Repository Opposition
The primary individuals and groups opposing Yucca Mountain are
listed in Table 3. Among the wide range of individuals and organizations
opposing Yucca Mountain are politicians, the Nevada Nuclear Waste
Project Office and its subcontractors, and a variety of environmental
and social justice movements.
The length of the Yucca Mountain opposition list may come as
a surprise to some, because the anti-nuclear movement is often
portrayed as being an unorganized grassroots movement. In reality,
the movement is a self-contained and well funded political juggernaut,
relying not only on donations from individuals, but also on support
from large philanthropic funds.
PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS
Surprisingly, opposition to Yucca Mountain and nuclear technology
is not primarily motivated by environmental and health concerns
over radioactive substances. Instead, social, political and religious
influences dominate the debate.
One crucial issue is the question of what role technology should
play in society and who controls science. Hazardous waste "dumps"
are predominantly placed in the neighborhoods of poorer Americans
and minorities and the question raised by progressives is whether
this is due to practical considerations or more ominously because
of social biases of the technological elite. Governmental takings
of land claimed by the Western Shoshone and Southern Paiute, which
include Yucca Mountain, are considered by some an act of social
oppression, inhibiting the native population's ability to practice
traditional culture.
Other opposition currents focus on at times arcane political
issues. One argument uses Yucca Mountain as a surrogate for the
larger issue of control of Nevada's resources, but in the process
links the repository with expansion of bombing ranges and secret
test areas within Nevada. Others view nuclear waste as a tool
of "centralizing" industrialists and part of a conspiracy
to keep society under the thumb of elite capitalists, making the
repository a revolutionary focal point. Some see democracy at
risk at Yucca Mountain because the local community is not allowed
to vote and veto the project.
A variety of religious concerns are also voiced. One is that
Yucca Mountain is part of an amoral global nuclear warmaking apparatus
because plutonium in the waste could be separated for bombmaking.
Others argue the repository is a pagan altar to a technology of
greed on which human souls are being sacrificed. Still others
believe that building a repository will destroy Mother Earth and
is thus a mortal sin because we are abusing our stewardship of
the planet. Apocalyptic environmentalism is in general more religious
than scientific, based on a paranoia that nuclear technology represents
an environmental Armageddon.
Although the spectrum of anti-repository philosophies competing
in Nevada seems wide and varied, they share common threads, being
socially egalitarian and environmentally apocalyptic. These theories
have names:
LIBERATION THEOLOGY - An outgrowth of Brazilian land reform
struggles, its main proponents (Gutierrez and Paolo Friere) relied
heavily on Marxist theory but attempted to remold this theory
using Catholic concepts of "peace and justice" as outlined
by the Pope. Nevada Desert Experience seems to spring from this
mold, a central organizer of Nevada Test Site protest.
RAWLSIAN ETHICS - John Rawls of Harvard wrote his "Theory
of Justice" in 1971, outlining a theoretical formulation
of egalitarian thought that found acceptance in academia, though
not without heated debate. It emphasizes accounting for the "least
advantaged man" in all social calculations. This theory
is a favorite of the academics doing socioeconomic studies for
the state.
DEEP ECOLOGY - An envirocentric philosophy theology formulated
by David Brower (Sierra Club activist and founder of Friends of
Earth) and expanded upon by other environmentalists. This is
a mixture of anarchist, far-east animist and American tribal philosophies
in which nuclear technology is viewed as the ultimate threat to
the world ecology. Evident in many of the environmental protest
movements works, from Sierra Club to Greenpeace.
INDIAN TRIBAL SPIRITUALISM - Many environmental movements
look towards Indian philosophies of coexistence with natural resources
as models. Along with this comes a reverence for supposedly egalitarian
tribal lifestyles. In Nevada, the Western Shoshone have been
used in this role and their geographical links to the Nevada Test
Site and Yucca Mountain have tied tribal spiritualism to the debate.
DECENTRALISM / ANARCHISM - The organizing philosophy behind
the "Green Revolution", this anarchist philosophy makes
itself known in both populist environmental tracts and academia.
