COMMENTS OF 91 ORGANIZATIONS, IN OPPOSITION TO FERC'S PROPOSED RELIABILITY AND RESILIENCY RULE

Beyond Nuclear joined with 90 other organizations, on comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), opposing the old coal and nuclear power plant bailout euphemistically dubbed the "Reliability and Resiliency Rule." See the coalition comments, and full list of signatory organizations, here.

Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), a leader of the environmental coalition, submitted the comments by FERC's incredibly short deadline of October 23, 2017.

Thank you to groups which responded to Beyond Nuclear's action alerts, urging organizations to sign onto this coalition comment letter.

Beyond Nuclear also signed onto an Ohio and Michigan grassroots coalition comment letter, initiated by attorney Terry Lodge of Toledo. Lodge represents Beyond Nuclear and local grassroots environmental coalitions at such atomic reactors as Fermi 2 (and the proposed Fermi 3), as well as Palisades, in Michigan, and also Davis-Besse in Ohio.

In addition, NIRS submitted 868 individuals, supplementing 10,561 it hand delivered on October 11th. Beyond Nuclear joined NIRS and Food & Water Watch at the rally, at FERC HQ front entrance in Washington, D.C., before the petitions were hand delivered. Thanks too to everyone who has taken action on Beyond Nuclear's alerts, calling for support of the NIRS petition.

Public Citizen reports that its own petition garnered nearly 18,000 signatures -- so thanks too to readers who took action on Beyond Nuclear's alerts encouraging support for that one too. Public Citizen's Energy Program Director, Tyson Slocum, also submitted his own set of comments.

For those individuals who haven't already, please sign the NIRS petition, and also the Public Citizen webform. There is a November 7th FERC deadline, for "response" to comments already submitted -- so additional opposition by our side can be registered by that date.

Likewise, there is still time to add your group's name to the NIRS coalition letter mentioned above -- to sign on, just fill out the form here: https://goo.gl/forms/lXq6Qhy0IhZYQ6wH3

To see the text of the coalition comments letter, and to see the 91 groups currently signed on, click on the top most link in this web posting.

Analysis by the Sierra Club estimates that this old coal and nuke plant bailout could cost ratepayers $14 billion per year. (Reports are that well over 22,000 Sierra Club members also petitioned FERC on this outrageous proposal -- given that many tens of thousands of public comments described here and above, this could well explain why FERC's public comment website "melted down" as the deadline approached!)

Thus, when extended over the likely decade+ long life of the policy, NIRS $180 billion+ cost estimate holds true.

The Center for American Progress (CAP) has also provided critical analysis of the proposed bailouts.