Letter to the Editor - Tell legislators to vote no on taking public out of nuclear reactor decisions

Editor,

The Montana Legislature is back in session and I was more than a little concerned when I read that Republican Derek Skees introduced HB273. HB273 if passed would overturn Initiative 80, a long-standing initiative that gives the citizens of Montana the right to vote on nuclear power in Montana. I don’t understand why Derek Skees thinks the citizens of Montana would want to give up their right to vote on whether-or-not to produce nuclear power in Montana.

I personally have huge reservations about producing nuclear power in Montana. My concern is not with small nuclear reactors, they are much safer than years ago, barring natural disasters (this does not include small modular reactors, SMRs, which are experimental and not even slated to be on-line in the United States until 2029). My concern is with the long-term storage of radioactive waste produced from using the current small nuclear reactors to make nuclear power. The radioactive waste products I am concerned with are: Pu-239 which has a half-life of 24,000 years; Tc99 has a half-life of 220,000 years; and I-129 has a half-life of 15.7 million years. Disposal of these radioactive waste products requires isolation from animal, plant and human contact for tens of thousands of years. The United States has no long-term plan for storing the waste from nuclear reactors which is referred to as “spent nuclear fuel,” SNF for short. “No country including the United States, has a permanent geographic repository for disposal of commercial SNF and other HLW (high level waste). Currently, commercial nuclear power plants store SNF on site, awaiting disposal in permanent repository.” This quote is from the article “Nuclear Waste Storage Sites in the United States,” April 13, 2020, Congressional Research Services at https://crsreports.congress.gov .

I do not want radioactive waste to be stored in Montana and this appears to be the way it is currently done at nuclear power sites throughout the United States. The storage of nuclear reactor radioactive waste on site was intended to be a temporary solution while waiting to get access to a longer storage site like Yucca Mountain (no longer even considered a possible site). Nuclear power may have a small carbon foot-print, but it has a much larger problem with radioactive waste disposal. Please contact your legislature to vote NO on HB273

Thank you,

Pamela Diedrich

Butte