Waste threatens nuclear plants.

• Author: Fantle, Will
• Position: Prairie Island, Minnesota facilities

Prairie Island, Minnesota

Minnesota activists have forged a powerful coalition that is threatening to close the nation's topranked set of nuclear power plants. Northern States Power's twin 550-megawatt Prairie Island nuclear facilities--considered by many to be the crown jewels of the nation's nuclear industry--have been relatively efficient and problem-free. But lately they are troubled by radioactive constipation. For the past three years, Northern States Power has sought permission to store highly radioactive waste in steel casks near the plants.

The power company's choice for a dump site is an island in the Mississippi River, about thirty-five miles south of Minneapolis, next to the small Mdewakanton Dakota Indian community.

The Mdewakantons-all 480 of them-vehemently oppose the dump. "We are a community and a people in the fight of our lives," says Darelynn Lehto, vice president of the tribal council.

Tribal members say Northern States Power never bothered to consult with them when the company built its reactors two decades ago. Now the company is proposing to store its radioactive waste in seventeen 122-ton casks on the island--a plan that would permit the nuclear power plants to keep operating until the year 2002. Without the site, the plants would be forced to close next year.

Across the nation, utilities are sinking under a rising tide of nuclear waste. Northern States Power and other plants are desperate for storage sites. While the company describes its storage plan as temporary, no one seems able to predict when, if ever, the toxic garbage will leave the site.

The alarm generated by the prospect of radioactive waste parked forever on the shores of the Mississippi River has rallied others to the Mdewakantons' cause. The alliance opposing the dump includes environmentalists, African-Americans, church groups, and farmers. The NAACP's Ben Chavis, speaking recently in St. Paul, called the storage scheme "environmental racism" and pledged that his organization would oppose it.

Northern States Power is accustomed to having its way in Minnesota. At the end of public hearings on the plan before the state's Public Utilities Commission, the hearing examiner recommended against the company's...