Tell FERC One More Time: Stop the $100+ Billion Nuclear-Coal Bailout! | NIRS | #DirtyEnergy #NuclearFreeCarbonFree #DontNuketheClimate

Make Your Voice Heard!

Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary, Rick Perry, has proposed an unprecedented bailout for nuclear and coal power plants that will raise people’s energy bills and undermine renewable energy.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is fast-tracking the DOE’s radical proposal and plan to adopt it in 60 days. Public comments were due October 23rd, exactly three weeks after the plan was announced, and we delivered over 11, 420 comments to FERC. 

The proposal calls for subsidies for old, outdated, and very polluting nuclear and coal plants under the guise that they promote electric grid reliability. 

Here are the basics:

     • The DOE wants FERC to bailout power plants that have 90 days of fuel onsite (-- a meaningless idea fabricated to justify subsidies for nuclear and coal).

     • FERC would guarantee the profitability of those coal and nuclear plants by charging consumers prices for their electricity that cover each plant’s operating costs, plus a "return on investment."

     • The bailout would cover 43 reactors in thirteen states—nearly half of the nuclear industry—and over 60 coal plants.

     • The purported basis for the proposal is to ensure the reliability of the electrical grid, but the DOE’s own report published in August found that wind and solar energy strengthened the affordability, reliability, and resilience of the grid.  

This bailout will raise electricity costs by billions of dollars a year and ratepayers across the country will ultimately foot the bill for supporting these expensive plants. And worst of all – it will block renewable energy and increase greenhouse gas emissions.

FERC is taking a final round of public comments until November 7. And we need to deliver another 11,000 comments to them! Even if you already signed a petition or sent a comment, please do so again for this final round.  

It is still important to voice our opposition and the time to act is NOW! And after that, pass it on to your friends and to your contacts on facebook, twitter, Instagram, etc.

Stay tuned for more actions to take as we build this campaign to save our 100% Clean Energy Future!

SIGN NOW!

Background Information:

NUCLEAR SUBSIDIES

• NIRS Report: Too Big to Bail Out: The Economic Costs of a National Nuclear Power Subsidy
  NIRS analysis shows that the nationwide cost of a proposed nuclear subsidy program could cost over $280 billion by 2030.
• GreenWorld:  The Astronomical Cost of New Subsidies for Old Reactors: $280 Billion
  A national nuclear bailout would be climate backwards: blocking renewable energy and diverting massive amounts of money to prop up aging, uneconomical reactors.
  
• New York Just Proved Why Bailing Out Nuclear Power Is a Bad Idea
  New York's recently approved 12-year, $7.6 billion nuclear subsidy program will cost 3 times as much as the state's plan to achieve 50% renewable energy by 2030.

• Union of Concerned Scientists: Nuclear Power: Still Not Viable without Subsidies
  Government subsidies to the nuclear power industry over the past fifty years have been so large that in some cases it would have cost taxpayers less to simply buy kilowatts on the open market and give them away.
• NIRS: Killing the Competition: The Nuclear Power Agenda to Block Climate Action, Stop Renewable Energy, and Subsidize Old Reactors

100% RENEWABLE ENERGY

• Environment America: We Have the Power: 100% Renewable Energy for a Clean, Thriving America
• Institute for Energy and Environmental Research: Carbon Free and Nuclear Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy
• Greenpeace: Energy (R)Evolution: A Sustainable Energy USA Outlook
  Study shows U.S. can get to 98% renewables by 2050
• 100% Renewable Energy for All: A sustainable world energy outlook 2015
  Report finds that the world can be powered by 100% renewables by 2050. 
• SUN DAY Campaign: Watts Bar 2: Winning the Battle while Losing the War
  New Electrical Generation from wind and solar is 21 times greater than that expected from the US's first nuclear reactor in 20 years.
• Pew Research Center: Public opinion on renewables and other energy sources

MULTIMEDIA

• Don't Nuke the Climate: lessons from Japan and Germany. Featuring Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute.
• Paris and Onward: the Path Forward to a Nuclear-Free, Carbon-Free energy future
  With Dr. Mark Jacobson of Stanford University and The Solutions Project; and Dr. Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF NUCLEAR POWER

• #NuclearIsDirty Presentation Series
• Fact Sheet: Nuclear Power and Climate: Why Nukes Can't Save the Planet
• Briefing Paper: Nuclear Energy is Dirty Energy

ENERGY TRANSITION

• Oil Change International: The Sky’s Limit: Why the Paris Climate Goals Require a Managed Decline of Fossil Fuel Production
• Labor Network for Sustainability: Climate, Jobs, and Justice Project: A plan for a just transition to a climate-safe economy
• Alliance for a Green Economy (AGREE) and NIRS: Replacing FitzPatrick: How the Closure of a Nuclear Reactor Can Reduce Greenhouse Gases and Radioactive Waste, While Creating Jobs and Supporting the Local Community

SIGN NOW!

