Observation 1: Inherency

A. Now is key to create a permanent nuclear waste repositoryPNC Voice 8/31/14http://www.thepncvoice.com/federal-government-loss-disposing-current-nuclear-waste-stores/35047

In an effort to clean up America, the United States government seeks ways to transport tons of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants across the country to various nearby disposal sites.¶ Or, wait, the government already has the trains; the trains just have nowhere to go and no cars to haul.¶ Such is the current nuclear dilemma the U.S. Department of Energy faces as they plead with national companies for ideas on how they can get more rail cars to transport each of the 150-ton casks of used, volatile, radioactive waste. They expect the cars could last 30 years but they want to know if consumers—or maybe experts that don’t already work for the government?—think they should buy or lease the rail cars.¶ ¶ Whether it is a lack of response or a lack of manpower, apparently the

Obama administration isn’t planning to move the trains anytime soon, even if they did have the cars. After all, the latest government plan is to build or use an existing interim storage site—but not until 2021—as they wait for a new geologic depository that should be ready by 2048.¶ Whether they are building a new geologic depository or plan to alter an existing site is also unclear at this time. And nobody knows where any of these sites could possibly be. Still, even amidst the confusion the Obama administration continues to plan, develop, write contracts, and test new equipment in anticipation that the answers will come.¶

“Digging your well before your thirsty” really only works when you still have water to drink. Where are we going to put all the waste we already have?¶ Of course, the U.S. Department of Energy hasn’t commented on the issue, but they do share responsibility for disposing of the waste with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Thus, the plan: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase sub-seabed disposal of nuclear waste in

the Earth’s oceans.

Observation 2: Solvency

A. Sub-seabed nuclear waste disposal solves radiation leakage

Dillon in 2014 – Kenneth (Historian who writes on science, medicine, and history)”Sea-Based Nuclear Waste Solutions”, Scientia Press,http://www.scientiapress.com/nuclearwaste. MWHFirst formally proposed in 1973, the concept of burying nuclear waste in stable clay formations under the seabed was investigated by international teams of scientists for many years. A substantial scientific literature details the various modalities, associated risks, and geological conditions. The large undersea plain some 600 miles north of Hawaii, stable for some 65 million years, received special attention. Researchers found that the clay muds in such sub-seabed formations had a high capacity for binding radionuclides, so that any leakage would be likely to remain within the clay for millions of years, by which time radioactive emissions would decline to natural background levels.

B. Sub-seabed disposal was proven to be the safest method of disposing of nuclear waste, but the U.S. program was terminated in 1987 Professor Edward L. Miles ‘08[Professor of Marine Studies and Public Affairs at the University of Washington; Adjunct Professor at the School of Fisheries at the University of Washington; Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Denver (1965); Senior Fellow at the Joint Institute for the Study of Atmosphere and Ocean at the University of Washington; Co-Director of the Center for Science in the Earth System at the University of Washington; Graduate from the School of International Studies at the University of Denver; studies in International Law and Organization; Science, Technology and International Relations; Marine Policy and Ocean Management ; did his Ph.D. dissertation on “The Process and Politics of the Intergovernmental Codification of  International Law at the Supranational Level”], “Sub-Seabed Disposal of High Level Radioactive Waste: The Policy Context Then and Now,” Published on the Internet,

2008 ,http://www.xiamenacademy.org/upload/2-8%20Miles%20MASTER%202008-07-29.doc[PB]

“Ultimately, on the basis of radiological assessments conducted by EPA and Sandia National Laboratories, the manager of both the national and the coordinated international programs, the sub-seabed option was shown to be the safest of all options by several orders of magnitude. Nevertheless, the U.S. program was terminated prematurely by DOE in 1987 and the European program couldn’t survive on its own. What then had happened?”

