Tuesday, October 08, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

With street chalk, dreadlocks and peace signs, a group of anti-nuclear activists rallied Monday outside the Lloyd George U.S. Courthouse to protest the government's role in producing nuclear weapons and creating nuclear waste.

Reminiscent of the anti-war protests of the 1960s, but on a much smaller scale, the nonviolent rally by the 35 activists also targeted the Bush administration's push for military action against Iraq.

Some of them pretended to die in front of the steps leading to the courthouse while others in the so-called "family spirit walk action" displayed signs that said "Peace with Iraq" and "Yell for Peace."

Someone used chalk to write "Greed Kills" on the sidewalk before a security guard advised the crowd not to scribble on the concrete around the courthouse.

A spokeswoman for the group said they are preparing for civil disobedience actions later this week at the Nevada Test Site and again next week at the Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project site, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The protesters began their trek from New Mexico, leaving a sacred American Indian site there Aug. 9.

"We've been walking about 20 miles per day on the way to Yucca Mountain," said the spokeswoman, 34-year-old Michelle Peixinho of Chimayo, N.M.

"We're out to raise awareness about the nuclear cycle: uranium mining, nuclear waste and nuclear weapons."

Peixinho said the protesters are trying to link the Department of Energy's role in nuclear weapons research and its plans for disposing of highly radioactive waste inside Yucca Mountain to President Bush's call for military action against Iraq. Both are driven by federal spending for defense, she said.

Hauling nuclear waste and spent fuel from commercial power reactors to Yucca Mountain will require more protection than leaving it at generation sites, she said.

"Those trains will become targets for ... terrorists," Peixinho said. "My gut feeling is the U.S. needs to stand down."

Another protester, Norb Drouhard, 78, of Chehalis, Wash., said he worked as a geologist at the government's Hanford Reservation in the 1960s researching methods for disposing of wastes from reactors and processes used to produce weapons-grade plutonium. At the time, he said he had no objections to nuclear weapons but realized while working at the reservation near Richland, Wash., that there is no safe way to dispose of the waste.

Drouhard said he decided to become an anti-nuclear activist after farmers downwind of the reservation developed illnesses they blamed on exposure to radioactive contamination.