Ralph Nader's anti-nuclear activists have been proponents of
decentralism, arguing that nuclear energy centralizes political
power while solar energy disperses it.
THERMODYNAMIC NIHILISTS - An undercurrent to Vice President
Al Gore's philosophy, derived in part from the writings of environmental
lawyer Jeremy Rifkin. This theory suggests man's technology (especially
nuclear energy) dooms the world environment through entropic decay
according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. There are no noted
thermodynamicists who believe this theory.
MAOIST / MARXISTS - Remnants of class warfare theory pervade
many of the previously mentioned environmental theories. While
Maoism and Marxism are no longer mentioned by name in environmental
tracks, following the writings of environmental authors back twenty
years often reveals a time when their ideas were directly attributed
to these revolutionaries.
BRIEF HISTORY OF PROTEST
These different worldviews of the dangers of nuclear technology
have mixed and merged like paint in a pot over the years so that
it is often hard to distinguish where one philosophy begins and
another ends. Practitioners of the numerous varieties of anti-nuclearism
cross the lines of debate frequently. Protest against nuclear
weapons, nuclear reactors and now against the waste repository
have thus interwoven into a larger tapestry. The true rationale
behind the debate over the repository only becomes visible if
one understands the broad historical panorama of anti-nuclear
protest and its philosophical driving forces.
The history of antinuclear protest begins in the early seventies
as the Vietnam War ended and the peace movement began a search
for replacement causes. One event which seemed to stir up antagonism
for nuclear technology among the protest factions were the musings
of Alvin Weinberg, the father of nuclear reactors, who in 1972
postulated the need for a "Technological Priesthood"
to watch nuclear waste for many millennia. Activists like the
physicist Marvin Resnikoff began to target nuclear projects during
this birthing period of the anti-nuclear movement. Resnikoff,
a professor at the short lived Rachel Carson University, became
critical of the West Valley nuclear reprocessing plant in New
York, thus beginning what became a career of protest. Others
followed similar courses during this critical period in the early
70s, becoming involved in a lifelong anti-nuclear crusade.
The growth of the Clamshell Alliance and protest at Seabrook
in the early 70's led to the parallel formation of Ralph Nader's
Public Citizen Critical Mass Energy Project. The Critical Mass
rallies of 1974 and 1978 helped solidify and legitimize the opposition.
The movement became cohesive and hit its stride with Nader's
writing of "The Atomic Menace", first published in 1977,
which portrayed nuclear technology as a time bomb waiting to happen.
Besides the various alliances (Clamshell, Palmetto, Cactus, Abalone,
etc.) and Nader groups (Critical Mass, Public Interest Research
Groups, Environment Watch, etc.), other anti-nuclear protest groups
began to make their presence known. Dr. Helen Caldicott's Physicians
for Social Responsibility took on the tenor of a revival crusade.
Richard Pollard of the Union of Concerned Scientists and Dan
Reicher the Natural Resources Defense Council also made themselves
effective as anti-nuclear advocates. Amory Lovins, the British
representative of Friends of the Earth, helped stop development
of the Gorleben waste repository in Germany in 1979, an effort
which would serve as a template for later actions. Lovins later
joined forces with Marvin Resnikoff in New York to protest shipment
of plutonium through the state.
The accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 created a professional
core of nuclear opposition which later became critical components
in opposing Yucca Mountain. Nader, Caldicott, Resnikoff, Reicher,
and others formed a permanent core of anti-nuclear protesters
inside the Washington Beltway with a network of offices and staff.
In the academic sphere, psychologists and political geographers
from a small kernel of institutions, (in particular Mountain West,
Decision Research, and Clark University's CENTED) began to dominate
nuclear risk perception studies based on their key participation
in the socioeconomic analysis of the Three Mile Island accident
for President Carter's Kemeny Commission. The ideology of these
academics would later play a pivotal role in the Yucca Mountain
debate.