Observation 3: Advantages

Advantage 1: Ethics

Scenario 1: Environmental Racism

A. Environmental Racism affects Native Americans and any person of color on a daily basis.Bullard 8 (Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D., Environmental Justice Resource Center, Clark Atlanta University, 7/2/08, “POVERTY, POLLUTION AND ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM: STRATEGIES FOR BUILDING HEALTHY AND SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES” http://www.ejrc.cau.edu/PovpolEj.html The United States is the dominant economic and military force in the world today. The American economic engine has generated massive wealth, high standard of living, and consumerism. This growth machine has also generated waste, pollution, and ecological destruction. The U.S. has some of the best environmental laws in the world. However, in the

real world, all communities are not created equal. Environmental regulations have not achieved uniform benefits across all segments of society. [2] Some communities are routinely poisoned while the

government looks the other way. People of color around the world must contend with dirty air and drinking water, and the location of noxious facilities such as municipal landfills, incinerators, hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities owned by private industry, government, and even the military.[3] These environmental problems are exacerbated by racism. Environmental racism refers to environmental policy, practice, or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages (whether intended or unintended) individuals, groups, or communities based on race or color. Environmental racism is reinforced by government, legal, economic, political, and military institutions. Environmental racism combines with public policies and industry practices to provide benefits for the countries in the North while shifting costs to countries in the South. [4] Environmental racism is a form of institutionalized discrimination. Institutional discrimination is defined as

"actions or practices carried out by members of dominant (racial or ethnic) groups that have differential and negative impact on members of subordinate (racial and ethnic) groups." [5] The United States is grounded in white racism. The nation was founded on the principles of "free land" (stolen from Native Americans and Mexicans), "free labor" (African slaves brought to this land in chains), and "free men" (only white men with property had the right to vote). From the outset, racism shaped the economic, political and ecological landscape of this new nation. Environmental racism buttressed the exploitation of land, people, and the natural environment. It operates as an intra-nation power arrangement--especially where ethnic or racial groups form a political and or numerical minority. For example, blacks in the U.S. form both a political and numerical racial minority. On the other hand, blacks in South Africa, under apartheid, constituted a political minority and numerical majority. American and South African apartheid had devastating

environmental impacts on blacks. [6] Environmental racism also operates in the international arena between nations and between transnational corporations. Increased globalization of the world's economy has placed special strains on the eco-systems in many poor communities and poor nations inhabited largely by people of color and indigenous peoples. This is especially true for the global resource extraction industry such as oil, timber, and minerals. [7] Globalization makes it easier for transnational corporations and capital to flee to areas with the least environmental regulations, best tax incentives, cheapest labor, and highest profit. The struggle of African Americans in Norco, Louisiana and the Africans in the Niger Delta are similar in that both groups are negatively impacted by Shell Oil refineries and unresponsive governments. This scenario is repeated for Latinos in Wilmington (California) and indigenous people in Ecuador who must contend with pollution from Texaco oil refineries. The companies may be different, but the community

complaints and concerns are very similar. Local residents have seen their air, water, and land contaminated. Many nearby residents are "trapped" in their community because of inadequate roads, poorly planned emergency escape routes, and faulty warning systems. They live in constant fear of plant explosions and accidents. The Bhopal tragedy is fresh in the minds of millions of people who live next to chemical plants. The 1984 poison-gas leak at the Bhopal, India Union Carbide plant killed thousands of people--making it the world's deadliest industrial accident. It is not a coincidence that the only place in the U.S. where methyl isocyanate (MIC) was manufactured was at a Union Carbide plant in in predominately African American Institute, West Virginia. [8] In 1985, a gas leak from the Institute Union Carbide plant sent 135 residents to the hospital. Institutional racism has allowed people of color communities to exist as colonies, areas that form dependent (and unequal) relationships to the dominant white society or "Mother Country" with regard to their social, economic, legal, and environmental administration. Writing more than three decades ago, Carmichael and Hamilton, in their work Black Power, offered the "internal" colonial model to explain racial inequality, political exploitation, and social isolation of

African Americans. Carmichael and Hamilton write: The economic relationship of America's black communities . . . reflects their colonial status. The political power exercised over those communities go hand in glove with the economic deprivation experienced by the black citizens. Historically, colonies have existed for the sole purpose of enriching, in one form or another, the "colonizer"; the consequence is to maintain the economic dependency of the "colonized." [9] Institutional racism reinforces internal colonialism.

Government institutions buttress this system of domination. Institutional racism defends, protects, and

enhances the social advantages and privileges of rich nations. Whether by design or benign neglect, communities of color (ranging from the urban ghettos and barrios to rural "poverty pockets" to economically impoverished Native

American reservations and developing nations) face some of the worst environmental problems. The most polluted communities are also the communities with crumbling infrastructure, economic disinvestment, deteriorating housing, inadequate schools, chronic unemployment, high poverty, and overloaded health care systems.

