It's time: demand permanent shutdown of GE Mark I reactors!

A call to action from Michael Mariotte, Executive Director of Takoma Park-based advocacy group Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS):

There are 23 nuclear reactors currently operating in the United States using the same General Electric Mark I design as those that have failed so catastrophically at Fukushima.

The flaws in this design are fundamental, cannot be fixed, and have been documented for 40 years now. They have led to containment building explosions at three of the Fukushima reactors, the exposure of irradiated fuel pools to the environment and enormous radiation releases.

It is time to close them, permanently. Please take a moment to tell that to President Obama, your Congressmembers, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

Take action.

Action Alert: $50 Billion of our Money Targeted for Nuclear Power in Senate Stimulus Bill

Via the "Beyond Nuclear Bulletin" of Feb. 2, 2009:

Background:

Secretively, without debate, hearings, or any public notification, the Senate Appropriations Committee attached a pre-emptive nuclear power industry bailout onto the stimulus bill late at night on January 27. Although the $50 billion in loan guarantees could also be used to support climate-friendly renewables and efficiency projects, Senate backers such as Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT) and Sen. Thomas Carper (D-DE) have made clear the main beneficiary they envision would be the nuclear power industry. The coal industry would also vie for these loan guarantees. While efficiency and renewables could meet President Obama's call for "shovel ready" stimulus projects that could get well underway or even be up and running in the next two years, new reactors and carbon sequestration projects would take much longer to even break ground. See Friends of the Earth's press release about this atomic money grab here.

The Bush administration and Congress approved $18.5 billion of loan guarantees for new reactors, and an additional $2 billion for new uranium enrichment, in Dec. 2007. Nuclear utilities, however, applied to the U.S. Dept. of Energy for $122 billion worth of loan guarantees for 21 new reactors last September. While that first installment will likely aid three new nuclear plant proposals (a French Areva "Evolutionary Power Reactor" at Calvert Cliffs Maryland, two Toshiba-Westinghouse AP1000s at Summer South Carolina, and two Hitachi-General Electric Advanced "Boiling Water Reactors" at South Texas Project), this latest surprise money grab would help fund several additional new reactors elsewhere across the U.S. With price tags of $6 to $10 billion per reactor, and climbing, this would transfer the financial risks of loan defaults from nuclear utilities and Wall Street investment banks onto U.S. taxpayers. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated over half of new reactor projects will default on their loan repayment, leaving taxpayers holding the bag for tens of billions of dollars.

What You Can Do:

Call your U.S. Senators and U.S. Representative TODAY, to express your outrage and to urge them to block the up to $50 billion of new atomic reactor loan guarantees proposed in the Senate economic stimulus bill. Call them via the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Urge your Senators to strip the language from their version of the stimulus bill, to be voted on this week. Urge your Representative to make sure such an outrage is blocked in the stimulus bill's upcoming House-Senate conference committee later this month.

You can also email your Senators via the website of Nuclear Information and Resource Service here.

Reminder: Call the White House today

Via the NIRS email alert system. Subscribe here.

January 21, 2009

Reminder: Today is the first National Call-In Day of the Obama Administration

Yesterday, Obama talked about the need to develop renewable energy, to build smart grids, and address the climate crisis. It's about time we heard that kind of talk from our President.

But don't think achieving that kind of future is going to be easy.

So far, Obama's energy secretary Stephen Chu hasn't been nearly as lofty in his ambitions, and has expressed support for some new atomic reactors and increased research into dangerous and dirty reprocessing technologies.

And the nation's energy companies are lining up to try to block all efforts to institute a sustainable energy policy--and they plan to spend millions in the process. Yesterday's special Inauguration edition of the Washington Post, for example, included expensive ads from the likes of the Nuclear Energy Institute, Southern Company and Peabody Coal--all pushing a pro-nuclear, pro-coal agenda.

Meanwhile, many members of Congress continue to be strong supporters of the nuclear/coal lobby.

We need to support Obama when he's right, and pressure him when he's wrong. And we need to start today.

That's why, in cooperation with the grassroots network CLEAN, we're sponsoring today's National Call-In Day to the White House.

It's easy: the White House phone number is 202-456-1414. Just call up and leave your message: YES to renewables and efficiency; NO to nuclear and coal. If you'd like more information and/or a sample script, just go to our website, www.nirs.org, and click on the Call the White House banner.

We're beginning to plan our first Call/E-mail Congress Day, and we'll let you know about that soon. But for now, let's get thousands of calls to Obama! Forward this message to your friends and neighbors, colleagues and acquaintances.

And, if you can in this time of economic hardship across our country, please consider a tax-deductible donation to NIRS to help us continue this kind of outreach and work for our common goal of a nuclear-free, carbon-free energy future. You can do so here.

Thanks for all you do.

Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
nirsnet@nirs.org

For more about this effort, visit CLEAN'S Call the White House page, or the NIRS Website.