The premier anti-nuclear activist group in Nevada is Citizen
Alert, which started as a protest against nuclear waste disposal
in Nevada in the late 70's but cut its teeth on the MX debate
in the early 80's. In the same time frame, Nevada Test Site protest
became the seed for creation of the Nevada Desert Experience (NDE)
by Franciscans and nuns. Later, the national anti-nuclear Freeze
movement merged its efforts with NDE, eventually spinning off
as American Peace Test. Members of all these organizations regularly
crossed boundaries and as nuclear weapons protest faded, many
became regulars in Citizen Alert, the local focus of Yucca Mountain
opposition. Professionals from the earlier national protest movement
regularly resurrected themselves in Nevada, as for example Marvin
Resnikoff who helped found the Sierra Club Radioactive Waste Campaign
but traveled extensively to Nevada and later worked for the state
Nuclear Waste Project Office.
In Washington, the Safe Energy Communications Council had been
created in the early 80's as an umbrella organization for anti-nuclear
/ pro-solar environmental groups. As an offshoot of Ralph Nader's
Public Citizen Critical Mass Energy Project, the SECC centralized
control of nuclear protest. Anti-nuclear warriors moved from movement
to movement, exemplified by Diane D'Arrigo (from the Sierra Club
Nuclear Waste Campaign to the Nuclear Resource Information Center),
and Caroline Petti (from Public Citizen to PIRG to Southwest Information
and Resource Service to the Environmental Protection Agency).
In Nevada, the election of Richard Bryan to the governorship
in 1982 had ensured continuing no-compromise opposition from the
state to the Yucca Mountain repository. The state agency designed
to oversee the technical study of Yucca Mountain, the Nevada Nuclear
Waste Project Office (NWPO), became captive to environmental special
interests under its director, Bob Loux. An unyielding opposition
to the repository developed which paralleled the philosophy of
the anti-nuclear movement. NWPO's science, public information
and socioeconomic mandates were compromised by radical political
agendas. For example, in 1985, Mountain West was chosen by NWPO
as prime contractor to do socioeconomic studies for the state.
NWPO funneled $15 million through the Mountain West research
accounts, much of which was devoted to anti-nuclear advocacy.
NWPO also found itself influenced by the progressive politics
of some of its key consultants. In the mid eighties study of
a repository in Deaf Smith county, Texas, was effectively opposed
by environmentalists from the local organizations STAND and POWER.
Steve Frishman of the Texas Nuclear Waste Program Office and
Texas Agriculture commissioner Jim Hightower were critical in
the success of this opposition. Frishman later found employment
at NWPO 1987, Hightower now is on the board of Nader's Public
Citizen..
In 1987, Senator Bennett Johnston's (D-La) "Screw Nevada"
amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act designated Yucca Mountain
as the sole site for study, causing an uproar in the nuclear protest
movement. That year, Bob Loux hired Steve Frishman on at NWPO
to serve as an opposition consultant. Also in 1987, Public Citizen
produced "Shutdown Strategies", a secret plan to shutdown
nuclear energy in America. The Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force
was formed in late 1988 by Citizen Alert and Judy Treichel in
conjunction with national anti-nuclear activists. The NNWTF was
promptly given a sweetheart contract by Bob Loux through NWPO.
Citizen Alert pressed the battle against Yucca Mountain in the
early 90's, counting among its allies the Safe Energy Communication
Council, Greenpeace, Southwest Research and Information Center,
IEER, Don't Waste U.S. and many others. In short, a well organized
national movement evolved to obstruct the study of Yucca Mountain
because the repository is the bottleneck in the continued use
and development of the nuclear energy option.
When the nuclear coalition headed by the American Nuclear Energy
Council began in 1991 to present an alternative viewpoint to Nevadans
opposed to that presented by the professional anti-nuclear lobby,
war broke out. Among the anti-nuclear warriors who visited the
state were Ralph Nader, Helen Caldicott, Marvin Resnikoff, Dan
Reicher, Robert Pollard, Scott Denman, Rosalie Bertell and many
others. The battle was broken off, however, before the environmentalists
were sufficiently challenged. The nuclear industry reneged on
its commitment to a $10 million information campaign and pursued
backroom deals in Washington, leaving Nevada in the hands of anti-repository
environmental and political special interests.