B. Native Americans do not want nuclear waste on their land as “temporary” storage sitesMinn Post 9/3/14http://www.minnpost.com/political-agenda/2014/09/red-wing-officials-disappointed-feds-decision-spent-nuclear-fuel

Red Wing city officials and leaders of the Prairie Island Indian Community say they are unhappy with a recent Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruling that does little to resolve the ongoing dispute over storage of spent nuclear fuel .¶ The Prairie Island nuclear power plant is on the Mississippi River in Red Wing, and is adjacent to the Indian reservation.¶ A story in the Rochester Post Bulletin says the NRC ruling:¶ "...opens the door for on-site nuclear waste storage for 100 years or more. The language also lifts a suspension on licensing additional nuclear facilities even without the creation of a national repository for nuclear waste."¶ Not good, says Red Wing City Council member Peggy Rehder, who has lobbied in Washington, D.C., on the issue, and wasn't surprised with the ruling¶ "There's been a movement toward saying that spent fuel in dry cask storage is safer for a longer period of time," she said. "It's disappointing, but on the other hand, we're seeing movement in Congress toward getting spent fuel that's in storage in at a least an interim storage site."¶ And Ron Johnson, president of the Prairie Island Indian Community's Tribal Council, said in a statement:¶ "...the NRC affirmed a new rule and generic environmental impact statement that concluded that spent nuclear fuel — some of the most dangerous and toxic substances known to mankind — can be safely stored 600 yards from our homes indefinitely if no geologic repository is ever built. No other community sits as close to a nuclear site and its waste storage."¶ According to the paper, Xcel Energy says it has "38 casks containing nuclear waste near Red Wing and is permitted to store waste in 64 casks when the current operating licenses end in 2033 and 2034."

C. Environmental Racism IS RACISM- it perpetuates dehumanizationWilder and Memmi, 1996Gary and Albert, WEB Dubois institute, racial theorists, “Irreconcilable differences.” Transition, 71, 1996, pp. 158-177

Perhaps Memmi's most precocious and valuable insights emerge from his belief that racism traps its victims in "an impossible condition ... a condition which can have no solution in its actual structure." We can read Memmi's work as an

inventory of possible responses to colonization, racism, and anti-Semitism. He believes that racialized subjects are inevitably impelled by contradictory gestures of self-rejection and self-affirmation , and that it is as impossible to secure recognition as different but equal as it is to gain full access to "universal" humanity : " No matter which way I turned I always found my- self an accomplice of the established order." He has profound empathy for oppressed peoples' attempts to survive with dignity, and he allows us to see the desire to disappear into the mainstream and the wish to retreat into ghettoized enclaves as natural reactions to the racial dilemma.

D. Dehumanization is every impact discussed in debate felt by real people every day and must be rejectedBerube, 1997; David M., Professor of Communication Studies at University of South Carolina., “NANOTECHNOLOGICAL PROLONGEVITY: The Down Side,” http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/faculty/berube/prolong.htm]

This means-ends dispute is at the core of Montagu and Matson's treatise on the dehumanization of humanity. They warn[s]: " its destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural calamity on record -- and its potential danger to the quality of life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation. For that reason this sickness of the soul might well be called the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.... Behind the genocide of the holocaust lay a dehumanized thought; beneath the menticide of deviants and dissidents... in the cuckoo's next of America, lies a dehumanized image of man... (Montagu & Matson, 1983, p. xi-xii). While it may never be possible to quantify the impact dehumanizing ethics may have had on humanity, it is safe to conclude the foundations of humanness offer great opportunities which would be foregone. When we calculate the actual losses and the virtual benefits, we

approach a nearly inestimable value greater than any tools which we can currently use to measure it. Dehumanization is

nuclear war , environmental apocalypse , and international genocide . When people become things, they become dispensable. When people are dispensable, any and every atrocity can be justified. Once justified, they seem to be inevitable for every epoch that has evil and dehumanization is evil's most powerful weapon .

Scenario 2: Poverty

A. High fuel prices are one of the biggest burdens on impoverished families – lowering the cost of energy should be the first priority in solving poverty.

Holt, President of the Consumer Energy Alliance, 2014(David, “Energy key to solving income inequality,” January 28, Online: http://theenergyvoice.com/energy-key-solving-income-inequality/)

When exploring solutions to income inequality policy makers pay close attention to the costs.

