Let me say first off for those of you who expected this diary to be about some kind of juicy John McCain sex scandle, sorry perverts, that was only a clever ploy to get the camel to stick his nose in the tent. I'm talking about spent fuel rods, you know, the kind with a half-life of 25,000 years. And I've been thinking about how McStupid critized Barack at the debate about being opposed to nuclear power because of said rods. You see, I live in Salt Lake City working as a night janitor for the University of Utah. I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. But I am also a Liberal Democrat and fanatic surporter of the next President of the United States, Senator Barack Hussein Obama. I don't know much, but I do know a couple of things about these spent fuel rods. And one of those things is this. Here in Utah, reddest state in the Union, where I have been looking for some kind of weapon to use against John McCain, he just handed me a nuclear hand grenade. Thanks John.
MCCAIN: No one from Arizona is against solar. And Senator Obama says he's for nuclear, but he's against reprocessing and he's against storing. So...
OBAMA: That's just not true, John. John, I'm sorry, but that's not true.
MCCAIN: ... it's hard to get there from here. And off-shore drilling is also something that is very important and it is a bridge.
And we know that, if we drill off-shore and exploit a lot of these reserves, it will help, at temporarily, relieve our energy requirements. And it will have, I think, an important effect on the price of a barrel of oil.
OBAMA: I just have to respond very quickly, just to correct -- just to correct the record.
MCCAIN: So I want to say that, with the Nunn-Lugar thing...
LEHRER: Excuse me, Senator.
OBAMA: John?
MCCAIN: ... I supported Nunn-Lugar back in the early 1990s when a lot of my colleagues didn't. That was the key legislation at the time and put us on the road to eliminating this issue of nuclear waste and the nuclear fuel that has to be taken care of.
OBAMA: I -- I just have to correct the record here. I have never said that I object to nuclear waste. What I've said is that we have to store it safely.
And, Senator McCain, he says -- he talks about Arizona.
I want to tell you a story about spent fuel rods. For those of you who may ask what the hell a janitor knows about nuclear physics, just let me say this. I may not like John McCain, but I just love Sarah Palin. Why? Because that woman has single handedly changed the definition of knowledge and experience. All you have to do to know about any subject is to be able to see it. Did I mention that I work at a university? Better than that, I work in an engineering building, and the engineering building next door has a small nuclear reactor, with uranium fuel rods. AND I CAN SEE THE BUILDING! I'm sure I could operate one of those reactors safely, nooo problem. Every night when I'm scrubbing toilets, all that knowledge just seeps right in me. Trust me.
INTRODUCTION
Fuel rods are just that, fuel to run nuclear reactors. These rods are made mostly of either plutomium 239 or uranium 235.Plutonium has a half-life of 24,100 years. How long it is deadly to people is harder to say. I haven't mopped floors enough to know that for sure. But I think it's safe to say that this stuff will kill you stone cold dead for the next 50,000 years. Storing these things calls for long range planning to say the least. The Federal Government's answer to this problem was Yucca Mountain. The nuclear power industry has known about this problem from the beginning and only agreed to start building these nuclear reactors if the Federal Government would agree to take possession of these spent fuel rods. The Feds say sure why not and finally get around to get started building Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository which was supposed to open in January 1999. Needless to say the Feds fucked it all up so now that date has been set back to March 2017. For one thing, the people of Las Vegas eighty miles to the south weren't all that wild about the idea. In the meantime the power companies have been storing these death sticks on their reactor sites and are getting nervous about getting stuck with them forever. Just like Wall St, these power companies began looking for someone to dump their toxic waste on. This is where me and my fellow Utahns come into the story.
SKULL VALLEY GOSHUTE INDIAN RESERVATION
Enter Private Fuel Storage, a company hired by a consortium of nuclear power companies to find a place to store these fuel rods. Good luck with that. Nobody wants this shit. Nobody. But wait. Native American Indian reservations are not subject to state laws. In many ways they are treated as sovereign nations. I wonder if we can find some dirt poor Native Americans who would be willing to take these pox infested blankets off our hands in exchange for some shiny beads and a few coins.
Enter the Skull Valley branch of the Goshute Tribe. Now, by some strange coincidence, when the treaty with the Goshutes was negotiated, the whites got the prime real estate and the Indians got the waterless wasteland. The Skull Valley Reservation isn't exactly a booming center of economic activity. The Goshutes of Skull Valley aren't all that prosperous. It's located about 40 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. There are about 2 or 3 dozen Goshutes living on this reservation. Poor as they are, the Goshutes were't all that wild about storing this shit on their ancestorial tribal lands. But, possibly after a few bribes to the chief and tribal council, the tribe voted to accept the contract with Private Fuel Storage to store 44,000 tons of spent fuel rods in above ground containers. Since this storage was only "temporary" until Yucca Mountain was ready, no need to even bury it. Although the terms of this contract were never made public, it was rumored that each tribal member would receive about $30,000 up front. It's a done deal. Well, not quite.
THE RADIOACTIVE SHIT HITS THE FAN
Now the people of Utah are a little touchy about radioactivity because of people called the downwinders. During the 50's when the government was doing above ground nuclear testing over in Nevada, radioactive clouds drifted over our way giving ranchers of southwestern Utah five legged sheep and increased cancer rates. Now when you don't have a pot to piss in, $30,000 is a lot of money, so nobody really blamed the Goshutes for taking the deal. But the rest of the state was united in opposition. The scramble on was on to stop it, and our Republican politicians led the charge. Since the state of Utah has no jurisdiction over the Goshute reservation, the effort centered around stopping the Nuclear Regulatory Commission permit required to store this stuff. Washington Post No dice, strike two. Ok, what else have we got? Well, there may not be any way to stop them from storing the rods on the reservation, but they have to get them there first. So our Republican legislature passed a law requiring a state permit to transport hazardous waste in Utah. And our Republican governor, John Huntsman, vowed that if they tried to transport these fuel rods into Utah without a permit that he would personally stand on the tracks in front of the train. And he wouldn't be standing alone.That's were we are today. A standoff.
THE DEBATE
So during the debate it was McCain's criticism of Obama for opposing nuclear power because of these fuel rods was what jumped out at me. Now when you're talking about nuclear power, there is no such thing as safe. But because of our energy crisis I might possibly be open to building new nuclear reactors, if they are made as safe as they possibly can be safe. It makes me very uneasy, but I'm willing to consider it. But like Obama, I understand that the real problem is not the reactors themselves but what to do with the spent fuel rods. And like Obama, unless we can solve this problem I am opposed to building any more nuclear reactors. I have a question for John McCain. Arizona has just as much dessert as Utah and Nevada. So how about volunteering your state to store these things. C'mon John, country first. Right? You've surely got some extra space in the basement of one of your 8 houses.
Yo, John. If you plan on hauling this crap into or across Utah, you better drive the train yourself. And make sure your papers are in order. Because me and the gov will be waiting. Along with a few friends.