“Will the blurring of reality and fantasy continue?”  This recent headline appearing in a major Chicago newspaper shouts a warning worth heading in the upcoming debate on energy legislation and Illinois’ energy future, and as President Joe Biden formulates a response to effectively deal with climate disruption.  The reality is – nuclear power is not a viable response to the climate emergency.

Nuclear cheerleaders in the media and politics continue unchallenged to glowingly but falsely refer to nuclear as “clean” power.

Nuclear reactors produce 20+ tons of extremely hazardous high-level radioactive wastes (HLRW) annually, plus thousands of cubic feet of so-called low-level radwaste.  Exelon’s Illinois reactors have produced over 11,000 tons of the nation’s 80,000+ tons of HLRW — with no place for disposal, thanks largely to federal government ineptitude and Congressional incompetence.

Government Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations also permit routine radionuclide discharges into the air and water – if below regulatory standards, some of questionable validity.  But “accidental” releases like at the Braidwood and Dresden reactors also occur; sometimes, rather large ones – like Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Cradle-to-grave analyses of the entire nuclear fuel chain (beginning with uranium mining and ending with permanent HLRW disposal) demonstrate that nuclear has an abundant greenhouse gas footprint exceeding renewables when accounting for the necessities of uranium mining and processing, fuel production, reactor manufacture, plant construction and eventual tear-down, such as has occurred at Exelon’s Zion nuclear power plant, and the permanent disposal of dangerous HLRW.

This is not the profile of a “clean, green and emissions-free” energy resource, as nuclear advocates claim.  At best, nuclear is LOW-carbon, and only at the reactor site.  End of fantasy.  To paraphrase the late S. David Freeman, former public utilities director of SMUD in California: exchanging carbon for plutonium is dumb energy policy.

But beyond environmental cleanliness, Governor Pritzker and the Legislature must also consider the “political cleanliness” of nuclear power.  ComEd’s admitted unethical lobbying practices locking in rate increases and possibly the $2.3 billion bailout of Exelon’s unprofitable reactors on the backs of Illinois ratepayers should disqualify them as a desirable business partner supplying an essential public necessity.  Corporations like Exelon/ComEd that actively thwart the ability to bring in renewable-generated power from out of state are certainly no friends of “clean” energy.

Beyond Illinois’ $2.3 billion bailout, nuclear scandals such as the FBI arrests and $61 million nuclear bribery and $1.3 billion bailout scheme in Ohio, the ratepayer subsidized $13 billion cost overruns at the Georgia Vogtle 3 & 4 reactor construction site, the 2016 $8.5 billion nuclear bailout in New York, and the $9 billion SCANA nuclear fraud scandal in South Carolina unequivocally demonstrate the ethical “uncleanliness” of the nuclear industry.  The fraud and bailouts of these scandals alone amount to $34.1 billion – nearly 65 times the $528 million Solyndra bankruptcy often mentioned by renewables critics as an excuse to not invest in renewables – amply illustrating that nuclear power is certainly not a climate option least susceptible to corruption and mismanagement.

New nuclear plants – whether conventional or “advance” designs – remain untested, economically uncompetitive, and unavailable.  To meaningfully address the climate crisis, an energy resource must: 1.) remove the most amount of carbon, 2.) in the quickest time, 3.) at the lowest cost possible, and 4.) without creating, substituting or worsening equally planetary-threatening, socially unjust or unacceptable alternatives ( nuclear proliferation, terrorism, war, waste, etc.).  Nuclear power fails all of these conditions.

Yet some persist with the fantasy that we must pursue an “all of the above, everything is on the table” approach to meeting energy needs and fighting climate disruption.  Sen. Joe Manchin (D.WV), incoming chair of the Senate Energy Committee recently expressed this absurd belief in an “all-in” energy approach as an indication of how he intends to operate and gate-keep energy legislation in the Committee (and bailout out his home state’s coal industry).

This is an irrational and completely uneconomic option, best laid low by former NRC Commissioner Peter Bradford, who was also the public utilities chair for the states of Maine and New York.  Bradford points out:

“Those who assert that the problem of climate change is so urgent that ― we have to do everything (or, another popular substitute for serious thought,  ‘seek silver birdshot, not silver bullets’), overlook the fact that we can never afford to do everything.

