Seven Hundred Yards Pt. 2: Pretend Democracy — Episode 211 of Local Energy Rules

Tina Jefferson:
We decided that we weren’t just going to sit there and do nothing about it, that we were going to be, you know, actively involved and trying to make a change.

John Farrell:
Prairie Island Indian Community didn’t have a say in the sighting of the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant when it was built in the 1970s, but the community has always had a voice. Since the construction of the plant, they have resisted efforts to expand waste storage and to extend the life of the nuclear plant on Prairie Island.
This three-episode podcast series traces that history, examining how powerful players from the electric utility to state and federal policy makers sited the plant and its waste right next door to the Prairie Island Indian Community and how Tribal members and their allies have stood up for their rights — in the process, growing a clean energy future for the community and for Minnesota as a whole.
Last episode, we discussed the history of the Prairie Island Indian Community and the nearby nuclear plant, which Northern States Power or NSP currently doing business as Xcel Energy located less than 700 yards away without consent from the Native Nation.

Michael Childs, Jr.:
We are the closest community, closest community. I’m not just talking native — any community in the United States to an operating nuclear plant and that storage of spent nuclear fuel.

John Farrell:
In this episode, we’re taking a closer look at the spent nuclear fuel, which at Prairie Island is stored above ground in large metal containers known as dry casks. NSP first proposed storing waste in these casks in 1989 as a supposedly temporary measure, but more than 30 years later, 50 casks remain on Prairie Island and the utility has plans to add dozens more. To find out why they’re still here, we have to go back to the 1970s and the construction of the nuclear plant.
I’m John Farrell, director of the Energy Democracy Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and this is episode two in our three-part series, Seven Hundred Yards: How a Native Nation Resisted the Nuclear Plant Next Door. It’s a production of Local Energy Rules, a biweekly podcast about monopoly, power, energy, democracy, and how communities can take charge to transform the energy system.
To help explain why NSP turned to dry casks to store its spent nuclear fuel at Prairie Island, we spoke with George Crocker.

George Crocker:
I’m the executive director of the North American Water Office, which is a nonprofit that my wife Lea and I co-founded in 1982 in the wake of the Black Hills Survival Gathering and the power line fight across West Central Minnesota. And so we formed the North American Water Office and have been busy ever since, sort of with the relationships between energy development, economic development, environmental issues, social justice, environmental racism types of issues — how do all of these things play together as society goes about determining how electric utility services get delivered.
All of that time, we were watching for the fuel question at Prairie Island.

John Farrell:
George knew that NSP was running out of space to store its nuclear waste at the Prairie Island plant. After it began operations in 1973, the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Plant stored spent fuel in an onsite cooling pool, a necessary step to cool the very hot spent fuel. But by the late 1980s, the accrued nuclear waste threatened to overtake the plant’s existing storage capacity.

George Crocker:
Back in the days when these power plants were conceived, why, the idea was that we would be reprocessing, not recycling, but reprocessing irradiated fuel, high level nuclear waste. Well, that didn’t turn out so good because of nuclear proliferation issues and also because the people who worked at the plants where they did the reprocessing tended to die young, but by then many of the fleet of commercial reactors was already built with the idea that waste fuel would be reprocessed. So the pools were small. They were not designed to contain fuel beyond the age where it was cool enough to ship to a reprocessing facility. And so when Carter, the Carter administration, that was of course in the late seventies, stopped doing that, why, these pools all over the country started to fill up, these waste storage pools at the reactor sites. If you think of an Olympic size swimming pool and then maybe make that times three or four, it’s about that big, so it’s a fairly substantial size pool. It’s just this waste in this fairly deep pool that’s dangling of the fuel assemblies.

John Farrell:
Around this same time, some Prairie Island Tribal members began stepping up their efforts against the nuclear plant next door, Tina Jefferson, a lifelong resident of Prairie Island, whose voice you heard at the top of the episode, started by protesting the transportation of waste materials through their land alongside her father, Joseph Campbell.

Tina Jefferson:
My father and I joined the Sierra Club and several different — Mississippi Alliance — and coalitions and things that were to protect the water and the animals and life down here. And they were transporting nuclear radiation through the reservation and we didn’t like the fact that they were doing that and they were doing it at night and random hours. And we protested against that. They built a different road around, or not through the reservation, so they didn’t have to bring the waste through the reservation anymore, and then they got to the point where they were no longer shipping the waste off because there was no place to bring it to. We actually went out and stopped the trucks. We stood across the road knowing that the trucks were coming through protesting. It started with that first and then it moved into the government because the people who were there with us at the time were not on council yet, but were being put — like, my father was on Tribal council. My cousin Dale Childs was on council and others who were aware of what was going on. We decided that we weren’t just going to sit there and do nothing about it, that we were going to be actively involved and trying to make a change.

