More than 500 organizations from the U.S. and abroad, including some of the world’s largest and most influential environmental organizations, have signed a joint statement explicitly rejecting “the construction of new nuclear reactors as a means of addressing the climate crisis.” Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth International, Sierra Club, Clean Water Action, and Rainforest Action Network and a few of the many environmental groups that have signed on, along with major peace groups like Code Pink, Peace Action, and Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and hundreds of grassroots environmental, sustainable energy, religious, peace and other groups and businesses large and small from 46 states and 38 countries on six continents. 5900 individuals also have signed the statement, and more are signing every day.
Beyond rejecting nuclear power as the answer, the statement also embraces renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies as “faster, cheaper, safer and cleaner strategies for reducing greenhouse emissions.”
The release of the statement is timed to coincide with Congress considering billions of dollars of taxpayer-backed loan guarantees for new nuclear reactor construction, partly as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the generation of electricity. While some environmentalists have jumped on the nuclear power bandwagon, most have dug their heels in against it as unsafe and too expensive.
“We keep hearing from nuclear industry lobbyists that environmentalists are ‘re-examining’ nuclear power,” said Michael Mariotte, executive director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), the non-profit watchdog group that has been collecting the signatures. “That re-examination is long over, and it is clear that nuclear power is not helpful at addressing the climate crisis. Indeed, because of its high costs, long construction times, and its own considerable carbon footprint, its use would actually make matters much worse by diverting the resources necessary to take genuinely effective steps to end carbon emissions.”
Source: To sign the statement
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