NIRS Executive Director Defends FUSE in Letter to New York Post

Breaking update on New York Post editorial which attacked FUSE USA. Michael Mariotte, the Executive Director of NIRS has sent a letter to the New York Post, which we have posted below.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

NIRS replies to New York Post

Michael Mariotte
NIRS

The New York Post is living in a nuclear industry fantasyland if it truly believes environmentalists consider nuclear power to be "clean." In just 5 weeks, more than 400 environmental groups (and 4,000+ people) have signed a simple statement: "We do not support construction of new nuclear reactors as a means of addressing the climate crisis. Available renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies are faster, cheaper, safer and cleaner strategies for reducing greenhouse emissions than nuclear power." And more signatures arrive daily. The Post’s argument doesn’t mesh with the facts.

The Post is also off-base when it claims no one ever has died from nuclear power in the U.S. Try that line on the Navajo people, many of whom gave their lives in the dirty business of uranium mining, and see how seriously you get taken.

Nuclear power remains what it always has been: dangerous, dirty and uneconomic.

FUSE is attempting to force the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to do what it refuses to do: ensure adequate oversight of the aging, unsafe Indian Point nuclear facility. New Yorkers should be applauding FUSE.

Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
Takoma Park, MD

Note to editor: you can see the statement referred to above, as well as the signers, at www.nirs.org