Environmental Justice

January 15, 2025 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Indigenous Sovereignty Stops Uranium Shipments, for Now

By Kelly Lundeen

On Tuesday, July 30, Navajo Nation police attempted to stop a truck shipment of radioactive uranium ore on the reservation. Energy Fuels Resources, Inc. successfully crossed the Nation going from the Pinyon Plain Mine near the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona to the White Mesa Mill in southeastern Utah more than 300 miles away. The truck crossing was in violation of the Nation’s “Radioactive and Related Substances Equipment, Vehicles, Persons, and Materials Transportation Act” passed by the tribal government in 2012, which prohibits such transports.

Navajo Nation president Buu Nygren told Four Corners Public Radio KSUT, “Once they enter the boundaries of the Navajo Nation, they’re on Navajo land. They need to follow Navajo law. They snuck through the Navajo Nation, and they made it to the Utah side, outside of the reservation. So to me, they operated covertly to travel the Navajo Nation illegally.”

The illegal two-truck shipment not only broke Navajo Nation law, it was an infringement on an agreement that Energy Fuels had made to notify the Tribe and other entities two weeks prior to any transport. While Energy Fuels asserts that it briefed stakeholders of the ore transport with adequate notice, neither of the appropriate tribal authorities, the Navajo Nation EPA and the Havasupai Tribal Council, were ever contacted, deepening a lack of trust. Energy Fuels is a Canadian company that owns the Pinyon Plain mine and the White Mesa Mill.

While ignoring months of pressure and over 17,000 petitions from tribal members and environmental advocates, Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs responded to the Navajo Nation President and arranged to uphold the uranium transport ban temporarily while Navajo Nation and Energy Fuels negotiate terms for its safest possible transport. On August 29, Navajo Nation reaffirmed its opposition to radioactive transports by amending the 2012 ban. The new legislation extends the required notification time prior to transport from four to seven days, and authorizes the Navajo Nation EPA to create “reasonable license fees, bonding requirements, route restrictions, curfews and other terms.” It no longer acknowledges the Nation’s right to exclude non-Tribal members from entry onto Navajo Nation lands.

The transport pause remains in effect, so while a small battle has been won for now, the struggle against nuclear colonialism will continue. The land where the Pinyon Plain mine is located was stolen from the Havasupai people who oppose the mine. Under the 1872 mining law still in effect in many areas, lands such as Pinyon Plain, were taken from the original Indigenous owners and given to anyone who could prove there were minerals. The ore is transported through ancestral lands of the Diné People, Ute Mountain Utes, and other tribal communities, to the mill — without free, prior, or informed consent of any.

Over 500 abandoned uranium mines remain on Navajo Nation without remediation. The Navajo Birth Cohort Study has shown that at birth, babies are already carrying uranium in their bodies in areas uranium mining previously occurred. Thousands of Navajo have been killed or sickened with cancers, birth defects, and other terminal illnesses as a result of uranium mining and milling. Extraction at Pinyon Plain continues, and uranium ore is expected to be delivered to the mill as interstate commerce laws of the U.S. federal government protect industries in spite of other nations’ laws. Meanwhile, the Indigenous-led organization Haul No! continues to spread awareness while monitoring the mine and transportation route.

On both the national and global scale, the economic outlook for uranium is on the rise as it is necessary to fuel both the renewed arms race and push for new commercial reactors. The price of uranium reached a 17-year high in January after many had assumed the days of uranium mining in the United States were over. U.S. production hit a low at 21,000 pounds in 2021 with only three operating mines. However, during the first six months of 2024 (the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported) uranium ore production via in-situ leaching reached 180,242 pounds, putting it on track to be the highest since 2019. This does not include the astounding 9-million-pound stockpile stranded at the Pinyon Plain mine. Navajo Nation and Energy Fuels must negotiate an agreement on monitoring, fees, and regulations, prior to restarting transport. In addition to the five mines currently operating in Wyoming, Arizona, and Texas, new mines in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming are projected to open or reopen in the coming years.