“The urgency of world hunger doesn’t compel us to fight it with caviar, no matter how nourishing fish eggs might be.  Spending large sums on elegant solutions (especially those with side effects) that provide little relief will diminish what we can spend on more promising approaches.”

A study coming from University of Sussex last October (2020) discovered that economies that attempted to grow both a nuclear and renewable energy sector simultaneously wound up reducing carbon emissions less than if they would have done renewables alone:

Andy Stirling, Professor of Science and Technology Policy at the University of Sussex Business School, said: “This paper exposes the irrationality of arguing for nuclear investment based on a ‘do everything’ argument. Our findings show not only that nuclear investments around the world tend on balance to be less effective than renewable investments at carbon emissions mitigation, but that tensions between these two strategies can further erode the effectiveness of averting climate disruption.”

The fact is – nuclear crowds out more effective renewable energy resources. End of fantasy.

With legislation, words mean something, and fantasy has no place in it.  It’s long past time to end the fantasy that nuclear power is “clean” energy.  If Illinois is serious about supporting clean energy, then aggressively support renewables, not nuclear.  Unlike nuclear, they are both carbon and radiation free.

You can’t create an energy future by bailing out the past.  ■

NEIS events for Earth Week 2019 — April 22-27.
Workshop with noted activist/organizer/author George Lakey to promote his new book, “HOW WE WIN: A Guide to Non-Violent Direct Action Campaigning. 

Nuclear power plants appear to be sites of COVID-19 super-spreader events, but government regulators are ignoring the problem. So says a coalition of safe-energy advocates who have been tracking the situation. The groups obtained copies of social media reports by workers at one plant, describing unsafe working conditions, over 200 COVID infection cases, multiple hospitalizations, at least one death, fears for their safety, and a lack of concern by corporate management.

As the nation begins to experience the expected second surge in the COVID-19 pandemic, the coalition is calling for federal action to address coronavirus risks on nuclear sites, and the pandemic’s impacts on the safety and security of the nation’s 94 operating nuclear reactors.  They have addressed these concerns in a list of recommendations which they provided members of Congress and state officials, urging immediate action.

“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has utterly failed to do its job during this pandemic,” asserts Tim Judson, director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) in Takoma Park, MD. “The Agency has refused to undertake any measures to protect workers from the coronavirus, and has not even required the industry to report COVID infection rates. All we know is what concerned workers are reporting, and it is alarming. Congress must act now to prevent more COVID-19 outbreaks in nuclear power plants.”

The urgency for action on these recommendations was highlighted as reports of COVID-positive nuclear plant workers from reactor sites around the country came in.  At one reactor site earlier this year – Fermi unit-2 outside of Detroit, operated by Detroit Edison – over 240 workers reportedly tested positive.  Private Facebook posts from workers at the site spoke of “worse conditions I’ve ever experienced,” and questioned “just how hell can you maintain social distancing, constantly cleaning hands, and keep mask on all the time during an outage at a nuke plant.”

Several other nuclear sites have had similar reports of high COVID infection rates: over 800 workers at the Vogtle reactor construction site in Georgia; 89 workers at the Grand Gulf Nuclear Station in Mississippi; and dozens of quarantined workers at the Limerick Nuclear Generating Station in Pennsylvania. In stark and unexplained contrast, the Salem Nuclear Power Plant, operated by PSEG Nuclear in New Jersey, reportedly conducted outage work in the spring with no positives for COVID. The true extent of coronavirus spread within the industry is unknown because NRC has not required any reporting or protective measures.

Nuclear reactors require non-stop monitoring and maintenance.  In addition they need to replenish part of the nuclear fuel needed for the heat-producing chain-reaction every 18 months to two years.  When these operations occur, it is not uncommon for 800-1,200 temporary workers and contractors from all over the country to descend on a reactor site for weeks at a time to conduct the maintenance and refueling.

“The refueling and maintenance operations needed to keep nuclear reactors up to safety standards also mean that hundreds of out-of-state workers will be coming to states trying desperately to contain the COVID pandemic through quarantines, partial lock-downs, and other means of keeping people from close contact with each other.  These conditions are near impossible to achieve during such work outages,” Paul Gunter, reactor oversight project manager at Beyond Nuclear in Takoma Park, MD, points out.

