Tell Your Senators - NO to Bad Nuclear Waste and Uranium Bills
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Wyoming Senator John Barrasso are attempting to pass dangerous legislation on nuclear waste and uranium mining.
These bills would be huge giveaways to the nuclear industry. Manchin’s bill would put thousands of hazardous shipments of highly-radioactive nuclear waste on our roads, rails, and waterways at taxpayers’ expense. It would also target Indigenous peoples, people of color, and poor, rural communities for supposedly temporary (but probably permanent) above-ground radioactive waste dumps. People in over 80% of Congressional districts along the transportation routes would face radiation exposure and disaster risks for decades. Manchin’s bill also tries to exempt nuclear waste from basic environmental laws and would also open up the potential for widespread commercial reprocessing of nuclear fuel, which would be environmentally disastrous.
Sen. Barrasso’s bill would expand toxic and unjust uranium mining and increase the risk of proliferating nuclear weapons. It would remove environmental and human rights protections for the production of more highly-enriched uranium fuel (called HA-LEU) to be used in new types of nuclear power reactors. Specifically, the bill would allow uranium for HA-LEU to be mined on Indigenous lands (which is currently prohibited), and eliminate protections for drinking water. Enriching uranium fuel to HA-LEU levels would also set a bad example for the rest of the world, potentially making it harder to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
ACT NOW! Tell your senators to STOP radioactive dangers
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