— Sources: Grand Canyon Trust, Fall/Winter 2024; U.S. Energy Information Administration, Sept. 19 & May 23, 2024; 25th Navajo Nation Council, Aug. 26, 2024; and Navajo Birth Cohort Study Preliminary Results, Oct. 7, 2019

January 15, 2025 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Indigenous First Nations, Local Communities Oppose Canada’s Chalk River Radioactive Waste Dump

By Lindsay Potter

This is Part II of a story from Nukewatch’s Summer 2024 Quarterly, for Part I visit nukewatchinfo.org. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) approved a license for a Near Surface Disposal Facility (NSDF) one kilometer (0.62 miles) from the Ottawa River at the famed Chalk River Site.

Industry Inside Job

Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission president Dr. Timothy Berube was a “nuclear operator” at Ontario Hydro, according to the Commission’s website. Commissioner Andrea Hardie’s biography on the Commission’s site says she has 20 years of experience working “in various capacities with the Canada Energy Regulator, the Alberta Energy Regulator, and Energy Efficiency Alberta, in addition to holding industry association and private industry roles.” Commissioner Jerry Hopwood is president of the University Network of Excellence in Nuclear Engineering leading Canada’s university-industry partnership, and has over four decades of experience in the nuclear industry — including as a reactor safety specialist for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), where he held “progressively senior positions.” Hopwood also worked for SNC-Lavalin and was a consultant for the IAEA and the Canadian Nuclear Society. Dr. Marcel Lacroix worked for AECL at Chalk River and for the Gentilly-2 nuclear station — owned by Hydro-Quebec.

SNC-Lavalin and AECL, Hopwood and Lacroix’s former employers, are part of the “Canadian National Energy Alliance” — the private sector group chosen by the Canadian government to run Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL), which includes Chalk River, since 2015. Many of the sites are owned by AECL.

“What we see, quite frankly, is a captured regulator … [t]here is no independence,” said Lance Haymond, Chief of the Kebaowek First Nation. Kerrie Blaise, a member of the legal team representing Kebaowek First Nation, said the commission was originally founded with the mandate to promote, as well as regulate, the nuclear industry and Natural Resources Canada.

The dump would be managed by three private multinational contractors, all with a history of legal problems including convictions for fraud. Two of the groups are based in Texas and work in the cyber, intelligence, or weapons sectors: Fluor, which also manages the Savannah River Site; and Jacobs, which won a $6.4 billion contract to clean up the Idaho National Lab in 2021.

A Dark Past, A Deadly Legacy

Threats to the Ottawa River watershed from the Chalk River Lab are an 80-year-old problem. Chalk River began as part of the Manhattan Project, building the world’s first heavy water reactors to produce plutonium for bombs in 1944. Canada sold uranium and plutonium to the U.S. for nuclear weapons production until 1965. In 1974, India used a copy of the early reactors at Chalk River, a gift from the Canadian government, to build its first bomb.

In 1952, the National Research Experimental nuclear reactor at Chalk River suffered a catastrophic meltdown and explosion which destroyed the core, unleashed radioactive gas into the atmosphere, and left intensely toxic wreckage and radioactive water. The core was removed and buried nearby, and other contaminated reactor wreckage was put in sandy trenches. “Refuse from that day remains … part of an immense toxic legacy,” according to the Ottawa Citizen. The site suffered another major accident six years later.

The Chalk River site is home to 70 percent of all the radioactive waste generated by AECL and its predecessor. In 2005, AECL began an estimated 70-year, $7 billion federal cleanup program which includes its sites at Chalk River, Whiteshell Laboratories, and several reactors.
There are several waste management areas at Chalk River that date back decades and have caused radioactive contamination of groundwater, streams, lakes, and rivers. The high-level waste includes more than 12,000 used fuel rods, used fuel bundles and assemblies, as well as depleted uranium, thorium, and plutonium — all from eight reactors across the region. In addition, there are about 300,000 liters (79,252 gallons) of liquid radioactive waste from medical isotope production and fuel processing experiments now stored in underground tanks that were built between 1947 and 1960.

Natural Resources Canada found “aging tanks that contain higher-level radioactive liquid waste are rusting.” Intensely hot, high-level uranium and thorium is kept in 750 concrete “tile holes,” 16 feet below ground, alongside fuel rods from over a half century of reactor operations. One hundred of these, housing 175 old fuel rods shrouded in aluminum, have water intrusion and are corroding.

