by Bonnie Urfer

Yesterday at mail call, I received the Nuclear Resister. Editors Felice and Jack Cohen-Joppa have been reporting on nonviolent opposition to the nuclear industry since 1980. I also read the February 16 Minneapolis Star Tribune. Both papers carried news that made me want to scream.

The Resister tallied the number of anti-nuclear arrests in the U.S. for 2001 - the lowest number recorded in over 19 years. The Star Tribune announced President Bush's approval of commercial radioactive waste dumping at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. I can't help but see a connection.

Throughout the 1980's, yearly arrests against the bombs, bomb tests and reactors numbered in the thousands. In 1983 - 5,300; 1987 - 5,300; 1989 - 5,530. Resistance dropped drastically in the early 1990's once the Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union collapsed and the U.S. brought its cruise missiles back from England and Europe.

By 1996, only 590 people placed their bodies on the line against the most deadly industry and weapons on Earth. Last year there were only 570 arrests at 21 sites in 45 actions - an average of fewer than 4 a month.

The struggle to keep Yucca Mountain from becoming the nuclear power industry's waste dump is 20 years old. But the effort to squash it has waned despite valiant efforts by the Shundahai Network, Nevada Desert Experience, Citizen Alert and others. The Department of Energy (DOE) gained a stronger position as our numbers at the gates dwindled, and, with the travesty of September 11, the scales tipped. The nuclear power conglomerates are getting what they want in order to continue operating and contaminating.

Yucca Mountain is due to open in 2010. At that point our roads and rails will be swarming with radioactive traffic. The Star Tribune said the plan "marked a significant victory for nuclear utilities such as Twin Cities-based Exel Energy." But the pro-nuclear lobby still has to get past Congressional votes, court challenges and licensing tests.

In the meantime, war rages in 35 places around the world with nuclear exchanges threatened or hinted at in at least two. In spite of those threats and the power of nuclear-armed nations to wipe out earthly life-as-we-know-it, the outcry is at best weak.

Perhaps the lack of activism would be easier to swallow if the human race weren't hurling itself into extinction. If the nuclear industry's radiation doesn't eventually kill us, then our daily automobile driving habit - the distance to Pluto and back - and the resulting global climate change will. If we curtail our driving but don't stop poisoning the water, we don't have a chance. If we destroy the rain forests and carry on destabilizing the oceans' ecosystems, we won't have oxygen. I don't know about anybody else, but I'm feeling like a dinosaur walking into a tar pit.

What I find most distressing is that all of this destruction happens by choice. For some, it's motivated by profit, for others the decision to not protest amounts to consent. For many, there's no incentive to learn the truth about our literally Earth-shaking habits - in order to act in self-defense.

Friends and family often ask that I not engage in resistance anymore. My friend John says I should retire and leave the work to younger folks. Fact is, I'm part of the 5% of the world's population that consumes 1/3 or more of the resources and produces almost half of its hazardous waste. Countering this gross injustice weighs heavily on my sense of humanity.

Within a decade, the DOE could be schlepping more than 77,000 metric tons of deadly radioactive waste to Yucca Mountain through every state by rail and truck. This isn't new. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a nuclear dump near Carlsbad, New Mexico, opened two years ago and plutonium-tainted military wastes are hauled right through downtown Denver. Every person in the U.S. is adversely affected by nuclear profiteers. Certainly more than 570 people should be concerned enough to recognize that the consequence for acting pales in comparison with what we face in staying home.

This is a pitch for justice, for clean water, air and soil. This is a plea for peace and an end to the self-destructiveness of the nuclear industry. This is a cry for the common sense it takes to turn our backs on the tar pits.

The Resister should never have to tally decreasing numbers in activism, and the papers shouldn't be congratulating private utilities on their "victory."

[Bonnie Urfer is serving a five month sentence for probation violation, having refused to pay restitution for the Silence Trident disarmament action at Project ELF, June, 2000.]

(Reprinted from the Spring 2002 issue of the Pathfinder, newsletter of Nukewatch, P.O. Box 649, Luck, WI 54853.)