Atomic Discrimination
Introduction
Uranium Mining and Human Rights: A new Beyond Nuclear campaign
Wherever uranium has been mined, health problems, disease, death and environmental degradation has followed. From the Navajo Nation to Niger, indigenous people have most often endured these hardships. Today, the Navajo in New Mexico are struggling to ensure that the 2005 ban on uranium mining on their land is respected an upheld. The nomadic Touareg in Niger, are literally fighting to stop further exploitation of their Sahara Desert environment on which they depend for subsistence. These struggles and more - in Australia, Canada, Argentina, Namibia and elsewhere - have repeated themselves over the decades and threaten to get worse as nuclear corporations attempt not to exploit climate change by pushing for new uranium mines across the globe.
Standing Room Only for Campaign Launch
Sidi-Amar TaouaIt was standing room only when Beyond Nuclear brought a team of speakers to Washington in February, 2009 to address the human rights abuses caused by uranium mining - and in particular the disproportionate targeting of indigenous peoples. The speakers included the actor, James Cromwell, Dr. Bruno Chareyron (below right, French nuclear engineeer), Sidi-Amar Taoua (keft, Touareg, Niger), Mitch (Aboriginal, Australia), Manny Pino (Acoma Pueblo), Jenny Pond (filmmaker, Poison Wind) and Bruno ChareyronNat Wasley (Beyond Nuclear Initiative, Australia). They drew standing room only crowds at their opening panel session at the 12,000-strong PowerShift 2009 youth conference with audiences turned away as fire code rules for the room were exceeded! Beyond Nuclear staff members were panelists and two additional packed-to-capacity PowerShift panels on nuclear energy and Beyond Nuclear's Paul Gunter conducted a solo workshop there that also had to turn people away due to overflow capacity. The speakers also held a press conference at the National Press Club and a Hill briefing and met with a dozen legislative offices on Capitol Hill. Pond's film, Poison Wind - describing the impact of uranium mining on Native American communities in the American Southwest, was screened at the 14th St. NW location of Busboys and Poets along with two short documentaries from Al Jazeera detailing the plight of the Touareg in Niger.
Breaking News
Australian Uranium Mine Leaking The Ranger uranium mine inside the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park is leaking 100,000 liters of contaminated water into the ground beneath the park every day, a Government appointed scientist has revealed. Read more here.
Learn More
Support Congressman Raul Grijalva's bill to ban uranium mining at the Grand Canyon. Read more here, then contact your representatives and urge them to support this bill.
Support and Join the Energy Action Coalition. Are you as student or youth activist? Consider joining Energy Action Coalition, a movement to create change for a clean, efficient, just and renewable energy future.
Read two excellent articles in the January 2009 edition of Orion magazine - Nuclear Caribou by Mark Dowie and Uranium Mining, Native Resistance and the Greener Path by Winona LaDuke - both of which describe the impacts on indigenous people, and on wildlife, from uranium mining. Read the articles here.
Read Blue People, Yellowcake, an article by Stefan Simanowitz that appeared in the March 4, 2009 edition of In These Times, about the situation in Niger. Read the article here.
Read Australian investigative journalist, John Pilger, on the latest land-grab attempt by the Australian government in order to seize ownership of Aboriginal lands that contain uranium resources. Read the article here.
Read the Los Angeles Times series, Blighted Homeland.
Watch excerpts from Poison Wind, a new documentary by Jenny Pond, showing the devastating health and environmental impacts of uranium mining on Native American communities in the Southwest. Watch here.
Watch Navajo activist, Norman Patrick Brown, speak about the tragedies incurred by the Navajo (Diné) as a result of industrial exploitation on Navajo land, most particularly uranium mining. Watch here.
Watch a narrative slide show featuring Aboriginal (Australia) activists, Mitch and Priscilla Williams in their struggle to oppose radioactive dumping on Aboriginal land. Watch here.
Watch a multi-part series produced by Al Jazeera on the plight of the Touareg in Niger threatened with new uranium mines. Watch the series here.
Watch Uranium Thirst, a film by Norbert Suchanek about the effect of uranium mining on the people of Namibia. Watch here.
Watch the two-part short documentary in French about the trip made to Niger by the French scientific research team, CRIIRAD investigating radioactive exposures resulting from the Areva mines. Watch here.
Background
Native Americans and the Nuclear Fuel Chain
The first link in a nuclear chain that binds us to catastrophic weapons and energy is uranium mining. The final link is the intensely radioactive waste these industries produce. Native Americans are targeted at both ends of the chain.
The health of members of tribal communities living near operating and abandoned uranium mines and mills has been negatively affected and they continue to demand population-based health studies to explain these illnesses. No extensive health studies have ever been conducted among these populations.
To date the only proposed site for a high-level radioactive waste site for geological disposal is on Western Shoshone Indian land at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. However, it appears that president Obama will likely cancel the flawed Yucca site after decades of wasted time and billions in wasted dollars.
Dozens of Native American reservations have been targeted for high-level radioactive waste “parking lot” dumps. The anti-nuclear and environmental justice movements, working with members of these Native communities, have stopped every such proposal thus far. On the western part of the Navajo Nation about 1 in every 5 drinking water sources contains uranium and arsenic that exceed EPA drinking water standards, and many of these contaminated water sources are located close to abandoned uranium mines.
Indian tribes in Alaska are facing the prospect of a new prototype reactor that could contaminate America’s most pristine watershed.
At Prairie Island, Minnesota, Indian land involuntarily hosts a massive dry cask storage “parking lot” for spent fuel rods just 600 yards from the tribal day care center.
The Seneca Nation of Indians is downstream from the West Valley dump for nuclear power and weapons wastes and the country’s failed commercial irradiated fuel reprocessing plant.
Reports
A new report from the New Mexico Environmental Law Center shows that new uranium mines in the state would not be the economic boon claimed by the uranium mining companies. Read the report and press release.
Victories
* Working with the Western Shoshone Defense Project and Western Shoshone National Council, Beyond Nuclear’s Kevin Kamps, then with NIRS, helped the team effort to stop the planned “Divine Strake” bunker buster blast at the Nevada Test Site, located on Western Shoshone land in violation of the Treaty of Ruby Valley. The blast would have blown radioactive dirt and dust (leftover contamination from previous atomic tests) thousands of feet into the sky, high enough to be carried long distances downwind.
* An attempt to create a ground-level dump on the Skull Valley Goshute Reservation in Utah was defeated after a collaborative effort among Native and environmental activists and elected officials including members of the Beyond Nuclear team.
* Kevin Kamps, while with NIRS, forced the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to admit in an Environmental Impact Statement that the Palisades Nuclear power plant in Michigan had never conducted a site survey for Native archeological sites on the property, including burials. This has led the NRC to require more careful procedures from the nuclear utility, in order to prevent the bulldozing of sacred Native sites.