The existing waste management areas are largely located in sandy soils that drain to Perch Lake, at the center of the site, which drains to the Ottawa River by way of a small creek. Over two million cubic meters (528,000,000 gallons) of waste has already been dumped into “unlined sand trenches” or pits with “three aquifers in the vicinity,” the Ottawa Citizen reported.

As a result, tests show more than 83 acres of land that drains into Perch Lake and other nearby basins are contaminated with radioactive cesium-137, strontium-90, cobalt-60, tritium, plutonium, as well as metals, industrial chemicals, mercury, and lead.

In addition, other toxic radionuclides found at Chalk River or at Whiteshell Laboratories — which has sent decommissioned material to Chalk River — include: carbon-14, iodine-125 and -131; argon-41, plutonium-238, -239, and -240; and americium-241, according to a report by CNL. In total, 19 of the 29 radionuclides found at Chalk River have half-lives of more than 1,000 years, 12 have half-lives of 100,000 years, and some could remain in the environment for millions of years.

“A terrible mistake and one that future generations will curse us for” – Gordon Edwards

The newly green-lighted waste site would sit less than one km (0.62 miles) from the Ottawa River and would include planned releases of radioactive tritium and “treated” wastewater into Perch Lake.

Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR), told Libbe HaLevy of Nuclear Hotseat, “They’re building basically … an Earthen mound which is essentially a glorified landfill on the surface right beside the Ottawa River.” Why? Edwards believes it is just a matter of industry convenience.

Theresa McClenaghan, executive director of the Canadian Environmental Law Association, described the NSDF design as “tantamount to an ordinary domestic landfill and we know that such facilities always eventually leak to the surrounding environment.”

Edwards points out that the liners intended to prevent leakage are only designed to last at most 1,000 years, and many of the radionuclides are supposed to be kept out of the environment for hundreds of thousands of years. Though they call the waste inventory “low-level,” Edwards explains that it does not need to go to this site: “99 percent of the initial radioactivity in the mound is going to be Cobalt-60 … one of the most intense gamma-emitting radionuclides,” from imported commercial waste that is completely man-made, Edwards said. This waste is already packed for shipment and could be taken to concrete vaults further from water bodies rather than buried in the sandy ground by the river.

Tritium, one of the most impactful elements likely to leach from the mound, will “readily escape into the Ottawa River in the form of radioactive water molecules,” Edwards says. There is no way to remove tritium from water, so it will move easily downstream into people’s tap water.

The CCNR and two other groups have asked a Canadian federal court to review the decision on procedural grounds. The groups documented seven procedural errors that the regulatory industry committed.

Appeal Brought by Kebaowek First Nation

On July 10 and 11, the Kebaowek First Nation presented opening arguments in their appeal against the dump’s approval. The Kebaowek case argues the CNSC failed to meet the requirements for free, prior, informed consent under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and in Canada under the UN Declaration Act.

The Council of Canadians, a nonprofit social justice group, writes, “Kebaowek, Kitigan Zibi Anishnabeg, and Algonquins of Barriere Lake First Nations detailed the threats the NSD(F) poses to the land, water, wildlife, trees, and Algonquin inherent rights to the CNSC in August 2023. They did not give consent to the project, but approval was a foregone conclusion, consultation nothing but an afterthought.”

To the Kitigan Zibi and Kebaowek, the dump is another chapter in the “nuclearization of the Kichi Sibi” (Ottawa River). It continues the legacy of dispossession, disregard, and displacement represented by the lack of consent to the original Chalk River Laboratories site in 1944.

A group of more than 60 supporters joined the Kebaowek outside the Supreme Court on July 10th to demonstrate solidarity with protection of water, life, and the Algonquin cultural way of life, and to protest the threat to drinking water.

Kebaowek community member Rosanne Van Schie, who sat in on the hearings in Ottawa, said, “With the proximity of the potential Chalk River facility to the Ottawa River, the chances of a catastrophic event involving drinking water is … a serious concern.” Van Schie believes the appeal has a strong case and targets a clear breach of the regulator’s duty.