Please Join Us in Supporting the Don't Nuke the Climate Campaign! | NIRS | COP23 ::: #DontNukeTheClimate

NIRS is a founding member of the Don't Nuke the Climate coalition -- a global campaign to stop nuclear power and promote urgent, ambitious action on climate change. We are based in the US and serves the grassroots anti-nuclear and sustainable energy movements. 

It is more important than ever for the voices of people from the US and North America are heard at the COP23 global climate conference next month in Germany. President Trump opposes climate action and is working to undermine the Paris Agreement. His administration is strongly promoting nuclear power and fossil fuels -- most dramatically with moves to create a $100+ billion bailout for nuclear and coal power plants! 

This is a bad example for the rest of the world, and we must make sure that other countries know Americans oppose nuclear power and want a nuclear-free, carbon-free world.

Nuclear power is not a solution to climate change - it is too dirty, too dangerous, too expensive, and too slow to solve the climate crisis -- and it has a long track record of violating basic human rights. From mining uranium to making nuclear waste, to disasters like Fukushima and Chornobyl, it poisons the environment and endangers our health and security. Climate action funds must focus on sustainable, 100% renewable energy solutions -- and not false, dirty energy sources like nuclear, dirty biomass, and large-scale hydro power.

The Don't Nuke the Climate! campaign is a grassroots international campaign to bring that message to the COP23 global climate conference at Bonn, Germany in November 2017.  

We have to stop nuclear power from raiding climate action funds to build nuclear reactors, mine uranium, and make radioactive waste.

Thanks for whatever support you can give!

#DontNukeTheClimate

>> Please Join Us in Supporting the Don't Nuke the Climate Campaign! | NIRS

Petition – NUCLEAR-WASTE near the BEACH? You heard right... #SanOnofre

In October of 2015, the California Coastal Commission, an entity meant to keep our coasts and ocean safe, granted Southern California Edison (SCE) a permit to bury their Nuclear-Waste on a stretch of beach between Oceanside and San Clemente (in San Diego and Orange Counties). This area is located on two fault lines, and it is not a question of IF there will be a major earthquake in this region but WHEN...

The probability of a major earthquake in this area is inevitable and may be sooner than one may think https://sanonofresafety.org/earthquake-and-tsunami-risks/. As you likely know, radioactive-waste is deadly to humans and wildlife... including marine-life in the ocean, where the deadly-plume would not be contained. Much of Southern California would become uninhabitable and beach-towns would become ghost-towns up and down the coast (including Mexico). NUCLEAR-WASTE IS TOXIC FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS, and it would not discriminate between the wealthy, healthy, sick and poor. Everyone would be affected! 

Earthquakes are not the only concern. Public Watchdogs, a non-profit organization in San Diego, says the containers in which the nuclear-waste would be stored are only guaranteed for 25 years. However, failure has occurred in as little as 17 years in similar containers (and environment) https://sanonofresafety.org/nuclear-waste/. Although considering the fault system, an earthquake could rupture them sooner.

In a press release by Public Watchdogs they state,“On January 13, 2018, Southern California Edison will bury the radioactive (waste) equivalent of 700 nuclear warheads on the beach at San Onofre State Beach Park within 108 feet of the water. Each of the 75 waste containers holds more radiation than what was released at Chernobyl. When it is completed, it will be the world’s largest beachfront nuclear waste dump.”

more / SIGN NOW: Petition – NUCLEAR-WASTE near the BEACH? You heard right... Change.org

Petition REVOKE Nuclear Waste Storage Permit at #SanOnofre

Your signature on this Petition will send a message, loud and clear to the California Coastal Commission that the permit they approved for Edison was flawed and must be revoked. The Special Conditions in the Coastal Permit that are twenty years out are well intended, but should have been required from the start. Other countries currently use nuclear waste storage systems that could meet those reasonable requirements today. Their containers can be inspected, repaired, maintained, monitored and transported without cracks. The thin canisters being used at San Onofre have none of these attributes because they were only intended for temporary storage.

SIGN NOW: Petition REVOKE Nuclear Waste Storage Permit at San Onofre

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE 2017 goes to International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) !!

International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)

Prize motivation:
 "for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons"
International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) - Facts

The Call from Oslo

Listen to when Executive Director of ICAN Beatrice Fihn receives the news that International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has been awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

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"This Will Mean the World to Us"

Telephone interview with Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of ICAN, following the announcement of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize on 6 October 2017. The interviewer is Adam Smith, Chief Scientific Officer of Nobel Media.

Beatrice Fihn describes the significance for ICAN of receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. In the interview, recorded immediately after she had heard the news, she also describes the groundswell of public opinion bringing new momentum to efforts to ban nuclear arms, commenting: "The cold war is over a long time ago, we can no longer accept these weapons."

Transcript of the Interview