nuclear-news

Secret Wyoming nuke dump vote merits public outrage,  https://www.wyofile.com/secret-wyoming-nuke-dump-vote-merits-public-outrage/      July 23, 2019 by Kerry Drake 16 Seven Republican legislators pulled a skunk out of a hat with a secret vote to once again explore storing nuclear waste in Wyoming. This must be the “Wyoming way” so many state lawmakers boast about when describing how they do the people’s work.

The plan to store spent nuclear fuel rods at old uranium mines in the Gas Hills and Shirley Basin was hatched by Sen. Jim Anderson (R-Casper) and Rep. Mike Greear (R-Worland), co-chairmen of the Joint Minerals, Business and Economic Development Committee.

The Legislative Management Council did not assign the topic to their committee or any other before the Legislature adjourned in March. There was no discussion of the topic in an open meeting, no posted notice that it was up for consideration and zero public input. Hiring the state out as a nuclear waste dump appeared in no legislative documents prior to the Management Council’s July 8 email vote to approve study of the matter.

The only reason anyone knows that we’re spending taxpayer dollars to study this hairbrained scheme is because WyoFile requested a record of all recent email votes by the Management Council.

House Speaker Steve Harshman and Senate President Drew Perkins, both Casper Republicans, didn’t talk about the proposed interim topic or announce the vote to the public. They just went along and passed it.

House Majority Leader Eric Barlow (R-Gillette) joined five Democrats who opposed the measure.

Anderson told WyoFile reporter Angus Thuermer Jr., who broke the story about the vote, that “temporarily” storing the spent nuclear fuel rods here could bring in up to a billion dollars a year from the federal government.

Wyoming could have been making a haul off nuclear waste for decades, Anderson added, if “environmental terrorists” hadn’t stopped the so-called Monitored Retrievable Storage site in Fremont County. Then-Gov. Mike Sullivan, responding to polls that showed four-fifths of Wyomingites opposed the project, wisely halted it in 1992.

“I think they’ll be back terrorizing us again,” Anderson told Thuermer. It’s nice to know what he thinks of opponents to a project he tried to hide.

Oh, there will be protests all right. Now that the public knows what’s been going on behind their backs, people will be able to decide for themselves who is truly concerned with trying to protect Wyoming’s priceless environment and who is trying to make billions of quick bucks putting it at risk.

Is it too much to ask for legislators to give us a break on this issue and bury it instead of highly radioactive nuclear waste? It’s long worn out its welcome.