Yesterday was, in some ways, the culmination of months of NIRS’ work on nuclear power and climate issues, as we showered the Environmental Protection Agency with many thousands of public comments on its proposed Clean Power Plan. That followed months of outreach that resulted in the turnout of many thousands–far more than we had expected–for the Nuclear-Free, Carbon-Free Contingent to the People’s Climate March in September.
In general, we support the EPA Plan’s intent–to reduce carbon emissions from power plants. But the Plan fell short in that goal, did not give enough credit nor do enough to promote renewable energy, and, most importantly, provided unwarranted support for aging, uneconomic nuclear reactors already rejected by the marketplace, and which can easily be replaced with cleaner renewables and energy efficiency programs.
In other ways, however, far from a culmination, yesterday seems more like a beginning. Now that we have explained to the EPA, in formats ranging from a paragraph to hundreds of pages of great detail, both the shortcomings of its proposal and how to fix them, we already are turning our attention to what comes next.
That will mean dealing with the Plan as it is actually read when finalized, which is unlikely to be exactly how we have encouraged it to be modified. And that will mean working in the states, with regional, state and local grassroots clean energy organizations to prevent the nuclear power industry from claiming its dirty old reactors and toxic fuel chain are somehow an appropriate solution to the defining environmental problem of our day–the climate crisis. Besides preventing that silliness threatening to be catastrophe, it also means supporting the genuine clean energy technologies that can power our future without carbon emissions and without strontium, cesium, plutonium, tritium, you-name-it emissions as well.
That’s where we’re headed next and that’s where we hope every one of you will be joining us. In the meantime, below is the press release we sent out yesterday about the nuclear power/climate issue and the thousands who made their voices heard to the EPA and which thus was wholeheartedly ignored by the media.
148 ORGANIZATIONS, THOUSANDS OF INDIVIDUALS, WHILE BACKING INTENT OF EPA’S PROPOSED CLEAN POWER PLAN,
URGE AGENCY TO REMOVE SUPPORT FOR DIRTY NUCLEAR POWER AND INSTEAD ENCOURAGE CLEAN ENERGY
While supporting the general intent of the EPA’s proposed Clean Power Plan to address our climate crisis, 148 organizations—representing millions of Americans–today submitted comments to the agency urging it to reconsider and remove its unwarranted support for nuclear power in the plan...
more: Nukes, climate, and the actions of thousands | GreenWorld