The dump risks the destruction of 37 hectares of old growth forest, could displace deer, moose, bears, and wolves, and would add more radioactive contamination to the watershed that provides drinking water for more than ten million people.

“It’s a betrayal of a series of sacred trusts. Anishinaabe aki was not created for business profit. Our Nation was not built to turn the [Kichi Sìbì], our great river, into a self-storage unit for nuclear waste,” said Councilor Verma Polson.

— You may make a tax-deductible contribution to the Kebaowek First Nation’s legal effort to protect the Kichi Sibi here: raventrust.com/campaigns/kebaowek/

January 10, 2025 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

The Lies Have It: Xcel Energy Wins Operating Extension for Nation’s 5th Oldest Nuclear Reactor

The unit recently leaked nearly 1 million gallons of radioactive cooling water from its underground pipes, some of which reached the Mississippi River, drinking water source for Minneapolis, St. Paul and as many as 20 million people downstream.

John LaForge, 10 January 2025

I.F. Stone famously said, “All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.” The aphorism applies well to nuclear reactor operators, including Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has granted Xcel a second license extension for operating its 54-year-old Monticello reactor on the Mississippi River in Minnesota. The decision will permit this GE jalopy, a Fukushima clone, to run until it’s 80 years old — a dangerous feat never been done in the history of nuclear power. The NRC received over 3,000 public comments mostly critical of the extension, but the the commission has rubber stamped 87 of 92 [1] similar requests, so call the NRC Never Really Concerned.

The NRC nod is based partly on the commission’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) [2] for the re-licensing, even though the document confirms that Xcel repeatedly made false statements about its massive 2022-‘23 leak of radioactive cooling water. According to a March 16, 2023 Associated Press (AP) story, [3] Xcel’s first public response to the major leak was, “There’s no danger to the public.” Xcel then proceeded to understate by more than half the leak’s actual volume, only estimating it was 400,000 gallons.

Xcel eventually acknowledged that volume of the leak, from an old corroded underground pipe, was 829,000 gallons, and that the groundwater plume of reactor cooling water — some of which would later reach the Mississippi River — had a radioactive footprint of some fourteen curies of tritium [4] — a very large amount. (For a reference, the 1979 partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island released an estimated 15 curies of gaseous radioactive iodine-131 to the Pennsylvania atmosphere. Other radioactive materials went into the Susquehanna River.)

Xcel’s 829,000-gallon leak was always a direct threat to drinking water because — as the company’s own 2023 Annual Radioactive Effluent Release Report states on page 13 [4] — “It is assumed groundwater continuously flows to the river…” The Mississippi is the drinking water source for 20 million people, including Minneapolis, St. Paul and their surrounding suburbs 37 miles downstream from the leaky reactor.

The fact that Xcel’s radioactive groundwater plume would automatically move toward the Mississippi meant the leak posed a gargantuan PR problem. Lying about it was Xcel’s and the NRC’s first action. One NRC spokesperson, Victoria Mitlyng, told WCCO TV News, March 17, 2023, [5]“There is no pathway for the tritium to get into drinking water.”

This mis-step was so blatant that NRC Senior Environmental Project Manager Stephen S. Koenick publicly apologized [6] for the fudge, at an NRC open meeting in the city of Monticello, May 15, 2024. Koenick told the gathering, “I know we had meetings in which we reported there were no indication[s] of tritium leak making it to the Mississippi. However, in our Draft Environmental Impact Statement, we do say, we do conclude there were some very low concentrations of tritium in the Mississippi River.”

Curies and picocuries: code language helps to confuse

When these radioactive accidents take place, PR language is employed by the industry to confuse, befog, and try to trivialize their size, scope, and potential health and environmental effects. Xcel reported to the NRC Dec. 15, 2022 that its leaked cooling water contained 5,020,000 “picocuries of radioactive tritium per liter,” sometimes written as “picocuries/liter.” This concentration is 251 times the EPA’s allowable limit for drinking water.

A picocurie is one-trillionth of a curie. Anything in the world divisible by one trillion is naturally very large, and a curie is a very large cache of radioactivity indeed. One curie amounts to 37 billion atomic disintegrations per-second.