While recognized as a serious concern by the NRC, the agency tasked with insuring the safety and health of the public and the environment from radiation hazards, the agency has taken a direction of allowing nuclear plant operators to skip some maintenance and training activities to reduce the possibility of increased COVID infection at the reactors.

“Using nuclear power puts us on the horns of a serious health and safety dilemma,” observes David Kraft, director of the Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS). “If the current COVID outbreak worsens, or becomes ‘cyclic to permanent’ as some experts warn, nuclear utilities and regulators will be forced to regularly choose between spreading the pandemic by bringing workers from out of state into areas of quarantine to keep the reactors operating, or eroding safety by skipping maintenance and training exercises to observe regional quarantines.  Neither is a desirable choice,” Kraft warns.

“Because the NRC has a long and well-documented history of ignoring public input, we are turning to Congress for quick and more assertive action,” NIRS’ Judson points out. “If during the pandemic these reactors cannot be operated safely and according to existing regulations without constantly moving regulatory goalposts, then to protect the public they must be shut down unless and until they can be,” Judson asserts.

The safe-energy groups agree that three immediate action steps must be taken:

  1. Orders from governors and state agencies with pre-emptive authority on the issues of public health should be respected and deferred to in responding to orders for quarantine, isolation and lockdown during the COVID pandemic. Federal regulatory agencies and nuclear utilities must coordinate their actions directly and transparently with state governments attempting to halt the spread of COVID in their respective states.
  2. Calls for oversight:

The appropriate House and Senate committees dealing with nuclear issues must convene hearings on “best practices” in dealing with nuclear facility operation during a COVID, or any kind of pandemic.

  1. Get all Agencies to fully perform their mandates:

The appropriate House and Senate committees dealing with nuclear issues must convene hearings to examine in detail the response of NRC and OSHA to the effects of the pandemic on operation of nuclear facilities, and the effects on local communities; and the Administration must require these agencies to fully discharge their official duties as current regulations stipulate.

 

Examples of COVID-19 Concerns at U.S. Nuclear Reactors:

 Workplace safety concerns:

Just as with the meat packing industry, reports of large numbers of workers being infected with COVID have emerged:

  • Over 240 plant workers were reported to have tested positive at the Fermi 2 reactor outside of Detroit during its recent refueling outage, at least 12% of the workforce at the site. Private Facebook posts from workers spoke of “worse conditions I’ve ever experienced.”
  • Over 800 workers at the Vogtle reactor construction site in Georgia have tested positive, amounting to more than 10% of the 7,000-person workforce.
  • At least 89 workers reportedly tested positive at the Grand Gulf Nuclear Station in Mississippi, by the end of April.
  • It has been reported that first two case of COVID in Piketon Ohio, location of the Portsmouth Piketon Gaseous Diffusion Plant came from two workers at the Portsmouth plant. One of these workers was known for giving the COVID-19 to a family of seven. Piketon now has 10 deaths, and 761 reported cases.
  • NRC has modified reactor staff work regulations to allow utilities to quarantine essential plant personnel onsite if necessary, and permit them to work up to 84 hours per week over a 14 day period – a recommendation advised as potentially dangerous by the guidelines of the National Safety Council, OSHA, and the CDC.

Community Safety concerns:

The small and typically rural communities surrounding nuclear plants have unique safety concerns:

  • Because of their small size, local medical and hospital facilities are limited in their ability to deal with any major outbreaks.
  • Hundreds of workers from out of state will be passing through, dining, shopping and lodging in these communities which will have limited screening, testing and contact-tracing abilities available to them – if these workers are even identified at all engaging in these activities.
  • Even if transient workers are isolated at reactor sites, they will be passing through communities and interacting with the local population and economy.
  • Pennsylvania State Senator Katie Muth said, “Thus far, Exelon has provided an inadequate pandemic response plan, withheld information from county and state officials, and failed to prioritize the safety of its employees, contract workers, community first responders, as well as all residents of the 44th senatorial district and entire region,” Senator Muth wrote. “This is grossly irresponsible as Exelon has brought at least 1,400 workers to the epicenter of Pennsylvania’s Covid-19 pandemic.” (Source: April 1, 2020 letter to Exelon management)

Concerns with the current Regulatory Response:

The various federal agencies that would be most likely involved in dealing with COVID outbreaks relating to nuclear plants have responded in inconsistent and incomplete ways.  Worse, they often seem content to foist seemingly safety-related responsibilities to other agencies, abdicating their own roles in reactor facility safety.

