Taxpayer Bailout of Nuclear Companies: Sign the Petition

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www.nirs.org -
Nuclear Information and Resource Service

SIGN PETITION TO STOP TAXPAYER BAILOUT OF WEALTHY NUCLEAR COMPANIES!

March 2, 2010

Dear Friends,

Here is the next step in our ongoing battle to end a taxpayer bailout of the nuclear power industry and stop President Obama's proposal to triple the nuclear loan "guarantee" program to $54 Billion.

As we all now know, it's not a loan "guarantee" program at all. It's direct taxpayer financing provided to some of the richest utilities on earth--like Electricite de France, Progress Energy, NRG Energy, etc.-- to buy nuclear reactors from even wealthier nuclear corporations--like General Electric, the largest corporation in the world; Areva, Westinghouse/Toshiba, and so on.

They want to build reactors that would continue to be dangerous and dirty--just like those now leaking toxic tritium and other elements into our air and water. Reactors that would continue to generate lethal radioactive waste with no storage solution. Reactors that would continue to be extraordinarily expensive--even NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko says they'll average at least $10 Billion each. Reactors that would divert scarce taxpayer resources from solar, wind, energy efficiency and other technologies that can provide real energy independence and national security, and reduce carbon emissions safer, faster, cleaner and cheaper than nuclear power.

Please sign a taxpayers petition to Congress here.

We will hand-deliver the petition with signatures (and we hope it's hundreds of pages) to Members of Congress--especially the critical members of the Appropriations Committees--before any vote on this issue. Remember, Congress has to approve Obama's $54 Billion nuclear bailout: with your help, we can stop this.

Let's see if we can get 10,000 signatures on this petition in the next month or so before any votes come up! Help us spread the word: as always, tell your friends and family, send to your organizational mailing lists, post on Facebook and Twitter, write about it on your blogs. Make paper copies and post in your local food co-op, cafe, or other gathering place and send the completed sheets back to us. Want a pdf to copy? Just ask, we'll send you one.

We're happy to report that more than 2,200 new people have taken action in the past 2 months! That's thanks to your outreach efforts and to your contributions that helped us buy ads on Alternet and Google Adwords. If you want to see this kind of successful outreach continue and build (and we certainly do!), please make a tax-deductible contribution, of whatever size you can, now.

Your actions do matter, so please sign the petition.

Here is the direct link to the petition that you can pass on to friends and colleagues: http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5502/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=2096. It also will be posted soon on the front page of NIRS' website: www.nirs.org.

I know we sometimes ask a lot, but remember, we're up against an industry that has spent more than $600 million on lobbying in the past decade. We can win, but it will take all of us acting together.

Thanks for all you do,

Michael Mariotte

Executive Director

Nuclear Information and Resource Service

[e-mail]

www.nirs.org

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1. Michael Mariotte of NIRS is on Michio Kaku's "Explorations" radio show this week

On kpfa, the last 15 minutes were cut off for fund raising,
the rest is archived at http://kpfa.org/archive/id/59037

It should air on WBAI today at 5pm EST (2pm PST) http://www.wbai.org
and be archived later today at http://archive.wbai.org/