The NRC’s final EIS states on page 3-48 [8] says, “Monticello reported an abnormal discharge to the Mississippi River from tritium contaminated groundwater of 0.167 curies of tritium between 07/27/23 and 12/31/23….”

The figure “0.167 curies” may give the impression of a small amount, but this amount of tritium contamination already in the Mississippi translates to 167 billion picocuries. Again, 20,000 picocuries-per liter is the current EPA allowable drinking water limit.

Over seven million gallons of groundwater has been pumped from Xcel’s onsite wells [7] to try and keep more tritium from reaching the Mississippi. The final EIS says about this pollution at page 3-206 [9] “For the period from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023, a total of 0.388 Ci [curies] of tritium (released via natural evaporation from the temporary tanks and the groundwater remediation pond) was reported during calendar year 2023.” This is to say 388 billion picocuries of tritium were sent floating around Minnesota’s Wright and Sherburne Counties. This under-reported and unplanned, emergency stop-gap response poses some risk for the surrounding residents who breath.

Xcel’s estimated leak of 14 curies of tritium will contaminate the moving groundwater for a very long time. Its radioactive half-life is 12.3 years, so the tritium will persist for about 12 decades while it decays (to helium-3). Once tritium contaminates water, it is impossibly expensive to remove. A new textbook on tritium reports, “its half-life is short enough that it is extremely radioactive. For a given mass, it is, for instance, about 150,000 times as radioactive, in terms of disintegrations per unit time, as plutonium-239. One teaspoon of tritiated water would contaminate about 100 billion gallons of water to the U.S. drinking water limit.”[10]

Alarmingly, when tritium is internalized (ingested or inhaled) it can result in problem pregnancies, miscarriages, and birth abnormalities because this machine-made radioactive poison crosses the placenta where it threatens the fetus. Yet the NRC has neither imposed a penalty nor even issued a rebuke to Xcel for its enormous leak or for its public lying that still paints a false picture of its consequences.

Xcel’s home website seen Jan. 8, 2025 still includes the uncorrected notice of March 16, 2023 that claims, “Xcel Energy took swift action to contain the leak to the plant site, which poses no health and safety risk to the local community or the environment,” and in the next paragraph it still says, “the leaked water is fully contained on-site and has not been detected beyond the facility”. Of course, Xcel knows that nothing “contains” groundwater which is constantly moving willy nilly. This company’s public pronouncements must not be believed.

The Coalition for a Nuclear-Free Mississippi River, made up of regional environmental, climate, and justice groups has vowed to see the reactor closed before the achey, breaky unit causes a more catastrophic radiation release.

Notes

1.“Subsequent License Renewal: Extending Nuclear Power Reactors to 80 Years of Operation”, Power magazine, June 5, 2023, https://www.powermag.com/subsequent-license-renewal-extending-nuclear-power-reactors-to-80-years-of-operation-and-maybe-more/

2. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Subsequent License Renewal, Monticello, Final Environmental Impact Statement, Nov. 15, 2024, p. 3-43, https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2430/ML24309A221.pdf

3.“400,000 gallons of radioactive water leaked from a nuclear plant in Minnesota,” by Steve Karnowski, March 16, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/minnesota-xcel-energy-nuclear-radioactive-tritium-leak-c7a12ecb1b203179c5f7fef42bd0a3aa

Xcel “2023 Annual Radioactive Effluent Release Report”, https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2413/ML24135A191.pdf

5.“Regulators: Nuclear plant leak didn’t require public notice”, WCCO TV/CBS Minnesota, March 17, 2023

https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/regulators-nuclear-plant-leak-didnt-require-public-notice/ “Mitlyng said there is no pathway for the tritium to get into drinking water.”