The cost of healthcare. The cost of food. The cost of child care. The cost of housing.¶ What about the cost of energy?¶

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2012 the average U.S. family spent over $4,600 or about 9 percent of

their budget to heat and power their homes and fuel their vehicles. Families in the bottom fifth of income earners spent nearly 33 percent more of their budget on energy costs than average $2,500 a

year or 12% of their annual budget. Reference the chart to the left and you will find that low-income families spend two and half times more on energy than on health services. Unlike food and housing, consumers cannot shop around for the lowest cost energy. Bargains can be found in the supermarket, but, prices at the pump do not vary from one station to the next. Conservation similarly is not an option when it’s a choice between driving to work or saving a gallon of gasoline.¶ A solution to remedying income inequality is tackling rising energy costs . The U.S. Energy Information Administration

projects the price of electricity will rise 13.6 percent and the price of gasoline by 15.7 percent from now until 2040. Rising global demand, aging and insufficient¶ energy infrastructure and restrictive government policies all play a role in increasing cost s .President Obama has the ability to reverse this trend and lessen the blow to all consumers.¶ Take the shale gas boom for example. Increasing access to private and state lands and sound state regulatory programs have boosted production of natural gas and led to a significant lowering of prices. IHS CERA predicted that the shale revolution lifted household income by more than $1,200 in 2012 through lower energy costs, more job opportunities and greater federal and state tax revenues.¶ Policy makers should promote responsible energy development with the knowledge that it will have a positive affect on even the most vulnerable. The president has the power to act. Permitting energy infrastructure – including the Keystone XL Pipeline, opening new offshore areas to oil and natural gas development, and finalizing

the nuclear waste confidence rulemaking, could transform the energy economy.¶ If policy makers want to take meaningful action to help our nation’s low income families, they must pursue actions that help lower – not raise – the cost of energy.

B. Widespread Nuclear power leads to low electricity prices.Nordhaus, Lovering, and Shellenberger ‘14(Nordhaus & Lovering are founders of Breakthrough Institute, Shellenberger is a Climate & Policy Analyst at Breakthrough Institute)http://thebreakthrough.org/images/pdfs/Breakthrough_Institute_How_to_Make_Nuclear_Cheap.pdfThe promise of nuclear technologies capable of producing cheap, clean, and abun- dant energy once inspired widespread hopes in modern progress and captured the imaginations of policy makers eager to deliver on popular aspirations. That promise has not been altogether unfulfilled . Nuclear energy now represents 12 percent of total global electricity production and comprises 19 percent of total electrical generation in the United States, 29 percent in South Korea, 43 percent in Sweden, and 82 percent 10 in France.1 Existing nuclear plants are one of

the cheapest sources of electrical power production in the United States,2 while France

boasts the lowest electricity prices in Western Europe. 3

C. Formulating a credible nuclear waste solution leads to widespread nuclear power by revitalizing domestic nuclear industry along with being modeled globallyCSIS 13 – Center for Strategic and International Studies (June 2013, “Restoring U.S. Leadership in Nuclear Energy,” http://csis.org/files/publication/130614_RestoringUSLeadershipNuclearEnergy_WEB.pdf)Waste management has stood for decades as a barrier to the growth of nuclear energy in the United States. Several states have laws that ban construction of new nuclear plants until the waste issue is resolved. More broadly, the lack of a waste-disposal solution has damaged the credibility of, and

undermined public confidence in, nuclear power as an energy source. The recent report of the Blue Ribbon

Commission on America’s Nuclear Future found that “this nation’s failure to come to grips with the nuclear waste issue has already proved damaging and costly and it will be more damaging and more costly the longer it continues: damaging to prospects for maintaining a potentially important energy supply option for the future, damaging to state–federal relations and public confidence in the federal government’s competence, and damaging to America’s standing in the world —not only as a source of nuclear technology and policy expertise but as a leader on global issues of nuclear safety, non-proliferation, and security.” If the U nited States can decide on a course of action to deal with its own spent fuel and other

high level nuclear waste, this could open the door to options such as fuel “take-away” arrangements between the United States and countries with small nuclear programs. Such agreements, which would

allow a country to dispose of spent fuel in another country with established disposal capability rather than on its own soil, could have large safety and security benefits, especially if implemented in concert with nonproliferation goals. The United States has had a small but successful security initiative to repatriate spent foreign research reactor fuel for

storage and disposal. If a similar program to accept spent fuel from foreign commercial reactors could be established, this would greatly expand the options available to the United States in advancing its nonproliferation interests,

particularly as new, small, and inexperienced nuclear entrants consider their fuel cycle options. Of course, such a program would likely be politically acceptable only in the context of discernible progress toward implementing a permanent disposal solution for U.S. spent fuel. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

(NRC) has set the global standard for excellence in nuclear energy regulation and has long served to bolster public confidence in nuclear operations. Yet there is a growing concern that the regulatory burden facing U.S. plant operators will be expanded without commensurate safety benefit, particularly in light of the understandable and appropriate desire to respond quickly to lessons learned from the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan. It is essential that the NRC and the U.S. nuclear industry work constructively to enhance the safety and security of the U.S. nuclear fleet without placing undue

burdens on reactor operators. The U.S. commercial industry has been unrelenting in its quest for excellence.

