Environmental Injustice Case Study

A Nuclear Waste Dump at Yucca Mountain and the Shoshone Native Americans

By: Adam Hudson, Sarah Gambolati, Genese Leach, Ellen Larson

Background: 

     The U.S. government is planning to set aside Yucca Mountain for a nuclear waste storage facility, which will be able to hold 77 thousand metric tons of nuclear waste, because it is apparently the most logical place for a storage site.  It is in an area of low population and according to the Department of Energy, the dryness of Yucca Mountain will prevent leakage and migration of radioactive particles.  However, this infringes on the Shoshone Indians' right to control this land, which is rightfully theirs.  Also, many scientists and environmental groups question the true safety of a storage site at Yucca.  Important to note is that the Shoshone Nation is already dealing with the ramifications of a Nuclear munitions testing site, located on their tribal grounds, that has caused over 1,000 explosions to date.

The Issue:

    The government has been trying to determine the best way to dispose of the massive amounts of nuclear waste which has been building up at power plants and munitions facilities for over fifty years.  The current proposed location for this disposal site is Yucca Mountain, located on federal land out in Nevada.  Yucca Mountain is located near Death Valley "in a remote stretch of desert, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas" (Yucca Mountain 1).  Currently, nuclear waste is being stored in temporary facilities located in 43 states, near rivers, water tables, and large metropolitan areas, all susceptible to accidents, environmental disasters, and acts of terrorism (Harney 1).

          While Yucca Mountain is technically on federal land, it is land that has been allocated to and protected by the Shoshone Indians.  So, along with its importance as a proposed nuclear waste storage facility, it is also important to the Shoshones, who view the mountain as having traditional, intrinsic and spiritual value.  For this tribe, the mountain is seen as "a sacred place for prayers to the Great Spirit and messages back to the people" (Corbin 1).  The mountain is also the burial site of their ancestors and the water from the mountain is considered sacred.  In 1863, the Ruby Valley Treaty recognized the mountain as Shoshone land.  Additionally, a 1978 NEPA amendment (Council on Environmental Quality) legally incorporates Native Americans into environmental impact assessments.  It also requires that Native Americans receive information and research in adequate time to respond to any planned project; however, Native Americans generally do not have the legal power to overturn any proposed projects.

     The American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA) of 1978 reaffirmed the right of Native Americans to freely access any religious lands or natural resources, including those that extend beyond current tribal boundaries.  In 1982, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act "proposed to safely dispose of nuclear wastes, bearing in mind the environmental and cultural impacts on Native American communities" (Kendziuk 2).  Even given a policy specific to their situation, the Yucca Mountain project has continued to be forced upon the Shoshone people.

     Despite government assertions that the waste site is safe, the mountain lies near several fault lines and a volcano, indicating seismic activity, and hence, geologic disruption.  The waste will be out of the range of humans, but directly in the range of natural disturbances.  The radioactive waste will remain hazardous for 250,000 years; scientists largely question government beliefs that a major seismic event will not cause the storage facility to fail in this lengthy time span.  The Department of Energy states that over 621 earthquakes have occurred near the mountain in the last 20 years.  An earthquake at Yucca Mountain has the potential to cause a groundwater surge into the storage area, forcing hazardous levels of plutonium into the atmosphere and contaminating the water supply (Harney 1).

The Stakeholders:

       The Shoshone Native Americans are the key opponents of the proposed nuclear waste repository.  They want to keep their land sacred and free of nuclear waste.  They believe that Yucca Mountain has spiritual value and therefore needs to be protected.  The mountain is an ancestral burial ground and it contains prayer rings that can transmit prayers between the people and the Great Spirit.  The prayer rings are located within the current nuclear testing site, blocking access to the Shoshone.  The Shoshone believe that a traditional story may be a precursor to the Yucca Mountain repository.  The story says that the mountain will one day awaken and open up releasing a poison, which they now believe is the toxic waste that could be expelled from volcanic activity (Corbin 1).  The Shoshone are also seeing the health effects of the current nuclear testing site.  Residents have reported increases in cancer and birth defects, human hair loss, and unusual animal deaths.  The people fear that if the Yucca Mountain facility is approved it will cause more widespread health effects (1).  Some Shoshone also claim that they are the victims of environmental racism.

     A group representing the Shoshone interests is the Western Shoshone National Council.  The council is comprised of concerned Shoshone Native Americans, giving them a voice against the government.  They are currently in litigation in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals claiming that the Yucca Mountain Development Act is unconstitutional because the federal government does not own the land.  The government has tried to buy the land from the Shoshone, but they have rejected all offers.  The chief of the Western Shoshone National Council, Raymond Yowell, said "We've never accepted their money and never will - our land, the mother earth is not for sale and we will protect her and continue our responsibilities as caretakers under the Creator's law" (Corbin 1).  The Western Shoshone National Council is responsible for creating the Western Shoshone Health Project of 1994.  The goal of this project is to correct the imbalance of risk by educating the Native American community about the health effects of radiation.  They are implementing this by collecting data from the site and providing information on the quality of land, water, soil, plants, and public health.  It was developed because of the lack of environmental health concern by the federal government (1). 

