[blind-democracy] FW: Here's your fall 2020 nuclear advocacy update
- From: "Miriam Vieni" <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2020 13:54:58 -0400
From: Nuclear Information & Resource Service <nirs@xxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, September 16, 2020 11:14 AM
To: Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Here's your fall 2020 nuclear advocacy update
Here's what NIRS has been up to this summer.
Dear Miriam,
It’s been a busy summer here at NIRS! Now that fall is here, we wanted to give
you an update on what we’ve been up to this year.
But before we get to the update, we wanted to give you an opportunity to
support our mission of fighting for a nuclear-free, fossil-free world. We hold
the nuclear industry and their regulators accountable at every step of the way
and work towards a future free from the health and environmental dangers of
nuclear energy, with sustainable and environmentally just solutions to the
climate crisis.
If you believe in our mission, here’s an opportunity to support our work and
double your impact at the same time. When you donate to NIRS today, an
anonymous donor will match your donation dollar for dollar.
<https://default.salsalabs.org/T82a40309-817e-4850-829c-4a73f3c32058/0138a370-cef1-4ab2-b468-579715cea490>
Donate to NIRS today and double your impact!
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Donate to NIRS today!
And now, here’s the update:
Very Large Lies about Waste (VLLW)
We’ve been very busy fighting one of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC)
worst ideas to date: To relabel very dangerous and long-lasting nuclear waste
as “Very Low-Level Waste,” or VLLW (we call it Very Large Lies about Waste). By
labeling dangerous nuclear waste as “very low-level,” the NRC would make it
easy for operators to get rid of their waste on the cheap, bypassing
regulations that protect the health and safety of our communities. The NRC’s
proposal would pave the way for dangerous nuclear waste to end up in our local
landfills, or even to be recycled into consumer products, such as zippers and
baby bottles. To fight back against this terrible proposal, NIRS supporters
like you have sent more than 6,000 comments to the NRC demanding that nuclear
power waste stay under regulatory control—and we’re keeping up the pressure
into the fall, too!
Hauling Dangerous Nuclear Waste Across America
Here’s another bad from the NRC that we’ve been fending off this summer:
Licensing Consolidated ‘Interim’ Storage (CIS) facilities for high-level
nuclear waste in Texas and New Mexico. Building these so-called ‘interim’ sites
would require hauling dangerous, high-level nuclear waste all over the country
twice: Once to the ‘interim’ sites, then once again to the permanent site—if
that is ever built. If the permanent site is not built, the ‘interim’ sites
could become de-facto permanent storage sites. Communities (largely Hispanic)
in New Mexico and Texas would become the latest sacrifice to the nuclear
industry. NIRS supporters like you have sent thousands of comments to the NRC
opposing these proposals. We’ve also helped local groups in Texas and New
Mexico organize opposition to these sites.
COVID-19 and Nuclear Safety
While the NRC has been busy with all these bad ideas, they’ve also been falling
down on the job of protecting nuclear workers from COVID-19 and protecting us
from the pandemic’s effects on nuclear safety. We don’t have an accurate count
of how many nuclear workers have contracted COVID-19 because the NRC and the
industry are not even collecting that information. At the few reactor sites
where reports have surfaced, hundreds of workers have been infected. And the
NRC has granted more than 200 exemptions to skip safety inspections during the
pandemic. We also don’t have an official account of how the pandemic is
affecting essential nuclear facility functions, such as refueling, because the
NRC isn’t keeping track on behalf of the public. We mobilized over 90
organizations to put pressure on the NRC, the industry, and the White House to
come clean on COVID-19’s impact on nuclear workers and public safety. We also
created a petition to Congress and the president’s COVID-19 task force to
protect nuclear workers during the pandemic.
Nuclear Corruption
Recent news about corrupt nuclear bailouts in Illinois and Ohio revealed to the
public what we already knew: The nuclear industry is corrupt from top to
bottom. Federal agents have arrested the Speaker of the Ohio House of
Representatives and lobbyists, and utilities that received billion-dollar
nuclear bailouts in both states are under investigation. In South Carolina,
nuclear executives are under indictment for fraud in a failed $9 billion
reactor project. We’ve been beating this drum relentlessly on social and
traditional media, and calling for investigations of nuclear corruption in
other states where utilities have lobbied for more than $10 billion in
bailouts. For example, we recently syndicated a co-authored opinion piece where
we connect the dots about corruption in the nuclear industry with its other
faults, such as its role in blocking the rollout of renewables.
Cutting Corners on New Nuclear Reactors
In yet another bad idea (do you see a pattern here?), the NRC is looking to
exempt so-called ‘advanced’ nuclear reactors (ANRs) from various regulations
that protect public health and the environment. If the NRC has its way, certain
kinds of new reactors would be exempt from providing emergency response plans
that must be approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Instead, the
NRC would let plant owners determine what the size of the Emergency Planning
Zone (EPZ) should be—or whether offsite emergency planning is required at all.
The NRC’s other bright idea is to produce a generic environmental impact
statement for these ‘advanced’ reactors. By fast-tracking the environmental
review of ANRs, the NRC is once again putting the interests of the nuclear
industry before our health and safety. NIRS supporters sent thousands of
comments to the NRC opposing these proposals.
Support Our Work
These are just some of the projects we’ve been working on this summer. We plan
to continue some of these and launch new ones this fall. But we can’t do it
without your support.
If you believe in our vision of a nuclear-free, fossil-free world,
<https://default.salsalabs.org/Te90a3894-f27f-4aef-ae32-589f827be72a/0138a370-cef1-4ab2-b468-579715cea490>
please donate today and your gift will be matched by a generous anonymous
donor.
Thanks for all you do,
The NIRS Team
Diane D'Arrigo
Luis Hestres
Denise Jakobsberg
Tim Judson
Connect with us:
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