  • To date there has been no assessment as to whether, in the midst of the pandemic, reactor emergency plans would suffice to limit the spread of radiation after a severe accident.
  • No statistics are being kept by NRC regarding numbers of positive COVID-19 test results at reactors; the nuclear industry maintains a national database of nuclear maintenance workers, but has not made it available to track the movements of workers from plant to plant and health data such as date of last test and results.
  • “NRC spokesperson Scott Burnell said that, the NRC’s statutory authority only extends to protecting public health and safety ‘from radiological consequences, and that sets a boundary on our authority‘ and that ’OSHA’s [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] guidelines cover worker safety in regard to Covid-19.’” (Nuclear Intelligence Weekly, April 9, 2020). To date, OSHA has not indicated that it is tracking coronavirus impacts on the nuclear industry, and has provided no numbers as to the number of COVID positives at nuclear reactor sites.
  • “As NRC and industry increase work hour limits for nuclear workers and defer reactor safety inspections, maintenance and repairs as social distancing precautions, emergency preparedness must be strengthened with compensatory measures for the increased risk to public safety,” said Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear. “Civilian populations in radiological evacuation planning zones (EPZ) are already sheltering-in-place from the viral threat,” he said. “Disaster medicine professionals, principally the American Thyroid Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, strongly recommend that reactor operators, federal and state civil defense authorities be required to provide everyone, particularly infants, young children and pregnant women,  within the ten-mile reactor emergency planning zone radius with the immediate predistribution by direct delivery of potassium iodide (KI) tablets for the prophylactic protection from the radioactive iodine that would be released in a simultaneous severe nuclear accident,” he said.
  • As of April 2020, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which in the US is the sole authority for determining the adequacy of offsite emergency plans and preparedness, has so far not conducted any emergency planning reviews for nuclear power plants to assess whether they would suffice in the event of a severe accident. Such reviews are required during a “pandemic outbreak” or when “other events occur or are anticipated that may impact the ability to effectively implement offsite EP plans and procedures,” according to a longstanding memorandum of understanding (MOU) between NRC and FEMA, governing offsite emergency preparedness.

 

“Best Practice” Recommendations for COVID Response at Nuclear Facilities

Transparency and Reporting

  • NRC must require that each reactor site and nuclear facility submit regular reports on COVID testing and infection rates.
  • NRC must require licensees to submit the COVID-19 protocols and procedures, share them with state and local health agencies, and publish them online.
  • NRC must post summary data for each reactor site on infection, quarantine, hospitalization, mortality, and positive test rates, in real time.
  • Local and state governments and health departments must also be notified.
  • Licensees must establish robust contact tracing for all employees and contractors. NRC must establish a central database to track employees and contractors who work at multiple reactor sites, and make the data available to contact tracers and state and local health agencies

Maintenance Response:

  • In order to avoid incremental erosion of the nuclear industry’s oft-touted boast of “defense in depth,” and also to avoid the possibility of serious nuclear accident through neglect as has historically been demonstrated, inspections, maintenance and repair at reactors should not be skipped, deferred, or given exemptions.  To paraphrase former NRC Region III inspector Ross Landsman, “This is the kind of thinking that crashes space shuttles.”
  • If the maintenance and repair cannot be safely conducted, the reactors need to shut down until such time as these activities can be conducted.

