Newport / Costa Mesa / Irvine : IRVINE : Activists to Protest at Radioactive Waste Panel Meeting

Anti-nuclear activists plan to demonstrate outside today’s meeting of the federal Board on Radioactive Waste Management at the Beckman Center.

The demonstrators said the meeting will have a decidedly pro-nuclear tone.

Board members are scheduled to listen to reports on low-level radioactive waste dumps in Pennsylvania and Texas during the two-day meeting. One agenda item is entitled, “Dealing with the Public on LLW” (low-level radioactive waste).

A request for equal time by opponents of the waste dumps was rejected by the board, but representatives of the Sierra Club and the Committee to Bridge the Gap were granted time to speak at the end of Friday’s meeting.

“We want to let board members know that this will be a very one-sided presentation,” said Marion Pack, executive director of Alliance for Survival, a Santa Ana-based environmental organization planning to take part in today’s demonstration. “The data they are gathering is from the pro-nuclear side.”

The federal waste management board is meeting at the Beckman Center, a conference center for the National Academy of Sciences near the UC Irvine campus. The board is a division of the academy charged with advising the federal government on radioactive waste issues.

Board spokesman Craig Hicks said time has been allowed for public comments at the two-day meetings, which he said are part of a review of radioactive waste management throughout the United States.

“It’s basically designed to provide the best independent scientific and technical advice to the government,” Hicks said.

Environmental groups are fighting a proposal to locate a low-level radioactive waste dump in Ward Valley, near Needles. But Hicks said the Ward Valley proposal is not on the agenda.