“NRC apologizes, changes its stance on tritium leak,” Monticello Times, June 6. 2024, p.1,

https://www.newsbreak.com/news/3482973154219-nrc-apologizes-changes-stance-on-power-plant-s-tritium-leak

Xcel, “Groundwater recovery enters final phase at Xcel Energy’s Monticello plant”,

Updated estimates show total volume of water higher; Dec. 14, 2023, https://mn.my.xcelenergy.com/s/about/newsroom/press-release/groundwater-recovery-enters-final-phase-at-xcel-energy-s-monticello-plant-MCRTNOMXTBTNFYNLMVJD6GLPQXZQ

Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Subsequent License Renewal, Monticello, Final Environmental Impact Statement, Nov. 15, 2024, p. 3-43, https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2430/ML24309A221.pdf
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Subsequent License Renewal, Monticello, Final Environmental Impact Statement, Nov. 15, 2024, p. 3-43, https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML2430/ML24309A221.pdf
Arjun Makhijani, PhD, Exploring Tritium Dangers, IEER 2022, p. 5, https://ieer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Exploring-Tritum-Dangers.pdf

11.Coalition Petition for a nuclear-free Mississippi river, https://sign.moveon.org/petitions/petition-for-a-nuclear-free-mississippi-river

— Originally at Counterpunch. org

August 6, 2024 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Aging Monticello Nuclear Reactor Endangering Human Health

By Joseph J. Mangano

The Monticello nuclear reactor, one of the oldest in the world, has requested permission from federal regulators to extend its license for 20 years. If approved, the reactor in Monticello, Minn. could stay open for up to 80 years after its 1970 launch.

An 80-year-old reactor is an unknown quantity. Only a few, including Monticello, have even passed the 50-year mark. But federal regulators have approved all six requests for U.S. reactors to remain active up to 80 years, and are considering 10 others. Approvals are expected for all, as federal regulators have never rejected an extension.

A nuclear reactor is a complex array of mechanical parts. Over time, these parts become brittle and corrode. Aging at a reactor like Monticello presents multiple threats to safety and health, including:

1. The chance of a catastrophic meltdown increases; with over 3 million persons living within 50 miles of Monticello, many thousands would suffer from radiation poisoning or cancer.

2. The amount of highly radioactive waste that must be stored at each site — forever — in deep pools of water or steel and concrete casks would increase; currently, Monticello waste is nearly equal to the amount released during the Chornobyl meltdown.

3. Routine releases of over 100 radioactive particles and gases, only created when a reactor operates or a nuclear weapon explodes, are likely to increase; these toxic products enter bodies of nearby residents through breathing and the food chain.

These concerns are a reality at Monticello. In November 2022, a leaky pipe released large amounts of water contaminated with radioactive tritium at the site. Xcel Energy, which owns the reactor, failed to report this for four months — until a second large leak occurred — while trying to fix the first leak. The total amount of contaminated water is greater than an Olympic-sized swimming pool. Any entry into local drinking water from these enormous spills is a health risk.

U.S. reactors have operated over six decades, but federal regulators have only conducted one study of cancer in local residents. That report used statistics before 1985, and is thus outdated. No studies are currently planned.

Monticello is in Wright County, close to the border of Sherburne County. Almost all residents of these counties live within 25 miles of the reactor, and are most vulnerable to exposures from environmental releases. These counties are fast-growing areas just outside of the Twin Cities, with a current population of more than 250,000.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, before and just after the Monticello reactor started up, the two-county death rate was 6 to 7% below that of other Minnesota counties — for cancers, and for all causes combined. This pattern is expected in an area with low rates of people who lack health insurance, who are disabled, or who live in poverty.

By the late 1970s, the two-county death rate exceeded the state rate for all causes, and has remained high ever since. If the local rate had remained 6-7% below the state, over 4,000 fewer deaths would have occurred. Cancer death rates are also high; in the two most recent years (2022 and 2023), the local rate was 9% and 20% above the state, respectively.

Many factors can account for an elevated risk of death. But one clue that Monticello releases may have been one factor is cancer mortality among children – who are much more likely to be harmed by a dose of radiation than are adults. Prior to the early 1990s, local child cancer mortality was 37% below the state, but has been 14% above ever since.

The push to keep the Monticello reactor running does little as a solution for future energy needs, as it only accounts for 9% of Minnesota’s electricity. However, safe and renewable sources accounted for 31% of the state’s electricity in 2022, most of it wind power, a number that is rising each year.

Unlike nuclear power, the wind and sun pose no cancer risk, and will last forever. The application to keep Monticello open should be denied, and the reactor should close in 2030, the end of its current license period.

— Joseph J. Mangano, MPH MBA, is an epidemiologist and Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project.

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