Recommendations for Onsite COVID Response:

  • Workers’ health and safety must come first in the work environment. All CDC guidelines must be observed to the maximum extent possible, including but not limited to keeping social distancing; wearing masks; necessary disinfecting of probable contaminated surfaces, public areas like restrooms, changing rooms, food rooms, vending machine areas, locker areas, stairs and elevators, radiation detectors, security checkpoints, and especially the control room.
  • Daily temperature checks for incoming workers – regular employees and sub-contractors — should be conducted, and records kept for all employees and contractors entering or remaining at the plant site.
  • Isolated testing facilities must be maintained onsite, and workers regularly tested.
  • Should a worker or contractor arrive at a reactor site and test positive, they should be:
    • Immediately quarantined, and refused further entry into the facility.
    • Be reported to local public health authorities, or county EMA and state Department of Health should none exist locally.
  • Quarantine areas should be established for essential workers identified as COVID positive (e.g., reactor operators), who will need to remain onsite for the safe operation of the reactor and spent fuel areas. Should a need for some kind of quarantine be determined, it seems that the universal standard for this is a minimum of 14 days.
  • Temporary, quarantined screening area should be established in the outer area of the reactor site, to conduct the screening activities described below, before an incoming contractor can gain access to either the temporary lodgings, or the reactor areas in which s/he will be working.
  • Onsite temporary lodging trailers and facilities should be established for dedicated and exclusive use by all incoming contractors for the time they will be performing their maintenance and refueling duties and obligations.
  • Contractors should remain onsite at the above described temporary lodging facilities for the entire duration of their work at the reactor site; they should not be permitted to leave the site for the duration of their contracted work, only at final exiting.
  • To be granted entry to a reactor site, all individual contractors arriving at a reactor site must provide the following documentation:
    • Whereabouts for the past 14 days
    • Last reactor site worked at, and jobs/activities conducted, signed by an authorized personnel from that previous site, with contact information for that site personnel signing the document.
    • Written documentation of any previous COVID test results obtained within the past 14 days prior to arrival at the new reactor site.
    • A list of all states and towns passed though and stayed in, and a list of any temporary accommodations used (hotels, motels, camp grounds) or other stops made (restaurants, highway rest stops, any shopping, etc.) for the previous 14 days.

Recommendations for Offsite Response:

  • Reactor utilities should be required to notify all communities within the 10-mile EPZ of their intention to conduct any maintenance activities requiring the use of off-site contractors and personnel, no less than 21 days in advance of the work.
  • Prior to the arrival of any contractors, reactor utilities should institute cooperative measures and response plans between local town, county and state health departments and facilities, for dealing with anticipated COVID-positive individuals.

Recommendations for NRC and other Agency Responses:

  • Provide for immediate reevaluation and reversal by the Task Force of NRC exemptions to lift work-hour limits for reactor power operations  from 72 to 86 hours per week during the pandemic, due to the increased levels of fatigue on (a) workers’ vulnerability to COVID-19 and (b) radiological health and safety.
  • The Nuclear Regulatory Commission should coordinate with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide for immediate preparation of required Disaster Initiated Reviews (DIR) of the impact of the pandemic on emergency response  plans at all reactor sites and fuel cycle facilities.
  • NRC should establish a secure and confidential national contractor personnel data base, accessible by the appropriately identified reactor site screening personnel, that can collect and collate the health information gathered by the reactor site screening personnel (see above “Onsite” Recommendations). This will help reduce spread of COVID from workers going from site to site to do their work.
  • NRC should be ordered by Congress to maintain a data base that identifies all positive COVID test results at all U.S. reactors. Those numbers should be publicly available.
  • NRC should adopt a temporary procedure and emergency rule that considers the COVID pandemic, and any such future health epidemics/pandemics, as “fitness for duty” (FFD) related, and therefore affecting the safe operation of the reactor site; and be obligated to implement all pertinent FFD procedures in relation to the pandemic.
  • The Federal and State disaster authorities (FEMA; state disaster response agencies, etc.) should be ramping up best practices for offsite radiological emergency preparedness around every U.S. nuclear power station as a reasonable response to a pandemic.
  • Given the unpredictability of COVID outbreaks, and current guidelines for response to radiological emergencies that run counter to CDC social distancing guidelines (e.g., rendezvousing at identified evac reception centers and evacuation sheltering facilities, obtaining KI pills at central sites, etc.), potassium iodide (KI) pills should be pre-distributed by direct delivery to every household and business within the 10-mile EPZ, in the event that “shelter in place” orders are in place to deal with COVID spread.

