2012—A YEAR OF VICTORIES!
And how you can help extend this success, gear up for the major new battles of 2013, and build the nuclear-free, carbon-free future our nation and planet deserve…
November 20, 2012
Dear Friends,
Sometimes it's important to step back and reflect on our movement's accomplishments.... Think about how far we've come this year:
*The license for the proposed Calvert Cliffs-3 reactor was denied by the NRC! We couldn’t afford a lawyer so we did this legal intervention ourselves and won a stunning victory. We’re now defending that victory before the NRC Commissioners. We’re confident we’ll win there too.
*The NRC was forced to stop issuing licenses for new reactors and license renewals for the next two years. This was because of a lawsuit brought by our allies at NRDC, BREDL, and others. But two years isn’t enough to fix the problems caused by the NRC’s failed “waste confidence” rule. In fact, we have no confidence in our radioactive waste policy: the NRC should just make the licensing moratorium permanent.
*In October, Wisconsin’s Kewaunee reactor announced its permanent shutdown at the end of the year. Aging reactors can’t compete with the alternatives. The Exelon Corporation announced a few days later that it may close New Jersey’s Oyster Creek reactor before its scheduled 2019 date because of competition from “cheap renewables” and possible new capital costs to address post-Fukushima safety issues. Oyster Creek and other Fukushima-clone reactors (think Vermont Yankee, Pilgrim, Dresden, and more) are on their last legs. It’s our job to push these dangerous aging reactors, along with time bombs like San Onofre, Crystal River and Indian Point, over the edge.
*For the first time since 2010, President Obama’s budget this year did not include any new money for taxpayer loans for new reactors. And the President did not even mention nuclear power during his State of the Union speech, nor in any of the election debates (unlike his opponent). Nor has the $8.3 Billion taxpayer loan for the new Vogtle reactors, first announced in February 2010, gone out the door. This follows the successful efforts of NIRS and other DC-based groups over the past four years (and the 250,000+ e-mails and thousands of phone calls you have done) to block any and every effort to increase taxpayer support for new reactors.
With your help, we will build on these successes and take on the new challenges that face us. We expect a pitched battle on radioactive waste issues in the next Congress. We will not yield: we will not accept a plan for “consolidated interim” storage that would send lethally-radioactive waste across our highways and railways to a “temporary” storage parking lot somewhere. With your support, a Mobile Chernobyl is not going to happen.
We’re also gearing up, with our colleagues in Washington and at the American Clean Energy Agenda, to stop any new nuclear subsidies and begin taking back some of the existing ones, as well as to block any effort to include nuclear power in a “clean energy standard” or “all of the above” energy approach. (by the way, don’t forget to sign the American Clean Energy Agenda petition here--a lot of folks haven't yet…).
And we’re planning to take on the right-wing Koch Brothers-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, which says it’s going to try to roll back state renewable energy standards in 2013. With your help, we can beat them.
2013 will be NIRS’ 35th anniversary as the networking, organizing and mobilization arm of the anti-nuclear movement. To mark that anniversary, we are embarking on a major capacity-building campaign: we aim to quadruple our e-mail list, add new mobile communication components, reach and engage young people more effectively, and much more.
We ask for your support now to help us meet these goals. There are several ways you can help—and help build our movement for a necessary nuclear-free, carbon-free future.us know!
Thank you so much.
For a nuclear-free, carbon-free future,
Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
www.nirs.org
nirsnet@nirs.org
Stay Informed:
NIRS on the web (stay up-to-date with the Nuclear Newsreel section on the front page, featuring the day's most interesting news on nuclear power and other energy issues): http://www.nirs.org
NIRS on Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/pages/
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