Diné Activist Warns Against New Uranium Mining Amid Renewed Nuclear Energy Push

The search for an energy alternative to fossil fuels has renewed interest in nuclear power production across the globe. Despite nuclear boosters’ promotion of the energy source, Tim Judson of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service calls nuclear power an “elaborate greenwashing scheme.” Nuclear is “not carbon-free,” says Diné organizer Leona Morgan, who highlights the fuel costs and environmental contamination — particularly within and around Indigenous communities in the Southwest United States — of the uranium mining required to produce nuclear power. Because the carbon costs before and after nuclear generation are not factored into energy calculations, says Morgan, “it’s really not going to solve the energy crisis.”

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AMY GOODMAN: Overnight here at COP29, the U.S. and U.K. signed new agreements for civil nuclear collaboration and said Australia was expected to sign, but Australia’s acting prime minister confirmed today the country will not sign.

ACTING PRIME MINISTER RICHARD MARLES: I can confirm that the Australian government will not be signing that agreement. For Australia, pursuing a path of nuclear energy would represent pursuing the single most expensive electricity option on the planet. For Australia, pursuing a path of nuclear energy would be pursuing a path which would see $1,200 added to the household energy bills of each household in this country. For Australia, pursuing nuclear energy would be pursuing a path which wouldn’t see any new electricity into our grid in 20 years. For Australia, pursuing a path of nuclear energy would be pursuing a path which would only see, at best, 4% contributed to the electricity grid two decades from now.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined here in Baku at the COP29 climate summit by Tim Judson, executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service, part of the Don’t Nuke the Climate Coalition, and Leona Morgan, a Diné community Navajo organizer with Don’t Nuke the Planet and Haul No!

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! As you listen to this conversation, Tim, overall, we can hear everywhere here, I mean, the environmental movement is divided on nuclear power. And with this push on AI, on cryptocurrencies, I mean, you need nuclear power plants to fund a — one data center. It’s absolutely astounding. The reopening of Three Mile Island. Your thoughts?

TIM JUDSON: Yeah, well, I think the first thing you’ve got to understand about this recent wave of announcements about deals between nuclear power companies and data center companies and tech companies is that none of this involves buying power today. These are all deals to buy — to potentially buy nuclear power years down the road, you know, when some of these plants might exist.

But the reality is that the tech industry is building data centers and operating data centers today, which are consuming huge amounts of power. And that’s largely being powered, you know, by just what’s on the grid, which is largely fossil fuel energy. In fact, in some of the — a lot of the states in the country where this is happening, you’re seeing things happen like they’re extending the operation of coal plants or restarting coal plants or increasing the generation from gas plants and coal plants in order to power these data centers that are operating now.

So, you know, I think what we’re seeing is that the tech industry, especially under the Biden administration, is under some pressure to show that they’re actually being pro-climate, but they don’t want to wait to build data centers until they can build nuclear power plants. They’re doing that now. And so, it really seems more like what’s going on here is sort of an elaborate greenwashing scheme.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you can’t help but notice that you have, you know, President-elect Trump’s partner-in-chief here, Elon Musk, in charge, with Vivek Ramaswamy, of DOGE. That’s the Department of Government Efficiency. Clearly, the way that we’re going to be cutting billions out of the U.S. government budget is to deregulate, this at a time when they’re pushing to build nuclear power plants. Talk about the deregulation of nuclear power.

TIM JUDSON: Sure. Well, there’s actually been a tremendous amount of pressure over the last several years, orchestrated by the nuclear industry through Congress, to pass various bills and pieces of legislation that are already rolling back nuclear safety regulation at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And so, the NRC over the last couple of years has actually been rewriting its regulations on how they license and permit the construction of nuclear power plants to make it, you know, streamlined, more efficient, what they say, more predictable. But this is really just keeping the public out of the process and creating a set of regulations that there’s no transparency to whatsoever.

AMY GOODMAN: Leona Morgan, I saw you the other day here in the hallways of the U.N. climate summit. You both were a part of an anti-nuclear action. I’ve also interviewed you about what’s going on in the Southwest United States. You’re Diné, Navajo. Talk about the experience of the uranium cycle, uranium needed to fuel these nuclear power plants, and what happens on reservations in areas where Indigenous people live here.

LEONA MORGAN: Sure. Thank you.

So, the first thing I want to say is that nuclear is not carbon-free. Nuclear is not carbon-neutral. Nuclear, it requires fossil fuels in order to extract the uranium, mill it, process it. All of the steps before the nuclear power plant require some type of energy. And so, it is not fueled by renewables or nuclear. It’s fueled by fossil fuels. And they just simply don’t count the carbon footprint before the nuclear power plant or after the nuclear power plant.