The recent Illinois lobbying corruption scandal involving Exelon Corporation, its subsidiary Commonwealth Edison and Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan demonstrate the extent to which nuclear “power” is about more than electrons. While the FBI arrests of the Ohio House Speaker and 5 others in a $60 million bribery/corruption scheme, the $10 billion Exelon nuclear bailout in New York, the questionable circumstances surrounding Exelon’s 2016 PepCo merger, and the South Carolina $9 billion SCANA fraud case suggest that this may be a national pandemic (summarized nicely in this New York Times piece , “When Utility Money Talks,” 8/2/20), the situation in Illinois with Exelon and its subsidiary ComEd has been long standing and particularly egregious.

For decades Exelon’s stranglehold on Illinois energy legislation in cooperation with the currently investigated Speaker Michael Madigan has not only given Illinois more reactors (14) and high-level radioactive waste (>11,000 tons) than any other state. It has severely stifled expansion of renewable energy and energy efficiency, and hampered the Illinois’ energy transformation needed to deal with the worsening climate crisis.

For decades the Illinois environmental community has seen renewables expansion thwarted by the recognition that no significant renewable energy buildout could occur without concessions to either Exelon or ComEd, and Speaker Madigan’s approval. The most recent instance was the 2016 $2.35 billion bailout of three uncompetitive Exelon reactors.

This “nuclear blackmail” politics has forced enviros wanting to pass new legislation to expand renewables into a reluctant and grudging alliance with Exelon – at Exelon’s price of capacity market “reform” that would reward both renewables and ten of Exelon’s operating reactors. If passed in its presently proposed form, this provides yet another nuclear bailout under the disguise of “market-based reform.”

To ratchet up the pressure to enact this nuclear prop-up even more, Exelon CEO Chris Crane in Exelon’s 2Q quarterly earnings call with analysts once again dangles the prospect of closing up to 6 reactors if this market-based-bailout is not granted in 2021.

Under the current ongoing FBI corruption investigation, this reluctant alliance of necessity has turned disastrous, given the political toxicity of any current association with either ComEd or Exelon.

It is just and reasonable that ComEd (and the so-called “bad apples” who “retired” already) should be penalized and prosecuted for their misdeeds, even if they are reportedly “cooperative.” However, a $200 million “settlement” penalty for a $34 billion corporation that for decades has gouged billions from Illinois ratepayers through admittedly corrupt illegal practices is a slap on the wrist.

Further, the $200 million penalty agreement provides no restitution for the decades-long societal damage done via nuclear pay-for-play. Illinois rate payers deserve restitution from these and any predatory, corrupt companies that would engage in such activities. This may require explicit legislation. How can one logically or ethically assert that ill-gotten gains (e.g., the 2016 $2.35 billion nuclear bailout) are still “good for the public” when bribery and corruption were used to get them?

Last Fall, a spokesperson for Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker stated, “The governor’s priority is to work with principled stakeholders on clean energy legislation that is above reproach.” Gov. Pritzker – your moment of truth has arrived.

We urge the Governor and the legislature to begin the restitution process by repealing the $2.3 billion 2016 nuclear bailout. Further, and as others like Crain’s Joe Cahill have suggested, Christopher Crane must step down completely from all functions at Exelon.

The legislature should also enact explicit utility ethics legislation with transparent oversight of utility contracting and philanthropic giving activities to insure that this kind of corrupt behavior is not repeated. And if Chris Crane’s threat of imminent reactor closure is true, then community just-transitions legislation to protect those negatively impacted communities should be a priority of the legislature. As NEIS has maintained and advocated since 2014 – it’s the reactor communities (and equally adversely affected coal mining and power plant communities) that need state support and bailouts when plants are threatened with closure, not profitable private corporations like Exelon.

Finally, we support the FBI’s continued investigation into the activities of Speaker Madigan, associates, and other legislators if necessary to ferret out the remaining political corruption that has abetted this corporate larceny. This is the only way to send a significant and lasting message that nuclear pay-for-play in Illinois is over.

[NOTE: If you are interested in using the above cartoon, please contact NEIS for conditions of use. Thanks in advance.]
[NOTE: Due to COVID, event could not be held at the University of Chicago Campus ‘Nuclear Energy’ Statue so it was held online via Zoom conference.]

Good Evening, Thank you all for your concern and time regarding this issue and thank you to Charles Strain for organizing this event as well as to Roberta Siegel, Jack Lawler and Brad Little for all the work on past events.