The Institute of Nuclear Power Operations (INPO) has been a strong force for self-regulation and the result has been performance that sets the global standard. Added regulatory requirements when they produce real benefits are good for the industry; additional regulatory costs without appropriate benefits will weigh down otherwise well-performing nuclear facilities and their staff, and would contribute to financial pressures that could lead to even more rapid shutdowns of presently operating nuclear power plants.

D. All individuals deserve electricity access – but most don’t get it – we have an obligation to rectify the government’s failure to provide energy to the poor

Tully 6 – former BP Postdoctoral Fellow of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation and of the Law Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science¶ (Stephen, “The Human Right to Access Electricity,” The Electricity Journal vol 19 issue 3, April 2006, pg 30-39, dml)

Characterizing electricity as an essential civic service implies that governments are expected to provide access to an equal supply of electricity to all individuals within their jurisdiction or control. Drawing upon the sources identified in Section

I, the normative content and scope of the human right to access electricity entitles everyone to access a reliable,

adequate, and affordable electricity supply of sufficient quality for personal and household (domestic) use. Elaborating upon each

of these elements in turn, ‘‘everyone’’ implies that electrical facilities and services are universally available without

discrimination . Special protective measures to ensure that marginalized social groups enjoy electricity access would not qualify as

discrimination. Significantly, the human right is formulated as one of access rather than a right to electricity per se. ‘‘Access’’ must be physical (an adequate infrastructure exists), geographically proximate (located near end users) and economical (affordable).

The term ‘‘access’’ first implies equality of opportunity which permits everyone to develop their own

capabilities without undue restriction. It also requires governments to remedy situations of de facto

inequality by removing barriers to participation and instituting affirmative measures in favor of disadvantaged groups.

Second, the duty of suppliers to provide electricity upon demand is contingent upon consumers first being eligible, namely, satisfying the supply conditions including the ability to make financial payment. Third, access is consistent with the obligation of progressive realization envisaged by the ICESCR which acknowledges the resource constraints confronting government. Governments would be expected to incrementally expand

electricity networks over time in light of available energy sources, local energy requirements, and population density. Fourth, access is consistent with the terminology of relevant political declarations within the sustainable development context, a topic considered further below. Finally, individuals do not want electricity per se but rather the goods and services it produces (in

other words, their demand is derived). Returning to the right as formulated above, ‘‘reliable’’ means that electricity supplies are regular, dependable, secure, and continuous. Disconnection must not be arbitrary: it is only permissible in certain defined circumstances (for example, non-payment, illegal use, and risk to human health or safety) and must be exercised consistently

with proper procedures (for example, notification and opportunity to rectify). An ‘‘adequate’’ electricity supply means that consumers should not be deprived of the minimum essential level necessary to lead a life in human dignity, a particularly vague normative expectation. ‘‘Sufficient quality’’ means that the supply constitutes an acceptable strength to power

the appliance for which it is intended whereas ‘‘personal and household use’’ implies that electricity dedicated to satisfying basic human needs enjoys priority above directly productive but competing agricultural or industrial applications.

Advantage 2: Leakage

Scenario 1: Mutations

A. Leaks are inevitable unless a change is madeEasley ‘12(Megan, Magna Cum Laude @ Georgetown University, Law Graduate from Cornell)http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3235&context=clrAlthough the U.S. government accepted federal responsibility for disposing of civilian nuclear waste with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA),4 spent nuclear fuel continues to linger at its source in temporary storage facilities built by the utility companies operating nuclear power plants. 5 Some of these facilities are leaking,6 some are located near elementary schools, 7 and others are already filled to ca- pacity.8 These problems in "temporary storage" are hardly surprising, however, since under the NWPA the federal government was to accept receipt of nuclear waste for permanent disposal in a geologic reposi- tory in 1998. 9 However, 1998 came and went but nuclear waste stayed put.