John Farrell:
By 1989, the federal government had ended efforts to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and had not yet found another solution for the nuclear waste. Without options to transport spent fuel offsite, the cooling pool at NSP’s Prairie Island Plant was running low on available space for more nuclear waste. At this point, NSP came up with a plan: while waiting for the federal government to develop a more permanent storage solution, the utility would put the spent fuel assemblies into large metal canisters called dry casks that they would then store on site on Prairie Island as a supposedly temporary measure. George Crocker explains the proposal.

George Crocker:
Why NSP comes along and says we need to do something else with this waste. We’re going to put it in storage casks these big, what they call TN –trans nuclear 40 — for 40 waste assemblies go into each cask. TN-40 casks. TN-40 casks stand about 16 or 18 feet tall. They’re about eight or nine feet in diameter. They have a four and a half inch interior steel wall that is coated with about a quarter inch of resin and then another four inches of rolled steel on the outside of that. So it’s a very, very heavy, thick, robust structure that is used to hold this waste.

John Farrell:
Before storing nuclear waste in dry casks, NSP needed the state to approve their plan. In 1991, the utility went to the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission, which regulates utilities rates and other activities. Once the issue was in front of the commission, the Prairie Island Indian Community and organizations, including the North American Water Office and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance formed the Prairie Island Coalition to push back against the utility’s proposal.

George Crocker:
What they were looking for was a certificate of need before the Public Utilities Commission. They wanted a certificate of need for 48 casks. 48. They wanted to put 48 of these TN-40 casts out on a concrete pad, inside a berm, immediately adjacent to the plant at Prairie Island. We intervened as the Prairie Island Coalition against that decision before the Public Utilities Commission. We had like 37 various organizations, environmental groups, church groups, various civic groups, League of Women Voters. There were all sorts of communities entities that were involved with the Prairie Island Coalition. We did.. we sort of had a two track approach to it. One was the community organizing and letter writing and educating all of that work. And then we also intervened in the decision making process.

John Farrell:
As part of the process at the Public Utilities Commission, administrative law Judge Allen Klein was charged with making a recommendation on the case to the commissioners who would make the final decision. To inform that recommendation, Judge Klein held a series of hearings in late 1991. Members of the Prairie Island Coalition participated in the trial, which included evidentiary hearings as well as public hearings held in December at Prairie Island Indian Community, Red Wing, and St. Paul. Members of the public also sent in several thousand written comments and letters, with most opposed to the proposed dry cask storage. Rick Duncan, a lawyer who represented Prairie Island Indian Community at the time remembered the hearings.

Rick Duncan:
That was a lengthy process. That was like a six week long trial that we had in front of an administrative law judge.

John Farrell:
One of the coalition’s arguments against the dry cask proposal was that instead of continuing to operate the nuclear plant on Prairie Island and generate all this radioactive waste that the utility and community had to deal with, NSP could instead invest in renewables and energy efficiency to meet Minnesota’s electricity needs.

Rick Duncan:
What we were trying to prove was that the energy load from the Prairie Island plant, so it’s a thousand megawatts in total, could be offset using either renewable sources of energy, especially wind power or conservation methods, more efficient lighting, more efficient buildings, that sort of thing.

John Farrell:
The Prairie Island Coalition also argued that the Public Utilities Commission didn’t actually have the authority to approve the dry cask storage.

Rick Duncan:
There was a Minnesota statute from the 1970s that said that any permanent nuclear waste site required legislative approval. Okay? And so part of our argument was that — and we were proven right once again, I’m afraid — part of our argument was that they kept calling it the temporary storage facility. We said, well, it’s not temporary because it’s got no place to go.

John Farrell:
After the hearings, judge Klein issued his final report. It recommended that the Public Utilities Commission not grant the certificate of need and instead send the issue to the Minnesota legislature. He found that, quote, “The likelihood that the dry cask storage would become permanent is so great that it is appropriate to require legislative authorization if the project must go forward immediately.” Judge Klein’s report also noted, “existing or expected sources of power and conservation programs can replace the need for additional storage capacity under a stretch out scenario,” in which plant operations are reduced.

Rick Duncan:
I think he was impressed by the sincerity of the community’s belief that this little patch of land was really all that was left for them and they shouldn’t be burdened by the nuclear waste. And he came as close to aligning with our position fully as any of the decision makers ultimately did. But the way the system works, he’s not the final decision maker. He’s a recommender.