I am Gail Snyder and serve as President of the Board of Nuclear Energy Information Service a 39 year old non-profit organization based in Chicago. We are focused primarily on bringing an end to the use of nuclear energy locally here in Illinois as well as the nation and the world.

By now most of you have seen the footage of the explosion in Beirut Lebanon linked to the storage of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate on the edge of a harbor in a city of over one million people. Estimates are that over 130 have died and over 5,000 were wounded. 300,000 people are homeless as a result and the damages are estimated to be upwards of $15 billion dollars.

The pictures and videos of the devastation and impact to people as they went about their daily lives there are heart breaking.

Now I want you to think about what if they had been warned. What if someone told them there is something dangerous stored in your community that can do so much damage that if you live through it your community may not recover? Would people demand the danger be removed? Would they protest? Would they accept the risk and keep living there?

Four Hiroshima Day alums — Bradford Lyttle and friend, Roberta and Howard Siegel — show up anyway at the Henry Moore Sculpture, Univ. of Chicago, Aug. 6, 2020.

Our organization and others are sending out a warning that we have something dangerous in our communities and it is nuclear energy and the nuclear waste it produces. If it was a nuclear power plant that melted down in Beirut the damage would have been widespread and long lasting. There would be no rebuilding and returning to live there because the area would be a permanent exclusion zone like those created when the nuclear energy power plants melted down in Chernobyl in the Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan. Everything would be abandoned. There would be no returning to get your household items or your car, no community to return to. Radiation levels could be so high that rescue efforts might not be attempted. If you can imagine if the white part of that explosion you see on the video in Beirut was radioactive thousands of people would be exposed to radiation depending on which way the wind was blowing. The difference being that in a nuclear meltdown no huge explosion and shockwave would occur and no visible warning that radiation was coming toward you or was all around you be obvious to you. It is invisible and deadly.

The explosion in Beirut was small by comparison to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and miniscule by comparison to the modern nuclear weapons countries have today which if dropped on Beirut could easily kill 150,000 to 400,000 people instantly.  By comparison almost 160,000 people have died in the U.S. from Covid-19 but that took several months.

The connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons is clear. Nuclear reactors at nuclear energy facilities create the fuel for nuclear weapons. Recently countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have advanced their nuclear energy programs. We would argue those countries don’t need nuclear power for energy. The expansion of nuclear power brings with it the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. If we want to say “never again” in regards to Hiroshima and Nagasaki we must address the dangers of existing and expanding nuclear energy.

Greetings Safe Energy Advocate –

It’s now officially winter.  Both meteorologically and astronomically.  The major holidays are winding down, and we soon will face a new year.  That makes it time for NEIS to fill you in on what we’ve been up to, and what’s on the safe-energy agenda in 2020.

Exelon Bailouts – New Name, Same Results:

To paraphrase Shakespeare, a Carrion flower by any other name would smell as – foul.  The same can be said for Exelon’s 2019 attempt to subsidize its unprofitable nuclear reactors.  NEIS fought Exelon’s 2016 reactor bailout, and its new back-door version of bailouts in 2019.

Having already won its $2.3 billion overt bailout in 2016 for three reactors (Quad Cities 1&2, Clinton-1), Exelon shifted to a more subtle approach of co-opting the climate emergency for its own ends by marketing its reactors as “emissions free” (a blatant falsehood; lower-carbon, yes; emissions free, NO!), and therefore entitled to more money for its alleged environmental benefit of not Read more

[NOTE: Due to COVID, event could not be held at the University of Chicago Campus ‘Nuclear Energy’ Statue so it was held online via Zoom conference.]

Good Evening, Thank you all for your concern and time regarding this issue and thank you to Charles Strain for organizing this event as well as to Roberta Siegel, Jack Lawler and Brad Little for all the work on past events.

I am Gail Snyder and serve as President of the Board of Nuclear Energy Information Service a 39 year old non-profit organization based in Chicago. We are focused primarily on bringing an end to the use of nuclear energy locally here in Illinois as well as the nation and the world.

By now most of you have seen the footage of the explosion in Beirut Lebanon linked to the storage of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate on the edge of a harbor in a city of over one million people. Estimates are that over 130 have died and over 5,000 were wounded. 300,000 people are homeless as a result and the damages are estimated to be upwards of $15 billion dollars.