B. Leaks can lead to genetic mutations, cancers, and a higher vulnerability to diseasehttp://www.riverkeeper.org/campaigns/stop-polluters/indian-point/radioactive-waste/ Radioactive Waste and Pollution, River Keeper.org New York’s Clean Water Advocate 2014 River Keeper ’14

Every exposure to radiation increases the risk of damage to tissues, cells, DNA and other vital molecules. Each exposure can cause programmed cell death, genetic mutations, cancers, leukemia, birth defects, and reproductive, immune and endocrine system disorders. There is no safe threshold to exposure to radiation.Government regulations allow radioactive water to be released from Indian Point nuclear power plant to the environment containing “permissible” levels of contamination. However, since there is no safe threshold to exposure to radiation, permissible does not mean safe.It doesn’t take an accident at the Indian Point nuclear power plant to release radioactivity into our air, water, and soil. As a matter of regular operation, radiation is released from Indian Point in the form of liquid, gaseous, and solid radioactive wastes. Solid radioactive wastes include laundry (considered low-level waste) and irradiated spent fuel (considered high-level waste.)Each reactor routinely emits relatively low-dose amounts of airborne and liquid radioactivity. This radioactivity represents over 100 different isotopes only produced in reactors and atomic bombs, including Strontium-89, Strontium-90, Cesium-137, and Iodine-131. Humans ingest them either by inhalation, or through the food chain (after airborne radioactivity returns these chemicals to earth).Each of these chemicals has a special biochemical action; iodine seeks out the thyroid gland, strontium clumps to the bone and teeth (like calcium), and cesium is distributed throughout the soft tissues. All are carcinogenic. Each decays at varying rates; for example, iodine-131 has a half-life of eight days, and remains in the body only a few weeks. Strontium-90 has a half-life of 28.7 years, and thus remains in bone and teeth for many years.These chemicals are different from “background” radiation found in nature in cosmic rays and the earth’s surface. Background radiation, while still harmful, contains no chemicals that specifically attack the thyroid gland, bones, or other organs. Indian Point ranks among the top emitters with respect to radioactive releases over the years it has operated.Radioactive releases result from plant accidents and accidents happen. On February 15, 2000, IP-2 suffered a ruptured steam generator tube that released 20,000 gallons of radioactive coolant into the plant. The incident resulted from poor plant maintenance and lax oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The accident, a stage 2 event, triggered a radioactive release to the atmosphere. The NRC gave the plant its worst rating because of the previous plant operator’s failure to detect flaws in a steam generator tube before the February 2000 leak. One week after the accident, 200 gallons of radioactive water were accidentally released into the Hudson River.Since at least August 2005, radioactive toxins such as tritium and strontium-90 have been leaking from at least two spent fuel pools at Indian Point into the groundwater and the Hudson River. In January 2007 it was reported that strontium-90 was detected in four out of twelve Hudson River fish tested.The Nuclear Regulatory Commission relies upon self-reporting and computer modeling from reactor operators to track radioactive releases and their projected dispersion. A significant portion of the environmental monitoring data is extrapolated – virtual, not real.However, radioactive releases from Indian Point’s routine operation often are not fully detected or reported. In fact, accidental releases may not be completely verified or documented.And, they occur throughout the nuclear fuel cycle, which includes uranium mining, uranium milling, chemical conversion, fuel enrichment and fabrication, the process by which electricity is generated at plant via controlled reaction, and the storage of radioactive waste, both on-site and off-site.Finally, radioactive by-products continue giving off dangerous radioactive particles and rays for enormously long periods – described in terms of “half lives.” A radioactive material gives off hazardous radiation for at least ten half-lives. One of the radioactive isotopes of iodine (iodine-129)

