump on Goshute tribal land in Utah.
''The problem of nuclear waste is not solved when the 'solution' is to dump it on Indian lands,'' said Winona LaDuke, executive director of Honor the Earth, speaking out against revival of the nuclear industry in Washington.
''Dumping on the Goshutes opens the door to more nuclear waste, more dumps and more time lost to unsustainable and unjust energy development.''
Speaking out against nuclear waste dumping on Indian lands with LaDuke was Margene Bullcreek, Skull Valley Goshute. Bullcreek pointed out that American Indians have suffered a disproportionate share of disease and death from the weapons and nuclear industries.
Bullcreek said indigenous people within this nation have always been victimized to the point of genocide to provide national security.
''When will we be protected as our treaties indicated, to bring sovereignty to our indigenous lands, to be protected from large corporations exploiting our Native rights and our due process, our civil rights? Our health and livelihood has been affected,'' Bullcreek said.
The new federal energy bill, signed into law by President Bush in New Mexico, gives tax incentives to the nuclear industry. Bush said it would lead to new nuclear power plants before the end of the decade.
The first nuclear power plant to be built in the United States since the 1970s is slated for the Athabascan community of Galena, Alaska, where 65 percent of the 700 residents are American Indian.
The nuclear power plant demonstration project, approved by the community as a source of electricity, is awaiting approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The 10-megawatt nuclear power plant, to be built by Japan's Toshiba, would have an underground nuclear reactor in the Yukon River community west of Fairbanks.
Navajo tribal members comprising the Eastern Navajo Dineh Against Uranium Mining are fighting the corporation, Hydro Resources, in court to halt in situ mining. Navajos say the solvents injected underground to bring uranium to the surface will affect the aquifer and drinking water of 15,000 Navajos in Church Rock and Crownpoint, N.M., already devastated by the worst uranium tailings spill in U.S. history in 1979.
However, along with the news devastating to American Indians came good news from the EPA. The agency is proposing public health standards for the planned high-level radioactive waste disposal facility at Yucca Mountain, Nev., sacred land of the Western Shoshone, that will protect the public from excess radiation for 1 million years.
Under the standards, people living close to the facility would not receive total radiation higher than natural levels experienced routinely in other areas of the country.
''It is an unprecedented scientific challenge to develop proposed standards today that will protect the next 25,000 generations of Americans,'' said EPA Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation Jeffrey Holmstead.
The proposed standards require that the facility withstand the effects of earthquakes, volcanoes and significantly increased rainfall while safely containing the waste during the 1-million-year period.
With the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump facing more hurdles for completion and increased questions about the safety of the site from whistleblowers and leaked e-mails, more attention has been focused on the Goshute temporary waste dump slated for Utah, which is opposed by some tribal members and the state of Utah.
Bullcreek said, ''The BIA is supposed to protect the well-being of our tribe and its members. Instead, they undermine our sovereignty by approving a lease for this dangerous project on our land without our consensus.''
A nuclear utility consortium is proposing to dump 44,000 tons of highly radioactive atomic fuel from commercial reactors onto the Skull Valley Goshute tribal land, located 45 miles from Salt Lake City. A final decision on the proposal, which would require 4,000 rail shipments of radioactive waste over the next 20 years, is expected soon from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
LaDuke and Bullcreek were joined in Washington by musician Ani DiFranco, the Indigo Girls and actor James Cromwell to oppose revival of the nuclear industry and passage of the federal energy bill.
''When it comes to nuclear energy and weapons, from the mining to the testing to the disposal of nuclear waste, Native communities have been a sacrificial lamb for our destructive and wasteful policies,'' said Amy Ray of Indigo Girls. ''Indeed, we all will suffer if nuclear energy is not shut down.''
''Dumping high-level nuclear waste on Indian land is environmental racism and absolutely unacceptable,'' said Emily Saliers of Indigo Girls. ''Nuclear power is not clean and there is nowhere on Earth to store its waste safely. It is time to shift the U.S. energy paradigm away from fossil fuels and nuclear power toward a safe and clean energy future.''
The delegation of American Indians and musicians said the new energy bill contains massive subsidies for building a new generation of nuclear power plants, including loan guarantees, tax credits, limited liability in the case of an accident, research and development funding, and demonstration projects.
''Enough is enough,'' said Cromwell. ''The legacy of 50 years of federal subsidies for nuclear power is 50,000 tons of forever-deadly radioactive waste. We need to replace nuclear power with renewable energy sources so we have a finite radioactive waste problem to deal with, not an infinite one.''
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