On Monday, September 11th a coalition of 57 national, regional, and local environmental groups from all across the country, sent a letter all 100 U.S. Senators. The letter urged no votes on the confirmation of President Donald J. Trump's two Republican nominees for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Annie Caputo and David Wright. The Senate floor vote on their confirmation could happen at any time.
You can still take action. Please contact both your U.S. Senators, and urge them to block the confirmation of Caputo and Wright. You can be patched through to your U.S. Senators' Washington, D.C. offices by phoning the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121. Or, you can find your U.S. Senators' direct contact information, including email/webforms and fax numbers, by following the links. You could also get together with friends and colleagues and request a face to face meeting with your Senators when they are next back home (most weekends), or your Senators' in-district staff during weekdays and normal business hours.
As the letter stated, in part:
The Japanese Parliament concluded in 2012, after a year-long independent investigation into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear catastrophe, that the root cause was collusion, between regulator, industry, and government officials. Collusion was the root cause for the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant being so very vulnerable to the natural disasters that ruined it on March 11, 2011, resulting in a still ongoing, catastrophic release of hazardous radioactivity into the environment, from the three melted down reactors.
Given their long established closeness to the nuclear power industry’s lobbying agenda, if confirmed by the U.S. Senate to the NRC, Annie Caputo and David Wright would worsen such dangerous regulator-industry collusion on the NRC Commission. Confirmation of Caputo and Wright would consummate the nuclear power industry’s high-risk domination of the NRC for the next five years.
Caputo previously was a top lobbyist for the largest U.S. nuclear utility, Exelon. For more than a decade, she has served as a top committee staffer for the most pro-nuclear members of congress, including U.S. Reps. Barton and Upton (chairmen of the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Committee), and U.S. Sens. Inhofe and Barrasso (chairmen of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee).
For a decade, Wright was a leader of the South Carolina Public Service Commisision, as well as the National and Southeastern public service commission associations, with a focus on nuclear power and radioactive waste matters. He approved multiple rate hikes in South Carolina to finance the building of the now-cancelled Summer Units 2 and 3 atomic reactors, representing a loss of billions of dollars of ratepayer money.