The pictures and videos of the devastation and impact to people as they went about their daily lives there are heart breaking.

Now I want you to think about what if they had been warned. What if someone told them there is something dangerous stored in your community that can do so much damage that if you live through it your community may not recover? Would people demand the danger be removed? Would they protest? Would they accept the risk and keep living there?

Four Hiroshima Day alums — Bradford Lyttle and friend, Roberta and Howard Siegel — show up anyway at the Henry Moore Sculpture, Univ. of Chicago, Aug. 6, 2020.

Our organization and others are sending out a warning that we have something dangerous in our communities and it is nuclear energy and the nuclear waste it produces. If it was a nuclear power plant that melted down in Beirut the damage would have been widespread and long lasting. There would be no rebuilding and returning to live there because the area would be a permanent exclusion zone like those created when the nuclear energy power plants melted down in Chernobyl in the Ukraine and Fukushima in Japan. Everything would be abandoned. There would be no returning to get your household items or your car, no community to return to. Radiation levels could be so high that rescue efforts might not be attempted. If you can imagine if the white part of that explosion you see on the video in Beirut was radioactive thousands of people would be exposed to radiation depending on which way the wind was blowing. The difference being that in a nuclear meltdown no huge explosion and shockwave would occur and no visible warning that radiation was coming toward you or was all around you be obvious to you. It is invisible and deadly.

The explosion in Beirut was small by comparison to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and miniscule by comparison to the modern nuclear weapons countries have today which if dropped on Beirut could easily kill 150,000 to 400,000 people instantly.  By comparison almost 160,000 people have died in the U.S. from Covid-19 but that took several months.

The connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons is clear. Nuclear reactors at nuclear energy facilities create the fuel for nuclear weapons. Recently countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have advanced their nuclear energy programs. We would argue those countries don’t need nuclear power for energy. The expansion of nuclear power brings with it the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. If we want to say “never again” in regards to Hiroshima and Nagasaki we must address the dangers of existing and expanding nuclear energy.

NEIS sent the following today to Illinois state and federal legislators, as well as to its entire media list.  We share it with you now:

We hope that this latest installment of our energy transformation series finds you well, and as you wind down towards the end of the Spring legislative session, that your work is successful.

Former NRC Chair Greg Jaczko

We share with you a critically important op-ed that appeared today in the Washington Post, written by the former Chairperson of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) – Dr. Gregory Jaczko.  (before proceeding here, please read his article, “I oversaw the U.S. nuclear power industry. Now I think it should be banned.”).

Currently, there are a number of major pieces of energy legislation before the Legislature:  CEJA, the Exelon Bill, the ComEd/Ameren Bill, Path to 100, maybe more.  Realistically, no single bill from this group will or should pass before the end of this Spring legislative session; and in all probability, a large, omnibus energy bill in the Fall Veto Session is the most likely outcome. Read more

NEIS sponsors a week of activities against premature, hazardous radioactive waste transport through Illinois

NEIS hosted a week of events and activities in response to recent House Congressional legislation that would prematurely place hazardous high-level radioactive waste (HLRW) on our roads, build expensive and unnecessary HLRW storage facilities in Texas and New Mexico, and would reopen development of the flawed site at Yucca Mt., Nevada as the nation’s HLRW disposal repository.

Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear

Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear of Takoma Park, Maryland was the featured guest speaker at a number of events sponsored by NEIS in Chicago the week of November 12th.

Both Beyond Nuclear and NEIS are part of a national coalition of grassroots, environmental, anti-nuclear and environmental justice groups opposing the HLRW plans advocated in H.R. 3053, sponsored by Rep. John Shimkus (R., IL-15).  The bill – Amendments to the High-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act – passed the House in early 2018.  However, the Senate has not acted on the bill.  If the Senate does not take it up before Dec. 31st, 2018, the bill is dead and would have to be reintroduced into a now Democratic-controlled House in 2019.

The week got off to a poor start when both Sens. Richard Durbin and Tammy Duckworth declined to meet with Kamps and NEIS in Chicago before returning to the Senate for the year-end session. Read more