So, in the Southwest, we’re dealing with thousands of abandoned uranium mines. We’re dealing with a conventional uranium mill that’s taking waste from as far away as Japan and Estonia, because there are not enough properly licensed waste facilities. And the same with the high-level radioactive waste after the power plant. There are two proposals in the United States to store it in New Mexico and Texas. And we fought that, and we won. However, the industry is taking that to the Supreme Court. So we don’t know what will happen. Maybe in June we’ll find out. Hopefully, our victory stands.

But again, the nuclear industry is inherently racist. All of these activities, they depend on uranium, which comes mostly from Indigenous lands, not just in the United States, but even as we’re talking, you can think about other countries, Australia. Our Don’t Nuke the Climate Coalition includes several folks from all over the world. And I also want to highlight what’s going on in Africa. There’s only one nuclear power plant in Africa. And Koeberg is also slated to be restarted because of this push for a so-called carbon-free energy future. And so, I just want to make it clear that it’s not carbon-free, and it depends on the resources from our communities, resulting in various health — lots of health effects. So, we haven’t even begun to study all of the health effects, especially the genetic future. We know that it causes, besides cancers, autoimmune disease, kidney disease, things like that, also reproductive issues. And so, we really need to do more studies on the impacts from drinking contaminated water, breathing contaminated air and eating contaminated food.

AMY GOODMAN: Leona Morgan, talk more about what’s happened in Native America.

LEONA MORGAN: Well, going back to the beginning of colonization, I mean, I like to start with the Doctrine of Discovery. But from the 1872 mining law, which was created essentially to steal our land, we’re still dealing with thousands of abandoned uranium mines, and there is absolutely no funding to clean these sites up. The United States, our taxpayer dollars are going to fuel not just this so-called nuclear renaissance or this nuclear revival, but also nuclear weapons. And so, a lot of these so-called small modular reactors, they say they’re going to power our communities, but a lot of it is going to be used for nuclear weapons.

And so, with that, we’re dealing with — on Navajo Nation, where I come from, and most of the United States, we’re downwind from over 900 nuclear tests from the Nevada site. So, we’re hit doubly with the nuclear weapons impact and then the nuclear power impact, because both of them require uranium. And so, anybody living near abandoned uranium mines or anywhere there was uranium in the past are going to be threatened with new threats of new mining, new milling, new processing and all the things that come with it, including the cancers, the contamination and an unknown reproductive future.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about the uranium mines and what has happened to them.

LEONA MORGAN: So, the uranium mines, especially in the Southwest, I’m going to focus on Navajo Nation. This is only — this is one place in the U.S. where they’re kind of doing cleanup. Again, there’s no funding for cleanup. We just lost what is called the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA. And so, the United States used to — since the ’90s until just earlier this year, the United States provided some funding for compensation for people who worked in mines, only people who worked after 1971, and the eligibility is quite sparse. And so, even RECA, people like Navajo miners claim that it is also racist that they have not received the same amount of compensation as, let’s say, non-Native or white miners.

So, what’s happening in the country is there’s no funding to clean up the abandoned uranium mines. And on Navajo, where there is some funding — not because the government is giving the funding, because the government is looking for responsible parties to sue, and if they’re lucky enough to get some money out of those companies, then they can do what they consider cleanup — cleanup is never done to community standards. So, there are over 500 abandoned uranium mines on Navajo alone, some say up to 2,000. And if they’re marked off or have a fence, that’s great, because then people will know this is a contaminated place and not to build their houses there, not to plant food, not to play or work or pray in those areas. So, a lot of these places are left unmarked, with radioactive dust blowing around and getting into the water and our food sources.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. I also want to ask Alex de Vries more, because people may be very surprised by this whole push for small nuclear power plants to fund these AI mining, these AI data centers around the world. Leona Morgan is with us, Diné organizer with Don’t Nuke the Planet, and Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Center, also with Don’t Nuke the Planet. Stay with us.

(break)

AMY GOODMAN: “A Good Time Pushed,” a new song by Kim Deal. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman. We’re broadcasting from the U.N. climate summit here in Baku, Azerbaijan. We are still joined by our three guests: Leona Morgan, Diné organizer with Don’t Nuke the Planet, also Tim Judson, executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and joining us from Amsterdam is Alex de Vries, founder of Digiconomist. I want to get to Alex in one minute, but I want to talk about alternatives and where you see, especially at this climate summit — Tim, let’s begin with you — the whole issue of renewables. And we know how the government has funded the nuclear power industry for years, that it was dying, for example, in the United States because they couldn’t afford the insurance alone and the threat of a meltdown, as we’ve seen from Chernobyl to Three Mile Island. But now there’s a resurgence. Could you imagine if that money went into renewables?

