Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Take Action: Keep Nuclear Power out of Senate Energy Bill

The Senate Energy Committee is about to begin consideration of a major Senate energy bill, which is expected to take 2 weeks or more. Please send the letter below to your Senators to encourage them to keep taxpayer subsidies for nuclear power out of the energy bill. Please feel free to edit the letter to reflect your own concerns, highlight issues in your state, etc.

And please call your Senators (Capitol Switchboard, 202-224-3121) on Thursday, April 30--National Grassroots Call-In Day--to express these principle directly to their offices.

Thank you for taking action!

February 09, 2010

Subject:

Dear Senator,

As the Senate Energy Committee begins its consideration of its 2009 Energy Bill, as your constituent I urge you to fight for these principles in this bill, whether in the committee or when it reaches the Senate floor:

*Nuclear Power does not belong in a Renewable Electricity Standard. Not only is nuclear power not a renewable energy source, but including it in an RES would grossly distort the goals of such a program, which must be oriented toward encouraging truly clean, renewable sources of electricity generation. Nuclear power is dangerous and dirty--its radioactive emissions may be invisible, but as the National Academy of Sciences has determined, there is no safe level of radiation exposure.

*Nuclear Power must not be included in any Clean Energy Bank or similar funding mechanism. Again, nuclear power is "clean" only because its toxic emissions are invisible. If the radiation released every day from nuclear reactors were the color and texture of oil, there would never even be consideration of construction of another nuclear reactor. "Clean Energy Bank" or similar funds must be directed only to genuinely clean technologies such as renewable energy and energy efficiency programs.

*No other taxpayer support or subsidies for nuclear power--especially any expansion of the existing, bloated nuclear loan guarantee program--must be included in a Senate energy bill.

*If the Senate Energy Committee chooses to adopt a proposed amendment from Sen. John McCain to recover money paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund, those funds should be returned to ratepayers, not nuclear utilities--which merely collected the money from ratepayers and passed it on to the federal treasury. Utilities must not receive billions of dollars that was never theirs to begin with.

*Finally, our energy policy must be based on implementing the fastest, cheapest, cleanest and safest solutions to our climate crisis. Nuclear power and "clean" coal technologies do not meet these criteria.

Please act strongly and responsibly to ensure a safe, clean and renewable energy future for the United States. Please inform me of the steps you will take to do so.

Thank you.

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