Scenario 2: Ecocide

A. Nuclear waste leakage devastates the environment-this is ecocideHynes 14 – Traprock Center for Peace and Justice in western Massachusetts, retired environmental engineer and Professor of Environmental Health (Pat Hynes, Summer 2014, “The “Invisible Casualty of War:” The Environmental Destruction of U.S. Militarism, http://traprock.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Militarism-and-the-Environment.pdf)//twonilySince the United States exploded the first nuclear bomb in New Mexico in 1945, more than 2,000 nuclear weapons have been tested worldwide in multiple environments: aboveground, underwater, underground, and in outer space. According to some estimates, the equivalent of more than 29,000 Hiroshima bombs have been tested in the atmosphere, discharging more than 9,000 pounds of plutonium— with a half-life of 24,000 years—into the environment. 9,10 Hundreds of thousands of military personnel, civilian workers, their families, and people living downwind of test sites have been exposed to radiation at levels sufficient to cause cancer and other diseases. Compensation programs set up by the U.S. government place many obstacles in the way of claimants, including burden of proof, maximum limits on compensation and grossly inadequate underfunding, particularly in the case of compensating citizens of the Marshall Islands and Micronesia, both of which places were environmental sacrifice zones for the U.S. nuclear

program.11 Most of the uranium mined for the U.S. nuclear program was in or near Navajo tribal lands in New Mexico. More

than 1,000 regional mines and mill sites are now abandoned and unsealed sources of soil and drinking water contamination. Navajo miners worked without protection from exposure to uranium dust and still live with their families near

the contaminated sites. The Navajo and nearby Laguna tribes suffer lung cancer, kidney disease, and birth defects at higher than average rates.12 Even if all nuclear weapons were dismantled tomorrow, the radioactivity of waste from

mining, manufacturing, and testing will endure for millennia. By 1994, nearly 5,000 contaminated sites at the DOE nuclear weapons and fuel facilities had been identified for remediation. The now-closed Hanford nuclear weapons facility, which recycled uranium and extracted plutonium for nuclear weapons, is the largest nuclear waste storage site in the country and may be the world’s largest environmental cleanup site, with a

projected budget of $100 billion U.S. dollars. The operating plant regularly released radioactive iodine emissions

and discharged more than 400 billion gallons of radioactive waste into adjacent soil and the Columbia River , exposing tens of thousands of people living nearby to some of the largest amounts of radiation in the world. Over the course of its 30-year operations, Hanford workers developed a rare blood cancer and other work related diseases at elevated rates. Nearby residents, including the Yakima Nation, also experienced high rates of cancers, miscarriages and other health problems. The waste on the closed 600 acre site includes nearly five tons of plutonium and more than 53 million gallons of radioactive plutonium waste

stored in underground tanks. According to DOE about 60 of the tanks have leaked and others may be leaking into soil and groundwater which flows into the Columbia River , a regional source of salmon, agricultural irrigation, and drinking water supply.14 Nuclear weapons’ waste dwarfs all other hazardous waste in scale, toxicity, dispersion across the world, and cost. Moreover, it defies technical solutions for permanent environmental cleanup and environmental safety.15

B. Ecocide is the worst thing we can do to the environment. It is when we no longer know ourselves as a part of our environment that we enable the destruction of the atmosphere, non human beings and human beings. This is a far more violent level of extinction.

Gottlieb, 94 (Roger - professor of humanities at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Ethics and Trauma: LEVINAS, FEMINISM, AND DEEP ECOLOGY, http://www.crosscurrents.org/feministecology.htm)I speak of the specter of ecocide, the continuing destruction of species and ecosystems, and the growing threat to the basic conditions essential to human life. W hat kind of ethic is adequate to this brutally new and potentially most unforgiving of crises? How can we respond to this trauma with an ethic which demands a response, and does not remain marginalized?¶ Here I will at least begin in agreement with Levinas. As he rejects an ethics proceeding

on the basis of self-interest, so I believe the anthropocentric perspectives of conservation or liberal environmentalism cannot take us far enough. Our relations with nonhuman nature are poisoned and not just because we have set up feedback loops that already lead to mass starvations, skyrocketing environmental disease rates, and devastation of natural resources.¶ The problem with ecocide is not just that it hurts human beings. Our uncaring violence also violates the very ground of our being, our natural body, our home. Such violence is done not simply to the other -- as if the rainforest, the river, the atmosphere, the species made extinct are totally different from ourselves. Rather, we have crucified ourselves-in-relation-to-the- other, fracturing a mode of being in which self and other can no more be conceived as fully in isolation from each other than can a mother and a nursing child.¶ We are that child, and nonhuman nature is that mother. If this image seems too maudlin, let us remember that other lactating women can feed an infant, but we have only one earth mother.¶ What moral stance will be shaped by our personal sense that we are poisoning ourselves, our environment, and so many kindred spirits of the air, water, and forests?¶ To begin, we may see this tragic situation as setting the limits to Levinas's

