May 13 webcast -- Decommissioning: A New Era in the U.S. Nuclear Power Industry; a Critical Need for Congressional Oversight

Post-meltdown "clean up" at Three Mile Island nuclear power plantBeyond Nuclear is honored and privileged to have been invited to speak at a May 13th congressional briefing, co-sponsored by Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Natural Resources Defense Council, Nuclear Energy Information Service, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Riverkeeper and other participating groups, including ours. The briefing, about urgent atomic reactor decommissioning and highly radioactive waste management issues, will be webcast live from 2-3:30pm Eastern on Monday, May 13 (if you live near enough to Capitol Hill, please attend in person!). See EESI's website for more info., and be sure to pre-register for the webcast (or to attend in person).

Another event is coming up on May 19-22: Alliance for Nuclear Accountability's annual "DC Days." Beyond Nuclear has been a proud ANA member group since our founding in 2007. A highlight of every DC Days is the awards ceremony. Beyond Nuclear gives the Dr. Judith H. Johnsrud "Unsung Hero" Award each year. (It is one of a number of awards given out each year at DC Days, including to well deserving members of congress, activists, journalists, etc.) We are happy to announce this year's "Unsung Hero" awardee: Rose Gardner, with the Alliance for Environmental Strategies (AFES) in Eunice, New Mexico, our ally in the fight against irradiated nuclear fuel consolidated interim storage facilities at Interim Storage Partners/Waste Control Specialists, across the state line in Texas, just several miles from her home, and at Holtec/Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance, halfway between Carlsbad and Hobbs, NM, about 40 miles from her home (see here). It is not too late to register for and attend DC Days, if you can make it.

Judith Johnsrud (1931-2014) was a founding board member of Beyond Nuclear. She also co-founded Nuclear Information and Resource Service, as well as the Environmental Coalition on Nuclear Power. One of her many claims to fame was helping co-lead the intervention against the building of the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in the first place, in the 1970s, years before the TMI-2 meltdown. Another was being honored, in 2012, by Sierra Club for a half-century of anti-nuclear activism. See a tribute to Judith on the bottom of the last page of our 2014 newsletter about the Three Mile Island meltdown. (The photo, above right, shows TMI-2, post-meltdown, on the banks of the Susquehanna River, near Harrisburg, undergoing "clean up" activities. If and when TMI-1 finally closes (see entry above), decommissioning of the entire Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, including Unit 2, can finally begin, 40 years and counting after the 1979 meltdown.)