TIM JUDSON: It would be huge if it went into renewables. I mean, but the thing is that it’s actually not necessary for all that money to go in — all that public money to go into renewables, because renewables are already affordable as it is, you know, just to built, if people were given the access to them. But the nuclear industry is, pound for pound, the most subsidized energy industry in history. And the fact that they’re pumping more and more money into it, as this industry is basically on the verge of decline, is really one of the most false solutions that we’re talking about in the context of the climate talks. You know, if nuclear had to stand on its own two feet, it would phase out within a decade. But what we’re seeing is this push to promote nuclear really as a hedge against the decline of fossil fuels and a way to continue drilling and burning gas and oil, going forward.

AMY GOODMAN: Leona Morgan, very quickly, on this issue of renewables, also your fight right now around the Grand Canyon? You’re also with the group Haul No! That H-A-U-L.

LEONA MORGAN: Yes. Thanks, Amy. We’re fighting this uranium mine owned by Energy Fuels, which also owns the only uranium enrichment — I mean, I’m sorry, uranium mill in the country. And so, the mine would extract on Havasupai lands, and the mill is on Ute Mountain Ute lands. And the transport goes through Diné Bikéyah, so our lands. And this is being pushed, you know, all over the place, new uranium mining permits, new everything. And it’s really not going to solve the energy crisis. There is absolutely no transition that’s going to be able to power what humans — what we’re consuming today.

On Indigenous lands, we’re dealing with all kinds of different projects, such as hydrogen hubs and lithium mines. On our relatives’ lands in Nevada, they’re trying to protect a sacred site called Peehee Mu’huh. And then, the Hualapai in Arizona, they’re actually being mined by our tribe, the Navajo Nation. And so, as we’re fighting to protect our land and uphold our sovereignty, because the Navajo Nation has a law against transport, Haul No! and others, we’re also working to hold our own Navajo Nation accountable to not mine on our neighbors’ sacred places.

And so, it’s not just uranium. It’s all of these transitional minerals that are going to affect some community somewhere. And we don’t want that. We need to reduce our consumption in order to have not just a peaceful environment, but a safe and — how do you say? We are really concerned about our well-being. And in Diné, we say ”Hózhó.” We want a place where we can practice our culture and live in Hózhó.

AMY GOODMAN: In these last few minutes, we’re coming back to Alex de Vries in Amsterdam, founder of Digiconomist, a research company dedicated to exposing the unintended consequences of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies. And I’m also looking at a piece by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker magazine, “The Obscene Energy Demands of A.I.: How can the world reach net zero if it keeps on inventing new ways to consume energy?” And the piece begins with you, Alex. Is it true, something like what it would take to fund GPChat [sic] is — the fuel it would take would fuel the country of Ireland, Alex? ChatGPT, sorry.

ALEX DE VRIES: Yeah, indeed, it could be the case. Specifically, I try to visualize what would happen if we would just turn Google into a ChatGPT, whereas a single ChatGPT interaction consumes actually just a very small amount of power, just three watt hours, which is, you know, something like an illumined LED light bulb running for one hour. But, then again, at the scale of Google, you’re talking about 9 billion of the interactions every single day. And then you will, indeed, have the power need of a country like Ireland just to power that. And I actually quantify that all AI-related energy consumption could quite rapidly go up to the level of a country like Argentina by the year 2027, just to power artificial intelligence alone. That doesn’t include all other data centers that we use for, basically, cryptocurrency mining and everything else. So, yeah, we see these energy demands are rapidly rising. And in a world where we have limited renewable energy supply available, that just means that we are going to be using more of our backup energy source, which is fossil fuels.

AMY GOODMAN: Alex de Vries, we want to thank you so much for being with us, founder of Digiconomist, speaking to us from Amsterdam; Leona Morgan, Diné organizer with Don’t Nuke the Climate, as well as Haul No!; and Tim Judson, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, also part of Don’t Nuke the Climate Coalition.

Yes, we are broadcasting from the U.N. climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. We want to wish a very happy birthday to Iván Hincapié! Democracy Now! produced with Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff. I’m Amy Goodman, from Baku, Azerbaijan.