perspective. The other which is nonhuman nature is not simply known by a "trace," nor is it something of which all knowledge is necessarily instrumental. This other is inside us as well as outside us. We prove it with every breath we take, every bit of food we eat, every glass of water we drink. We do not have to find shadowy traces on or in the faces of trees or lakes, topsoil or air: we are made from them.¶ Levinas denies this sense of connection with nature. Our "natural" side represents for him a threat of simple consumption or use of the other, a spontaneous response which must be obliterated by the power of ethics in general (and, for him in particular, Jewish religious law(23) ). A "natural" response lacks discipline; without the capacity to heed the call of the other, unable to sublate the self's egoism. Worship of nature would ultimately result in an "everything-is-permitted" mentality, a close relative of Nazism itself. For Levinas, to think of people as "natural" beings is to assimilate them to a totality, a category or species which makes no room for the kind of individuality required by ethics.(24) He refers to the "elemental" or the "there is" as unmanaged, unaltered, "natural" conditions or forces that are essentially alien to the categories and conditions of moral life.(25)¶ One can only lament that Levinas has read nature -- as to some extent (despite his intentions) he has read selfhood

-- through the lens of masculine culture. It is precisely our sense of belonging to nature as system, as interaction, as interdependence, which can provide the basis for an ethics appropriate to the trauma of ecocide . As cultural feminism sought to expand our sense of personal identity to a sense of inter-identification

with the human other, so this ecological ethics would expand our personal and species sense of identity into an inter-identification with the natural world. ¶ Such a realization can lead us to an ethics

appropriate to our time, a dimension of which has come to be known as "deep ecology."(26) For this ethics, we do not begin from the uniqueness of our human selfhood, existing against a taken-for-granted background of earth and sky. Nor is our body somehow irrelevant to ethical relations, with knowledge of it reduced always to tactics of

domination. Our knowledge does not assimilate the other to the same, but reveals and furthers the continuing dance of interdependence. And our ethical motivation is neither rationalist system nor individualistic self-interest, but a sense of connection to all of life.¶ The deep ecology sense of self-realization goes beyond the modern Western sense of "self" as an isolated ego striving for hedonistic gratification. . . . . Self, in this sense, is experienced as integrated with the whole of nature.(27)¶ Having gained distance and sophistication of perception [from the development of science and political freedoms] we can turn and recognize who we have been all along. . . . we are our world knowing itself. We can relinquish our separateness. We can come home again -- and participate in our world in a richer, more responsible and poignantly beautiful way.(28)¶ Ecological ways of knowing nature are necessarily participatory. [This] knowledge is ecological and plural, reflecting both the diversity of natural ecosystems and the diversity in cultures that nature-based living gives rise to.¶ The recovery of the feminine principle is based on inclusiveness. It is a recovery in nature, woman and man of creative forms of being and perceiving. In nature it implies seeing nature as a live organism. In woman it implies seeing women as productive and active. Finally, in men the recovery of the feminine principle implies a relocation of action and activity to create life-enhancing, not life-reducing and life-threatening societies.(29)¶ In this context, the knowing ego is not set against a world it seeks to control, but one of which it is a part. To continue the feminist perspective, the mother knows or seeks to know the child's needs. Does it make sense to think of her answering the call of the child in abstraction from such knowledge? Is such knowledge necessarily domination? Or is it essential to a project of care, respect and love, precisely because the knower has an intimate, emotional connection with the known?(30) Our ecological vision locates us in such close relation with our natural home that knowledge of it is knowledge of ourselves. And this is not, contrary to Levinas's fear, reducing the other to the same, but a celebration of a larger, more inclusive, and still complex and articulated self.(31) The noble and terrible burden of Levinas's individuated responsibility for sheer existence gives way to a different dream, a different prayer:¶ Being rock, being gas, being mist, being Mind, Being the mesons traveling among the galaxies with the speed of light, You have come here, my beloved one. . . . You have manifested yourself as trees, as grass, as butterflies, as single-celled beings, and as chrysanthemums; but the eyes with which you looked at me this morning tell me you have never died.(32)¶ In this prayer, we are,

quite simply, all in it together. And, although this new ecological Holocaust -- this creation of planet

Auschwitz -- is under way, it is not yet final. We have time to step back from the brink, to repair our world. But only if we see that world not as an other across an irreducible gap of loneliness and unchosen obligation, but as a part of ourselves as we are part of it, to be redeemed not out of duty, but out of love; neither for our selves nor for the other, but for us all.