John Farrell:
Despite the recommendation from Judge Klein to turn down NSP’s proposal, the Public Utilities Commission ultimately approved the certificate of need that the utilities sought. However, instead of granting the full request of 48 casks, the commission limited its approval to just 17 casks. This wasn’t good enough for George Crocker and the other advocates in the Prairie Island Coalition.

George Crocker:
So, we sued ’em. We went back to court and we said, well, your honors, the law says that only the legislature is allowed to permanently cite high level nuclear waste in Minnesota. The Minnesota Legislature is not the Public Utilities Commission. The Public Utilities Commission has no authority to do this. And the court said, well, they don’t if it’s permanent, but how long is permanent? And so the court asked NSP, well, how long is it going to stay there? And then NSP says, well, we don’t really know. It’ll probably be at Yucca Mountain by 2020, and that’s about as good as they could get. Well, that’s more than seven years out when you’re talking about 1993. And so the legis- the court said the commission has no authority to do this, and that’s what set the stage for the big fight we had in the state legislature in 1994.

John Farrell:
The appeals court decision in favor of the Prairie Island Coalition resulted in the Minnesota legislature taking up the issue during the 1994 legislative session. Bringing the issue to the legislature gave the Prairie Island community, their coalition allies, and other Minnesotans a chance to weigh in on the issue. But NSP and its accomplices fought back lobbying legislators to get permission for the dry casks.

George Crocker:
Going into the legislative session, they went for their 17 casks and we said no casks. The Prairie Island Coalition continued organizing, continued building. We were a force to be reckoned with. Prairie Island Coalition brought the issue into the forefront by putting it on the table in front of the legislature, and it was only then that the environmental community writ large decided to get involved.

John Farrell:
According to Rick Duncan, NSP’s lobbying efforts in favor of the dry casks resonated with some legislators.

Rick Duncan:
NSP was arguing that they would shut down the plant and all these people would be thrown out of work. If the dry casK storage had not been permitted, I suspect what NSP would’ve done would’ve been to keep the pool operating, store what was there, and then repower the turbines from nuclear power to probably natural gas power. So you would still have an energy plant there. It would be a different kind of energy plant. I don’t think there was ever a scenario where they were really going to shut it down, but I think that was effective to some of the legislators. In the early nineties, there was still a lot of memory of plant closures on the Iron Range and things, and so I think there was a lot of fear that that might happen

John Farrell:
Considering NSP’s level of influence with elected officials, George Crocker found the legislative process lacking.

George Crocker:
That fight was a real example of pretend democracy because ordinarily when a bill is attempting to become a law, it goes in front of a committee and if that committee votes it down, right, that bill is dead for the rest of the legislative session, at least. Ordinarily. Well, we beat ’em in the House Energy Committee by a damn near unanimous vote. We beat ’em in the Senate Energy Committee by a good majority, and every time we beat ’em, why NSP would go and have a meeting with Senate leadership or House leadership. And then they decided just to take it right to the House floor and we beat ’em on the House floor with over a hundred votes on the House floor. That’s out of what, 136 I think? We had over a hundred that voted no. And still it came back. There never was a bill that had nuclear waste in it that passed out of the House. The Senate folded. They passed it out of the Senate, and at some point why the House had passed a bill that said energy in it. And so the leadership of the legislature decided that being as the House passed a bill that said energy in it somewhere and the Senate had a bill that said, give them 17 casks, why, that’s good enough to go to conference and we’ll negotiate it from there.

John Farrell:
The purpose of a conference committee is usually to align different versions of the same bill from the House and the Senate so that a single bill version can be voted on by legislators in each body and then passed into law. Though as this case demonstrates, that process can be influenced by people or groups with a lot of political power or deep pockets. Utility monopolies are consistently among the biggest spenders on lobbying in Minnesota, lobbying both the legislature and the Public Utilities Commission. According to the state’s campaign Finance Board, Minnesota’s three investor owned utilities, which includes Xcel Energy or NSP, together have nearly one registered lobbyist for every two legislators and commissioners. And they were the biggest combined spenders on lobbying between 2009 and 2021, paying over $30 million to influence decision makers.
When the conference committee began negotiations on the Prairie Island waste storage issue, all five of the Senate conferees and just two of the five House conferees were initially in favor of allowing the dry cask storage according to George Crocker. Those in favor first offered to include a provision in the legislation that would require NSP to buy or contract for a modest amount of renewable energy.

