No Nuclear Dumps in Michigan

No Nuclear Dumps in Michigan

Several months ago, there was some talk of dumping future radioactive wastes from Michigan's nuclear power plants into the salt beds underneath Detroit. More recently, officials of the federal Energy Research and Development Agency (ERDA) have insisted they never really seriously considered such a plan, but now it seems they're interested in another site, which they no doubt hope will prove less politically volatile-the salt beds in the northern part of the lower peninsula, near Alpena.

Initial reaction in that part of the state has not been much better-partly because ERDA had not notified the landowners, local officials, or citizenry of their designs, and kept a meeting with state officials carefully under wraps.

This is typical of the attitude demonstrated by the federal government, private industry, and public utilities, all of which are engaged in a well-coordinated, well-financed, top-priority effort to force nuclear energy down the throats of the largely unsuspecting public-minimizing the obvious and potentially catastrophic lack of safety in the nuclear industry, and using the theme of "jobs and energy" in an attempt to pave the way for big profits and "energy independence" from the Third World.

The possibility of a dreadful nuclear accident is hardly theoretical at this point, since there have already been several close calls in the U.S. and elsewhere-including Michigan, where Detroit Edison's Fermi plant nearly inundated the Detroit area with lethal radioactive gases ten years ago.

The disposal of nuclear wastes, of course, presents another impossible hurdle, since no technology has yet been devised to successfully recycle the millions of tons of waste that would be produced by the kind of expanded nuclear power program the government and the energy industry have set their sights on. The best idea they can come up with, apparently, is filling the earth's crust with useless and poisonous plutonium wastes, which would then have to be guarded for something like 50,000 years.

Just one accident during transportation of the wastes, or one successful hijacking by any group bent on blackmail, could be enough to kill thousands of people.

Since we have no experience with storage of such wastes, there is no assurance that a container couldn't rupture under the earth, due either to defective manufacturing or to natural phenomena beyond our control.

Somewhere in the Detroit area, tons of radioactive wastes from the Fermi accident are buried, guarded 24 hours a day. It's an uncomfortable feeling, to say the least, that we don't know where it is. And the plant itself, finally condemned by the federal government, will itself have to be perpetually guarded.

When so much danger exists, and we have so many more appealing routes to explore in the search for new energy sources-including solar, wind, and tidal power-it is inconceivable that we allow ourselves to be stampeded into a mass development of nuclear power, at the peril of our very lives.

While devoting our efforts to developing safer energy sources, we might also begin to make some real efforts to curtail our ridiculously wasteful energy consumption habits, which have finally brought us to the point where we can see the end of our fossil fuel resources in the not too distant future.

Meanwhile, if, as one Department of Natural Resources official has stated, we can't have nuclear power plants in Michigan without nuclear dumping grounds in Michigan, we hope that the residents of the Alpena area- or any others which may be asked to live on top of an underground sea of radioactivity will do everything in their power to thwart the designs of the ERDA and the energy industry.

Detroit is not a suitable site for a nuclear dump. Neither is Alpena-or, as far as we're concerned, anywhere else on a planet inhabited by human beings.