Western Shoshone to White House -- Stop Funding Nuclear

November 30, 2022

Comments to the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Committee

Provided by:

Principal Man Ian Zabarte of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians, Secretary of State of the Western Shoshone National Council, Secretary of the Native Community Action Council, 2017 US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Appointee to the Licensing Support System Advisory Review Board.

Our country stretched from the Mojave Desert in the south to the Snake River in the north defined by the Treaty of Ruby Valley (Consolidated Treaty Series Volume 127-1863)

Nuclear issues threaten the Western Shoshone People. Radioactive fallout from indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction, secret shipments of plutonium into our country, low-level nuclear waste facilities exploding from rainwater intrusion at the Beatty dump and licensing of Yucca Mountain for high-level nuclear waste repository inflict conditions intended to bring about the destruction of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians. Much nuclear risk we experience has been done in secret and demonstrates ill intent. The US nuclear weapons industry is lawless and unaccountable. The US must join the Treaty of Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It is International Law.

The US has failed to live up to the promise of peace and brought instead weapons of war to our country that kill our land and people, a violation of International Law peremptory norms and 18 USC 1091.

We love our horses. The US Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management blamed Western Shoshone ranchers' livestock for the destruction of the land caused by secret US/UK nuclear weapons radioactive fallout destroying our treaty-guaranteed life as herdsmen.

We need environmental regulations to protect our already vulnerable people. We need collaborative baseline health assessments of radiation exposure. We need health registries, surveillance and monitoring over time. Origin is important to uncover masked health effects.

We need expansion, increased funding and reauthorization of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to include Trinity downwinders.

We need the President to implement Article 6 of the Treaty of Ruby Valley for a reservation for the Western Shoshone people’s protection, development and growth. This would have the effect of making trespassing by other Americans occupying Shoshone country fair.

Finally, Andrews County Texas Holtec facility is licensed for high-level nuclear waste from commercial nuclear reactors pending licensing of the proposed Yucca Mountain deep geologic high-level nuclear waste repository without environmental protections. The waste sent to Texas will be stranded and abandoned there because the Yucca Mountain site will not be licensed. Yucca Mountain is Western Shoshone property with Constitutional protection under Article 6 Section 2 treaty supremacy clause and the Treaty of Ruby Valley (18 Statute at Large 689). After spending $15 billion dollars the Nuclear Regulatory Commission agrees that, even with the Department of the Interior Bureau of land Management Master Title Plats, the land status record of the US, the Department of Energy cannot prove ownership as required by 10 CFR 60.121 OWNERSHIP because Western Shoshone title remains unextinguished.

Every link in the nuclear chain releases CO2. Uranium mining, fuel fabrication, reactor construction and waste handling all release CO2.

Stop funding nuclear. Fund renewables. I have been an International Brotherhood of Electrical Worker electrician building solar in the desert near Las Vegas, now the cheapest electricity, 10 times faster than hazardous toxic nuclear with radioactive waste. Supercooled hydrogen is the battery so when the sun doesn’t shine, and the wind doesn’t blow we have electricity generation even at night.

We will provide our comments in writing.

Thank you