George Crocker:
So the session started early, it started in January, and now we’re in May at the end of the session and we’re still fighting over what to do with this waste. It consumed that 1994 legislative session. And the negotiations started out in the conference committee by saying, well, how about if we give you a little bit of renewable energy to go with these casks and then it’ll be okay? No casks. The three on the House side were firm — no casKs. So it was five senators and two representatives for casks and three representatives saying no casks. And that negotiations lasted until the very last day of the session. There’s this conference room down below the rotunda in the capitol. This circular hearing room was jam packed that last day. It was at night, and it lasted all night long. That session was still going as the sun was coming up the next morning.

John Farrell:
As the 1994 legislative session came to a close, tensions ran high at the Capitol, ILSR co-founder David Morris remembered. Some differences in strategy had also emerged among the members of the Prairie Island Coalition.

David Morris:
I think that the session had to end at midnight on a certain date, and I think that it probably ended at midnight on that date. I mean, it was late and the night before, it was an all-nighter at the legislature. So it was a really tense, challenging situation between the people and the Northern States Power. The Tribe was a member of the coalition, but the coalition had two purposes. Part of the environmental coalition wanted to close the nuclear power plant down. Another part of the coalition wanted to close the nuclear plant down, but also was willing to use it as a leverage as a bargaining chip to jumpstart renewable energy in Minnesota. The Tribe wanted to close the plant down, period, and also wanted some money and recognition and so forth from that. We had a legislative agenda that overlapped, but the end game was somewhat different for the two groups of people.

Rick Duncan:
Now, I think when I moved to the legislature, anytime you get involved in a legislative process, talk of compromise is inevitable.

John Farrell:
In this case, compromise was indeed inevitable as the clock wound down on the 1994 legislative session, negotiators in the conference committee landed on a compromise agreement that included a number of renewable energy provisions in return for allowing the dry cask storage.

George Crocker:
It was a whole Christmas tree full of bells and whistles and trinkets and gidgets and gizmos in order to get at least one of those three House representatives to flip their vote. And finally, finally on the last day, a guy named Carlson, Linden Carlson, bless his hat, he flipped. So they got their third vote in the conference. That meant three to two in the house side and five to nothing, and so they got their 17 casks on the very last day — along with all of these other things, some of which continue to this day, others which don’t.

John Farrell:
The compromise agreement in the final dry cask legislation, George Crocker’s Christmas tree, included a number of provisions meant to increase renewable energy development in Minnesota. For one, the law instituted new wind power and biomass mandates for NSP. In terms of wind energy utility had to build or contract for 225 megawatts by 1998, another 200 megawatts by 2002, and then an additional 400 megawatts if the Public Utilities Commission found it cost effective. As we’ll discuss in the next episode, these mandates effectively relaunched the modern wind power industry in the United States and kicked off the growth of renewable energy in Minnesota.
The law also required the utility to pay $500,000 per dry cask stored at Prairie Island per year, starting in 1999 and pay it into a newly created Renewable Development Fund, which would support renewable energy projects. The legislature has adjusted the funding formula over the years, including by requiring payments for dry cask storage at the state’s other nuclear plant in Monticello. The fund lives on today as the Renewable Development account and Xcel Energy continues to make payments into the account every year.
In addition, the 1994 negotiations over dry cask storage led to a ban on new nuclear energy plants in Minnesota that remains in place to this day — as do the dry casks on Prairie Island.
For Prairie Island Indian Community, although they weren’t able to stop the allowance of the dry casks, Councilman Michael Childs Jr. Shared that another outcome of the legislation was formal acknowledgement of the plant’s impact on the Tribe and the ability to enforce the law’s provisions.

Michael Childs, Jr.:
The biggest thing that the community wanted was one, some sort of acknowledgement, right? Prairie Island’s affected by this, and we had no… we have no say in it usually, right? So we were able to get an original agreement, you know, at least to acknowledge that fact, right? And we pushed and pushed. The beautiful thing is when you look at all the renewable energy in Minnesota, that is when it was dictated and environmentalists, which included a lot of our members back then, pushed for this, and I think if it wasn’t for our community to insert themselves back then when you look at where renewables are, I mean it’s amazing.

John Farrell:
The advocacy of the Prairie Island Indian Community and its members had a huge impact on the legislation that came out of the 1994 session and the later developments around the nuclear plant.

Rick Duncan:
I think it was really the fact of it being adjacent to Tribal land, the fact that the Tribe was actively opposed to it really was key to making the whole thing go.

