#Tribes, #environmentalists gather forces against Amazon’s #Northwest #nuclear plan

Amazon’s push for small modular nuclear reactors [#SMR] is just the latest development in decades long fight over #NuclearEnergy

By Antonio Sierra (OPB)
Jan. 7, 2025

"Chuck Johnson was 25 years old when he helped bring Oregon’s nuclear energy industry to a sudden halt.

"Fresh out of college, Johnson helped lead signature gathering and field organizing to pass Ballot Measure 7, which banned all new nuclear power plants in the state until the U.S. had a federally licensed permanent disposal facility. When Oregon’s only nuclear energy facility was closed in 1992, the measure effectively ensured that nothing would take its place unless major changes happened.

"For decades those changes seemed unlikely, but a new push by the power-hungry tech industry has reignited interest in nuclear energy in the region.

"Amazon announced in October that it is partnering with Energy Northwest to develop and build nuclear reactors in southeast #WashingtonState that would power its #DataCenters in #Umatilla and #Morrow counties. Amazon would work with its partners to develop and roll out a novel technology – small modular nuclear reactors – without brushing up against the limits of Measure 7 because the reactors would be north of the #ColumbiaRiver.

"For Amazon, SMRs would allow the tech and e-commerce giant to harness the immense, low-carbon [sic] power potential of nuclear energy while staying true to its climate goals, and avoiding the safety and environmental concerns that have plagued traditional reactors. More than 40 years after passing Measure 7, Johnson isn’t convinced.

"'If you can’t get rid of the waste produced by these plants, it’s irresponsible for us to – for the sake of some electricity right now – leave this legacy to future generations,' he said.

"Johnson is a part of a group of environmentalists, academics and American Indian tribes who are gathering force against a nuclear energy revival in the Northwest.

"Nuclear energy opponents argue that SMRs are simply a new coat of paint on the industry’s old problems. Like traditional reactors, they say that SMRs aren’t economically feasible and risk exposing people to #NuclearRadiation in a region still recovering from its World War II legacy."

Read more:
https://www.opb.org/article/2025/01/07/tribes-environmentalist-amazon-northwest-smr-nuclear-reactor-energy/
#NoNukesForAI #NoNukesForBezos #AmazonCorporation #NoNukesForTechBros #NoNukes #NativeAmericanActivism #AntinuclearActivism #NoNukesForBigTech #BigTech #AWS #Downwinders #CorporateColonialism

Protectors of the Waters: From the #SalishSea to #StandingRock

#PaulChiyoktenWagner speaks on carrying forward the sacred way
of life, from the Salish Sea to Standing Rock

By #BrendaNorrell, #CensoredNews, Nov. 11, 2024

"In their work as protectors, The Protectors of the #Salish Sea occupied the Washington State Capitol at Olympia, and in Standing Rock in North Dakota, during the protection of the waters from
construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, they built structures for the people.

"'We worked to build a movement that would allow people to step up alongside us and allow us to share our voice, a message to those forces who continue to do harm to our lands, that do not, and
have not, listened to our voices. It is only up till now that we have a voice -- it is only up till now that we are seen as human beings.'

"'Our people hold the road map to paradise. Our people have that memory within us.'"

https://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2024/11/protectors-of-waters-from-salish-sea-to.html

‘We want the mill to shut down,’ #GrassyNarrows #FirstNation to #Ontario

After nearly 60 years of industrial poisoning, the northwest #Indigenous community continues to demand justice

September 17 2024
by Jon Thompson

"When members of #Asubpeeschoseewagong #Anishinabek (Grassy Narrows First Nation) and their supporters arrive at Queen’s Park this week, they’ll be calling for the #DrydenPulpAndPaper mill that’s been poisoning their water with #neurotoxins for nearly 60 years to permanently close.

"'We want everybody to be compensated, we want the mill to shut down, and we don’t want no #mining or #logging in our territory. We just want it all to stop,' says #ChrissyIsaacs, lead organizer of the caravan.

"Isaacs has been a staple of the annual #RiverRun demonstrations since they began in 2010. She was a leader among Grassy Narrows youths who blockaded #LoggingTrucks from entering the nearby #WhiskeyJackForest in 2002 and is currently travelling 1,900 kilometres to Toronto from her community near Ontario’s western border to protest the downriver effects of #methylmercury poisoning.

"Staff at the upstream #ReedPaperMill in #DrydenOntario, about 150 kilometres east of Grassy Narrows, dumped nearly 10 metric tonnes of #mercury into the #EnglishWabigoon River system in the 1960s and early 1970s. Mercury poisoned the #plants and #fish that the people of Grassy Narrows, and neighbouring #Wabaseemoong Independent Nation, were consuming.

"A half-century later, medical experts are finding that varying nervous and neurological health effects affect up to 90 per cent of Grassy Narrows residents.

Members of Grassy Narrows First Nation stopped to demonstrate outside of the Dryden mill before heading to Toronto for the annual River Run demonstration at Queen’s Park. There, they will call on the Ontario government to compensate the community for generations of industrial poisoning and call for the mill, now owned by First Quality Enterprises, to be shut down.

"The Grassy Narrows road blockade to prevent clear-cut logging and mining from happening in their traditional territories has stood for 22 years, and in that time Isaacs’s children have had children of their own. She says the conversation has never been transformed as much as it has this year.

"In May, scientific researchers released the revelation that #sulphate and organic matter in the #effluent that the mill is still releasing into the river is making methylmercury in the river system even worse, as opposed to diminishing over time as they were told."

https://ricochet.media/indigenous/we-want-the-mill-to-shut-down-grassy-narrows-first-nation-to-ontario/

F*CK YEAH! Hiiiyaah!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLxI60MCJD8
#NativeAmericanActivism #NeverGiveUp