Yucca on the Mississippi

Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty sent National Guard troops to the state’s nuclear power plants on March 19, the day the U.S. invaded Iraq. That afternoon House Republican members of the state Regulated Industries Committee voted a potential increase in the number of high level nuclear waste casks on the Mississippi River from 17 to 112. On March 25, the bill, HR 775, passed out of the Environmental Policy Committee to the Government Operations Committee, probably the bill’s last stop in the House.

While committees approved 11 more casks at Prairie Island, they delegated the decision for 84 more casks at both Monticello and Prairie Island to the Public Utilities Commission. The five-member PUC board is not elected but appointed by the governor. Only three votes would be needed to approve increased nuclear storage.

The Minnesota Republican model of removing elected officials from controversial policy decisions is an echo of the U.S. Congress relinquishing its constitutional authority to declare war. Last October, Congress literally voted itself out of power by allowing the president to initiate unilateral preemptive military action against Iraq. If this country is engaged in an endless war to bring democracy to “backward” or oil-producing nations, politicians seem less enthusiastic about exercising the democratic process at home.

The Republican governor’s anxiety about protecting the state’s hazardous nuclear sites seems to contradict the Republican push for hugely increased nuclear waste on the Mississippi 40-miles north and south of the Twin Cities. What a paradox—to pay $60,000 per day to 262 troopers to guard water treatment plants (both Twin Cities get their water from the Mississippi) and to guard the nukes polluting that same river water.

“Security” is the new public works program. The problem with Homeland Security is that it produces nothing. No roads or bridges are built or fixed, no homes or schools are retrofitted for energy savings, no parks will get new picnic tables or their stone walks and walls repaired. Just a lot of low-wage, boring guard jobs with layers of administration above.

It was not the Republicans but Democrats who led the “compromise” in 1994 for 17 “temporary” nuclear waste casks and a token wind power program currently totaling one-percent of the state’s power production. The “temporary” storage has been extended to at least 2044 with no guarantee that the federal waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada will ever open. Yucca was originally scheduled to open in 1998 with the hope that all Minnesota nuclear waste would be transported out of state. The opening has been pushed back to 2015. However Sen. Becky Lourey (DFL-Kerrick) told colleagues, “I’d bet my farm that we’re never going to have a Yucca Mountain—and I love my farm.”

“What are you going to do with the waste?” is the question never answered throughout the development of nuclear weapons and power. Since the 1940s political leaders have trusted in “the future” to solve the waste problem. If the waste is moved it imprints a snail-trail of carcinogenic pollution along freeways and railroad tracks across urban and rural America. When nuclear waste cannot be moved citizens demand political action and politicians respond with fantasy plans about moving the waste sometime beyond the next election.

The bill moving through the Minnesota legislature this session would repeal the nuclear waste limits agreed to in 1994 and permit continued operation of the state’s aging nuclear reactors at Monticello and Prairie Island. If passed into law our three reactors could be relicensed by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission without any debate or citizen input at the state level. Every reactor in American that has come up for relicensing has been approved. Both Prairie Island steam generators are in poor condition, one would be replaced at $125 million, the other would require extensive repairs and Xcel would want to get its investment back.

Monticello’s single reactor would operate until 2030 with 40 waste casks on-site beside the Mississippi River. At Prairie Island, the two reactors would run until 2033 and 2034 with a total of 72 casks on the island. Nuclear fuel rods must be submerged in a cooling pool for about 10 years before being moved to dry casks, keeping Minnesota in the nuclear storage business until at least 2044. Maine’s only nuke, the Yankee plant, shut down permanently in 1997. In the nuclear waste shell game serious players stop producing more.

For continued nuclear power production the bill would compensate the Prairie Island Dakota tribe, whose community is 600 yards from the plant, with money taken out of the renewable energy fund. Pro-nuke bills consistently pit Native American interests against environmentalists. The renewable energy development fund would be reduced by the elimination of the $500,000 per cask, per year for all future casks, for as long as the casks remain in the state.

The renewable reductions clearly point the state’s energy future away from a cleaner, cheaper, conservation-oriented path. This is the heart of the controversy: In 1994 the transition from nukes to renewables was made. Now that decision is being challenged. Michael Noble, executive director of Minnesotans for an Energy Efficient Economy, estimates the loss to the fund for alternative and conservation technologies at more than $300 million over the next 20-30 years. Furthermore, the bill would not fund extra plant security such as the National Guard.

If HR 775 passes, the state would sanction the accumulation, by the year 2044, of 762,000 nuclear fuel rods in storage beside the Mississippi River. Rep. Jean Wagenius (DFL-Mpls) calls the plan “Yucca on the Mississippi.”