Leid Stories—Dept. of Energy’s Nuclear Waste-Disposal Rules Spark Renewed Protests Across the Country—06.11.18

Making good on an election-year promise to the coal mining and nuclear energy industries and a smackdown for environmentalists, President Donald Trump last week ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to take “immediate steps” to ensure continued operations of coal mines and nuclear power plants across the country.

This means that the administration is committed to continuing massive, and even fatal, assaults on the environment and on the people working in and living near such projects.

Investigative journalist Paul DeRienzo has filed several reports on Leid Stories about the sketchy state of the nation’s nuclear power plants, the government’s gross mismanagement of nuclear waste, and the health and environmental problems they cause nearby populations.

DeRienzo is joined by Tom Carpenter, executive director of Hanford Challenge, a group seeking the proper disposal of nuclear waste at the decommissioned Hanford Site in Washington state and at all other plants. They explain why the Department of Energy’s new rules on nuclear waste will create environmental and health hazards that will last forever.