From the Editors
In July of 1979, a uranium tailings
dam failed in New Mexico, spilling
radioactive mine waste into the
Puerco River, which flows through Navajo
communities. “What’s happened to the
people since then?” Marley Shebala, a
reporter for the Navajo Times, recently
asked a group of environmental journal-
ists. It was a rhetorical question; she sus-
pected no one in the room knew the
answer. “These stories need to be told.”
The Puerco River spill is one among
many injustices the Navajo people have
su=ered since their homeland became the
target of aggressive uranium mining in the
1940s and ’50s. Unprotected miners developed lung cancer, and more and more children were born with birth defects. Today,
the Navajo are fighting to keep future uranium mining o= of their land. For most
people, this story does not come to mind
when they hear the words nuclear power—
especially not today, when the industry is
poised for a “green renaissance.” Nuclear
power, claim its proponents, is today’s tech-
nological solution to climate change.
Last year, Maryland’s governor called
nuclear expansion in his state a “moral
imperative.” Driven by sentiments like
this, the nuclear industry is undergoing a
revival after thirty years of slumber during
which no new plants were built in the
U.S. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission
expects to have received applications for
thirty-four new nuclear reactors by 2010.
Nuclear power was an oft-debated subject
during the presidential campaign, but
even many environmental leaders cite
nuclear energy as one way to slow the
advance of climate change.
Many Americans are swept up in this
new, green nuclear story—a story most
antinuclear activists believe is a fiction
appended to the tale of a long battle they
thought they had won. All Americans
would benefit in this moment from
understanding the largely unknown costs
that only some Americans have borne so
far: the toxic scars left by uranium mining
on the land, and most often on people
who are poor and oppressed. Even the
nuclear history that once was well
known—the disasters at Chernobyl and
Three Mile Island—is too easily forgotten. But as Mark Dowie and Winona
LaDuke make clear in this issue (page
20), the hidden, dark story of nuclear
energy cannot be ignored.
There are facts, but facts alone can’t
show nuclear energy’s impact on the
Arctic caribou. Facts won’t put a face on
the Navajo whose lives have been compro-
mised. But once we listen to stories about
these things, we may never view nuclear
power the same way again. We may find
ourselves like Joni Tevis (page 30), whose
view of the world was irrevocably changed
after she learned the story of the Trinity
atomic bomb test. Some events shouldn’t
be brushed under the rug of history.
Marley Shebala is right. Facts are
important, but stories bring about justice,
healing, wisdom, and change. With the
election of Barack Obama, this nation
now has a new story about the civil rights
movement and its achievements, because
some people actually believed that anyone
could grow up to be president. Indeed,
Obama’s story— our collective story of his
election—goes far beyond any single
movement to redefine this nation both
within and beyond its borders, but it is
only the preamble. Nevertheless, it’s more
than enough to reinforce our belief at
Orion that telling stories—and hearing
them—is an extraordinarily powerful tool.
Forgetting is easy; it’s the remembering that takes e=ort. To remember means
to consider again. As nuclear power
moves toward the forefront of the national
and global agenda, we’ll need both facts
and stories at our disposal so that we may
make the most responsible choices. a
