[NukeNet] PETITION TO STOP THE NUCLEAR BAILOUT

[MoJo]

The Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility is proud to join with other
 organizations across our nation to speak out against fifty billion dollars in
 100% loan guarantees for the nuclear industry.  "The nuclear industry has
 had over fifty years to work out problems and compete in a free market and
 has been unable to do so. Now they want taxpayers to fund their next
 attempt, when many states are still paying off nuclear power's economic fiasco
 in the 1980's where cost overruns were in the billions of dollars per
 reactor site."  Rochelle Becker, executive director, Alliance for Nuclear
 Responsibility.


Musicians Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and Graham Nash announced today a
 new campaign to stop US Congress from bailing out the nuclear power
 industry. They launched the campaign with the release of a YouTube video and
 national petition effort all available at www.nukefree.org. The artists will
 deliver the petitions to Congress at a press conference and Lobby Day in
 Washington D.C. on October 23rd.
   
  PETITION TO STOP THE NUCLEAR BAILOUT

To: The 110th United States Congress

We ask that all members of Congress join us in working to remove from the
 pending Energy Bill massively expensive loan guarantees---potentially a
 virtual blank check from taxpayers--- for the building of many more nuclear
 power plants.

We strongly support those parts of this Energy Bill that advance Renewable
 Portfolio Standards, increased fuel efficiency for automobiles, and other
 safe, clean solutions to global warming.

The tragedies of September 11th, 2001, underscore how vulnerable atomic
 reactors are to terror attacks by airplanes and missiles. Chernobyl and
 Three Mile Island remind us that major nuclear accidents can also be caused by
 human error.

The problem of radioactive waste remains unsolved.  All reactors create
 deadly by-products that must be isolated for centuries. These wastes will
 have to be moved throughout the nation on trucks and trains, which could
 themselves have accidents and become terror and proliferation targets. There
 is no storage site even planned for the wastes that would come from new
 reactors.  The controversial dump under construction at Yucca Mountain in
 Nevada, which may never open, cannot handle even the waste from reactors
 already in existence.

Huge quantities of energy are used for nuclear fuel enrichment,
 transportation, construction and waste storage. This is no solution to global
 warming. Reactors in Alabama and France have already shut because they are
 super-heating nearby rivers and streams.

The "new generation" nuclear plant now being built in Finland is
 already 18 months behind schedule and $900 million over budget. This is a
 design planned for our country. If construction begins here, tax and ratepayers
 will be stuck with the bill.

The Senate version of the Energy Bill could authorize the Department of
 Energy to provide virtually unlimited guarantees for backers of new
 reactors. The industry indicates it wants $25 billion in guarantees for 2008, and
 another $25 billion for 2009, with untold billions more to come after
 that.

The industry wants these subsidies because after fifty years, atomic power
 has been rejected by the marketplace. The first commercial nuclear
 reactor opened in 1957.  But after fifty years of proven failure, Wall Street
 will not independently invest in more of them, and still no private
 insurance company will underwrite the possibility of a major reactor disaster.

In fact, nuclear power has been left behind by a profitable revolution in
 safe, clean, renewable energy sources, and in energy efficiency.  Wind,
 solar, bio-fuels, geothermal, ocean thermal and more are shaping a
 green-powered Earth that produces jobs and sustainability.  This is the true
 solution to global warming.

These wasteful reactor loan guarantees would siphon away resources better
 spent on truly competitive sources of power.

So we ask that they be removed from the Energy Bill.  Higher auto mileage
 standards, biofuels, energy efficiency and requirements for renewable
 energy are what we need to survive and prosper, not more taxpayer bailouts for
 the proven failure that is atomic energy.

Sincerely,

 
The Undersigned

Jackson Browne, musician/activist

Graham Nash, musician/activist

Bonnie Raitt, musician/activist

Keb' Mo, musician/activist

Ozomatli, musicians/activists

Harvey Wasserman, author/activist

Tom Campbell, The Guacamole Fund

Rochelle Becker, Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility

Rashid Shabazz

FENTON | communications NY-SF-DC
260 Fifth Avenue, 9th floor, New York, NY 10001
Tel:  212.584.5000
Mob:  646.407.8675
Fax:  212.584.5045 





"It is worth noting that, in the USA alone, there are an estimated 45,000 sites which are polluted or potentially polluted by radioactive poisons --- according to a report commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1992 (see EPA 1992). Worldwide, there is radioactive pollution from above-ground bomb tests. There is also the radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident in Europe and the former USSR. The fact that humans have already created large amounts of nuclear pollution, adds to the moral argument for allowing no more."    http://www.ratical.com/radiation/CNR/YuccaMtnRWRP.html
  
CAN AN ATHEIST GET INSURANCE AGAINST ACTS OF GOD?  (conversely, do insurance companies have to pay atheists on claims found to be 'acts of God'?) - Rebecca Cummings
 

       
---------------------------------
Be a better Heartthrob. Get better relationship answers from someone who knows.
Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.energyjustice.net/pipermail/nukenet_energyjustice.net/attachments/20071011/b6dd3f55/attachment.html