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Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Please take action ASAP, and spread the word to others to do so as well, as by forwarding this email action alert!
Urge both your U.S. Senators to VOTE NO on the nuclear power Advance Act, S. 870 Division B. Also urge both your U.S. Senators to speak out against it on the Senate floor. (We think there will be 30 hours of floor time provided for debate before the vote on the bill, thanks to U.S. Senator Ed Markey (Democrat-Massachusetts, a nearly half-century long nuclear watch-dog in Congress!), who blocked unanimous consent, which would have otherwise allowed the bill to go straight to the floor for an up-or-down vote.
If you need to look up who your two U.S. Senators are, or to find their contact information, the U.S. Senate has posted a contact page online, with contact info. and instructions on how to email your Senators (often via their web forms on their websites), as well as phone numbers for their offices.
Given the short timing, sending letters via snail mail is not an option -- it is also probably best to phone your Senators' D.C. offices, rather than in-state offices (unless you happen to have a good contact there).
You can also phone your U.S. Senators' Capitol Hill offices via the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121. An operator will put you through to your U.S. Senators' offices.
Here is sample language you can use for emails and/or phone calls to both your U.S. Senators' offices (feel free to use verbatim as is, or to change it any way your like!):
"Dear Senator X,
As your constituent, I urge you to vote against S. 870, Division B, the nuclear power "ADVANCE Act." Please speak out against it on the Senate floor, and do all you can to block its passage.
The ADVANCE Act will significantly increase the risks of nuclear power, by changing the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's mandate from safety regulation to industry promotion, a 50-year step backwards! It would also promote new atomic reactors, and much more highly enriched nuclear fuel, both in the U.S., as well as overseas. This will worsen the hazards, harms, and environmental injustices at each and every stage of the uranium fuel chain, from mining to highly radioactive waste dumping. The ADVANCE Act's allowing of foreign ownership of nuclear facilities in the U.S., and its promotion of High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) fuel, both domestically and overseas, will also significantly increase nuclear weapons proliferation risks.
Thank you for considering my concerns.
Sincerely,
X"
BACKGROUND ON THE DANGEROUS NUCLEAR POWER "ADVANCE ACT"
A 3-page bill to fund fire safety was usurped by the 93+ page Advance Act to promote expensive, dangerous, dirty, environmentally-unjust nuclear power, that could accelerate nuclear exports and weapons proliferation and allow foreign ownership/control of U.S. nuclear facilities! The mission of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) would lapse to a role of boosting the nuclear power industry, more than regulating its safety. This would be a half-century step backwards in time (not in a good way!), to the days of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which not only promoted nuclear power, but also "regulated its safety" (mutually contradictory mandates! In the mid-1970s, these two mutually contradictory mandates were split up -- safety regulation at NRC, and nuclear power promotion at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy).
S. 870 Division B, the nuclear power "ADVANCE ACT," promotes:
---> new nuclear power, which from uranium mining to long-term radioactive waste management violates environmental justice and relies on fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions for every step, is itself radioactively and chemically dirty, dangerous, expensive, slow, takes resources from true climate solutions and leaves intense, long-lasting radioactive waste that technically cannot be isolated for the eons it remains dangerous.
(See IEEFA report May 2024 Small modular reactors are still too expensive, too slow, and too risky | IEEFA)
---> allegedly “advanced” nuclear fuel, which can be so highly concentrated in Uranium-235 that it makes hotter, more-dangerous waste and routine releases, threatens the safety of reactor operations and is enriched nearly enough to make atom bombs.
(See The weapons potential of high-assay low-enriched uranium | Science, SCIENCE, 6 June 2024 Vol 384, Issue 6700 pp. 1071-1073 DOI: 10.1126/science.ado8693)
---> export of this more-dangerous nuclear material and technology to other countries, accelerating nuclear proliferation, already a major concern.
(see Squassoni, S., George Washington University, April 2024, New Nuclear Energy: Assessing the National Security Risks; NewNuclearRisk_Report_2024_v4-1-0b59385f1c7d4153.pdf (bpb-us-e1.wpmu cdn.com).
---> foreign ownership of US nuclear facilities, heretofore prohibited by the Atomic Energy Act, partly due to making plutonium that can be used for atom bombs.
---> directs the NRC to change its mission from regulating safety to promoting the nuclear power industry–despite the U.S. Department of Energy's mandated designation as booster in the 1974 Energy Reorganization Act. The 2011 Fukushima triple nuclear meltdowns were blamed on collusion between the nuclear industry, elected and appointed government officials, and the safety regulator–let’s not repeat that here by establishing nuclear power collusion in spades!
Compensation for and acknowledgement of radiation injuries have been denied by the U.S. House's failure to renew and expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (S. 3853), while the ADVANCE Act kick-starts more radioactive releases and exposures, using taxpayer dollars, spreading contamination to more places in the US and abroad, in denial of the potential increased harm from nuclear reactors large and small, significantly more highly enriched nuclear fuel and intensely radioactive waste, less regulatory oversight, and foreign control of nuclear sites within our homeland.
Please urge both your U.S. Senators to vote NO and do all they can to stop S. 870 Division B, the ADVANCE ACT, such as speaking out against it on the Senate floor.
Please help spread the word about this extremely urgent action alert to your networks, friends, and families. Thank you!
(Thank you to NIRS for spearheading this action alert initiative!)
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