Nuclear waste issues will be addressed by two speakers Thursday evening (Jan. 31) in a program presented by the St. Bonaventure University Center for Nonviolence. The talks will take place at 7:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the Walsh Science Center on campus.
In a presentation titled “The Nuclear Dilemma: No Good Place to Put the Waste,” Dr. Ray Vaughan, an environmental scientist with the New York State Attorney General’s Office, will address the question of what to do with the nation’s nuclear waste.
Vaughan will discuss the accumulation of radioactive waste at sites across the country, including nearby West Valley, where the U.S. Department of Energy has for decades been overseeing the cleanup of a defunct radioactive waste reprocessing center.
Also presenting at the session will be Barbara Dyskant of Olean. Her talk, “Radioactive Forks, Watches, Toys and Zippers?” will address a controversial Department of Energy plan to release and mix radioactive metal into recycling and landfill operations.
Dyskant said the proposal calls for the release of some 14,000 metric tons of metal from radioactively contaminated weapons sites into the recycling stream; metals that could end up in consumer and industrial products such as silverware, pants zippers, watches and furniture frames.
Dyskant, who maintains that radiation exposure at all levels presents a risk, and whose daughter is a leukemia survivor, has joined a petition drive to scuttle the plan.
Thursday’s talk is free and open to the public.