Official Summary of Proposed Nuclear Initiative Estimates Costs in Billions of Dollars in Case of Reactor Accident
12/26/07 Result: After Chuck Devore failed to garner enough support in the California Assembly to bring nuclear power to California, he attempted to qualify a ballot measure. However, Assemblyman Devore was forced to withdraw his proposed ballot initiative as well after a failure to garner enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. Bridge the Gap and other groups worked hard to fight the initiative's placement on the ballot, forcing a recognition that its chances at passage were dismal. This marked Devore's second failure in recent months to bring nuclear power to California.
The California Attorney General, Legislative Analyst Office, and Finance Department have issued the official title and summary for a proposed initiative that would overturn the state's nuclear safeguards law and permit construction of new nuclear plants. State law prohibits new reactors until the California Energy Commission certifies that there is a solution to the high level radioactive waste problem. The initiative would void that law, allow new reactors in about two-thirds of the state, including seismically active areas, and permit high level waste to be stored in numerous places in California for a hundred years. The official summary indicates there could be millions of dollars in costs to cleanup radioactive contamination at each new nuclear plant, and "potentially in the billions of dollars in the event of a major radioactive release."
Contact the Governor, Ask Him To Sign SB990
10/12/07 Result: Governor signs historic cleanup bill into law, clearing the path for meaningful cleanup at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory.
(alert text follows)
It is critical that the Governor is aware of public support for the recent SSFL bill passed by the California Legislature, SB990. Please write or call Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger NOW. Copies of any letter should be sent to Susan Kennedy, Chief of Staff to the Governor; and Dan Dunmeyer, Cabinet Secretary.
The Governor, Susan Kennedy, and Dan Dunmeyer can be reached at the same address:
Phone: 916-445-2841 Fax: 916-445-4633
Address: State Capitol Building,
Sacramento, CA 95814
A copy of a letter should also be sent to Linda Adams, Secretary of Cal-EPA. She can be reached at the following address: 1001 “I” Street,
Sacramento, CA 96812
Critical Hearing Regarding SSFL
Hearing Date : 1/19/06
Result: The Regional Water Quality Control Board refused to grant Boeing a relaxed pollution permit.
Rocketdyne has violated its pollution discharge permit from its nuclear/rocket testing site dozens of times in the last few months. The Regional Water Quality Control Board, rather than enforcing the pollution limits in the face of these persistent violations, has now proposed relaxing the rules to allow Rocketdyne to keep violating the limits for years to come. Come and speak at this public hearing to oppose this dangerous proposal. For more information, call us at (310) 478-0829 and see Bridge the Gap's comments on the two proposals to be voted on at the hearing:
CBG's Beamhenge Proposal
PROTECT REACTORS FROM TERRORIST ATTACK!
Update: 12/21/07 -- CBG comments on NRC proposed rulemaking that does not include protection for a 9/11 style attack at a reactor.
Result: Although the NRC failed to adopt CBG's Beamhenge proposal, CBG's focus on reactor volnurability to air attack sparked a national debate. Recently, the New York Attorney General filed a lawsuit against the NRC for failing to adopt Beamhenge.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has initiated an important rulemaking on reactor security, for which your comments are critical. A successful terrorist attack on a nuclear facility could release massive radioactivity, capable of producing tens of thousands of immediate deaths and hundreds of thousands of latent cancers, as well as contaminating an area the size of a big state for generations. Yet the NRC is proposing to DO NOTHING to improve the security of the nation's nuclear plants. The proposed rulemaking explicitly is designed to codify the status quo, which is woefully inadequate, with no security upgrades at all from the situation currently in place. Write them to indicate how inappropriate their proposal is, and that security at reactors needs to be dramatically improved.
NRC's Lax Dirty Bomb Cleanup Standards
A nuclear Katrina in the Making 1/11/2006
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today issued guidelines for responding to a radiological "dirty" bomb that would permit doses to the public equivalent to tens of thousands of chest X-rays without requiring intervention and cleanup. The federal government estimates radiation doses that large would produce cancer or leukemia in a quarter of those exposed. (This is on top of the number of cancers that would occur in the absence of the extra radiation exposure.)
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