Please email your Senators or call the U.S. Capitol Switchboard (202) 224-3121 and ask for your Senators' offices.Urge them to redirect funds from futile new reactor research to clean, reliable and safer renewable energy.
Talking points:
- We need climate change solutions now, not decades from now.
- Invest money in new sustainable technology like wind and solar that are cheaper and faster to build.
- Don't pour more money into nuclear technology that can be used for weapons. Uranium mining is predatory to First Nations who are already suffering the legacy of previous mines.
Fourteen US Senators have reintroduced the bi-partisan Nuclear Energy Leadership Act (NELA) that would fund research and production of theoretical and untested fast reactors and other allegedly "new" designs, including fusion. The senators falsely repeated that nuclear power is "clean, safe and reliable" and bemoaned the fact that the US has "surrendered" its leadership in nuclear energy to Russia and China, suggesting an underlying agenda that may have little to do with electricity generation. Significantly, China has already surpassed the US in renewable energy development, a fact that did not seem to prompt the same level of "security" concerns from the NELA co-signers. A summary of the bill includes the revival of uranium mining in the US. Supporters say the bill is necessary because the private sector refuses to undertake new nuclear projects "due to the cost of, or risks associated with, the research". The bill would fund "a 10-year strategic plan of "R&D goals" and "breakthrough innovation", just to arrive at an "on-paper design," which would do nothing to address climate change in time. Nor does the bill address any of the challenges associated with new technology such as exorbitant first-of-a-kind construction costs that have already killed other reactor projects.