Tina Jefferson:
We started advocating for ourselves because we knew that nobody else would, and because we’re only just a few people, we never thought that we would get as far as we’ve gotten today. At first, we were ignored because those are just those Indians and that’s just the Indian reservation. They shouldn’t have anything, any power over — and we felt we didn’t because we didn’t have the numbers, and that’s why we reached out to all these other people.
My father, he put a tipi up at the capitol for a week and had different people from all over the state and different people from all over coming to visit him, and he was protesting the nuclear power plant and the casks, and he was allowed to stay there, and he told stories and he educated people on what was going on in our backyard.
What really makes me feel good about it is that one person can make a difference. You just have to keep voicing and voicing and voicing and doing whatever it is you can in your power. I watched my dad do that. I watched him continuously be on it. It’s up to us to keep working on it and keep doing it and keep being involved and informed and helping the young generation understand. We didn’t need to pat ourselves on the back or get patted on the back or thanked or anything because we weren’t doing it for us. Just us. We were doing it for everybody.

John Farrell:
Thank you for listening to the second episode of Seven Hundred Yards: How a Native Nation Resisted the Nuclear Plant Next Door, a three-part series from Local Energy Rules. In the third and final episode, we returned to the present day to find out how the 1994 dry cask law impacted renewable energy development in Minnesota and how the Prairie Island Indian Community is pursuing their own net zero future.
For more content and information related to today’s episode, please check out the accompanying story map. A link to this page is in the show notes.
A quick note on the language we used in this episode. We use the word Tribe as well as the term Indian in the context of Prairie Island Indian Community’s federally recognized name. European colonial powers develop these terms to otherize and subjugate native peoples, and they can be used today to diminish the sovereignty of Native Nations. We opted to use these terms in the podcast because of the context in which they are used, and because many Native and non-native people continue to use these words. We acknowledged that this is an imperfect decision.
Katie Kienbaum produced Seven Hundred Yards with assistance from Jo Green. Local Energy Rules is produced by me and Maria McCoy. Editing, music, and sound production is by Andrew Frank. Thank you to everyone we interviewed or who otherwise helped us put this series together, including Michael Childs, Tina Jefferson, Andrea Zimmerman, Heather Westra, Eric Pehle, George Crocker, Rick Duncan, David Morris, Kate Taylor Mighty, and John Bailey.
ILSR’S offices are located on land that was and is stewarded by Indigenous peoples. This includes an office in the traditional territory of the Dakota people in what is also known as Minneapolis, an office in the traditional territory of the Wabanaki Confederacy, which currently comprises the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Abenaki, and Micmac nations, in what is also known as Portland, Maine. ILSR’s hometown is in the traditional territory of the Nacotchtank or Anacostan and Piscataway peoples, in what is also known as Washington, D.C. ILSR recognizes supports and advocates for the sovereignty of Native Nations.
Tune back in into Local Energy Rules every two weeks to hear more powerful stories of communities taking onconcentrated power to transform the energy system. Until next time, keep your energy local and thanks for listening.

• StoryMap: The Nuclear Plant Next Door

• Prairie Island Indian Community website
• Tinta Wita/Prairie Island Indian Community – Minn. Indian Affairs Council

• Bdote Memory Map
• Dakota Land Maps and Place Names – Marlena Myles and Dahi
• Dakota of Minnesota – Dakota Wicohan

• Dry Cask Storage – U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
• Nuclear Waste Storage in Minnesota – Minnesota Legislative Reference Library
• Application for Certificate-of-Need for Prairie Island Spent Fuel Storage (1991) – Northern States Power Company
• Findings of Fact, Conclusions, and Recommendation on Dry Cask Storage (1992) – Administrative Law Judge Allen Klein
• Court of Appeals Ruling on Dry Cask Storage (1993)
• The Prairie Island Nuclear Waste Storage Issue (1994) – House Research Information Brief
• Clip 1, Almanac Season 1994 Episode 24 – Twin Cities PBS
• Clip 2, Almanac Season 1994 Episode 24 – Twin Cities PBS
• Preliminary Notification Of Event Or Unusual Occurrence, Dry Cask Issue In Conference Committee After House Rejection (PNO-III-94-30) – U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
• Session Weekly: Prairie Island nuclear storage (May 13, 1994) – Minnesota House of Representatives Public Information Services
• 1994 law text – Minnesota Legislature, 1994 Regular Session, Chapter 641

• Prairie Island Dakota Oppose NSP Nuclear Dump Site (1993) – Native American Press
• Protest against nuclear storage held at State Capitol (1994) – The Ojibwe News
• The Costs and Benefits of Closing Prairie Island (1993) – Institute for Local Self-Reliance
• Confronting Nuclear Racism (1995) – Prairie Island Coalition