     The government, with its involved departments, is the main proponent of creating the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain.  The project was pushed by President Bush as an ideal setting, ignoring the strong opposition of the Nevada governor who vetoed the decision.  The Congress then voted on it and overrode the Nevada governor's veto by a vote of 306-117 in the House of Representatives and 60-39 in the Senate.  The Congress has given their approval of building the waste site, but the project has to be well-planned out by other departments of the government.  The Department of Energy (DOE) is responsible for the building logistics of the repository.  They have to plan, construct, and apply for licenses to the NRC to get the site running (Longley 1).  To get it approved, the DOE has to write several environmental impact statements about the actual toxic waste site itself and one for the proposed railroad to transport the waste to Yucca Mountain.  They will also have to do the research for their environmental impact statements to see if it is safe.  Once the site is built, the DOE owns it and therefore will be the ones running it.  This could cause some bias because they want the site to open so the department can provide more jobs.  They have already spent $5 billion towards the project and plan on spending $50 billion more to complete the site by the end of the decade (1). 

     The EPA is involved in that it is responsible for setting standards for human health related to the threats posed by the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste.   One such standard is that the facility must withstand the effects of earthquakes, volcanoes, and significant amounts of rainfall.  The EPA claims that the repository is safe, saying that people living in close proximity to the site would not receive total radiation higher than the natural levels found elsewhere (Longley 1).  The last part of government involved is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).  Their job is to implement the EPA's standards and hold the key in determining if the Yucca Mountain facility is safe enough to contain nuclear waste.  They have to review the DOE's environmental impact statements and also have to write their own about the site (1).    

     The local residents from the small towns near Yucca Mountain will also be affected, but they are more mixed about their feelings towards the nuclear waste site.  Residents from Indian Spring say that the site will bring more money and jobs into the region, which will make their town more stable (Sigler 1).  Red VanEpps, a test site employee said, "There's 1,000 acres out there, and they've had 710 nuclear events. The land is totally useless for the next 500,000 years. Why not put it here?" (Sigler 1).  But others know about the health effects that radiation causes.  Since the nuclear testing site was put in, cancer is on the rise in Tonopah and other nearby towns.  In Caliente, a man died from the highest leukemia count ever reported in the Western Hemisphere, and his daughter believes it is from the nearby atomic testing site (Sigler 2). 

Resolutions & Consequences:

      There has been continued litigation on behalf of the Shoshone Native Americans fighting against the Yucca Mountain Waste Repository.  In 2002, Congress officially approved the project for continuation, provided that the Environmental Protection Agency follows proper procedures and the project is truly determined safe.  As recently as 2006 the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has formally acknowledged that the U.S. Government has unjustly denied the Shoshone Native American's their traditional rights to the land (Rizvi 1).  While this was a huge victory for the Shoshone Nation, the project planners have continued to tie up loose ends and move closer to actually breaking ground on Yucca Mountain.  Some involved on the project believe that plans are so flawed and/or tied up in the courts that the site will never truly happen.  Interestingly, the entire Nevada congressional delegation as well as the city of Las Vegas formally oppose the project, with the mayor of Las Vegas going so far as to say that he would personally lay down in front of any trucks trying to carry radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain (Yucca Mountain, 1).  It is encouraging to know that people with more power and resources than the Shoshone Indians are on the same side of this battle as the tribe.  This is, and will continue to be a deeply divided fight.

     Fortunately, because the Yucca Mountain Waste Repository is not currently on-line, there are no immediate consequences being felt.  However, the potential for severe environmental and human damage are great.  The waste would have to be transported from 43 states through many metropolitan areas, effectively exposing a large percentage of Americans (in addition to the Shoshone people) to the risks of radioactive wastes (Yucca Mountain 1). The DOE believes that the current plan for the storage facility has not yet been proven safe and expects at least one storage canister to fail with in the next thousand years.  It has also anticipated several hundred accidents over the next 30 years during waste transport; any single accident holding the potential to lead to a dramatic loss of human life (Kendziuk 1).  Even if the project is deemed safe, the functionality of the facility is purely speculative as no scientist or government official has the foresight to see what will occur within the next 250,000 years.

Works Cited

Corbin, Amy.  "Yucca Mountain."  Sacred Land Film Project.  September 2007. 

     http://www.sacredland.org/endangered_sites_pages/yucca_mountain.html.

Harney, Corbin. "Yucca Mountain: No Place for Nuclear Waste." Nuclear Information and Resource Service: Radioactive Waste Project. October 2000. 

     http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/yucca/yuccaltrbycorbin102400.htm.

Kendziuk, Jamie. "Environmental Justice Case Study: The Yucca Mountain High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository and the Western Shoshone."

     Environmental Justice Case Studies. 17 June 2004. http://www.umich.edu/%7Esnre492/kendziuk.html.

Longley, Robert.  "Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Safe for 1 Million Years, EPA Claims."  Dateline.  August 2005.                                          

     http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/medicinalnews/a/yuccamillion.htm.

Rizvi, Haider.  "U.S. Found in Violation of Native Americans' Rights, Anti-Racism Treaty."  CommonDreams.org News Center:  Breaking News & Views for

     theProgressive Community.  11 March 2006.  http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0311-07.htm.

Sigler, Bret.  "Yucca Mountain: Towns mixed on repository."  Las Vegas Review-Journal.  14 June 2002.  

     http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home_2002/Jul-14-Sun-2002/news/19185164.html.

Stoffle, Richard & Michael Evans.  "Holistic Conservation & Cultural Triage:  American Indian Perspectives on Cultural Resources."  Human Organization.

     Vol 49, No 2. 1990.

"Yucca Mountain: Transporting Nuclear Waste May Put Millions At Risk." CBS News. 25 July 2004. 

     http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/23/60minutes/main579696.shtml.

Last Updated October 23, 2008