Hey all, See forward below. Can we do a quick consensus on allowing Erika to fax the sample letter below to the Natural Resources Committee on behalf of the SFGP? [Aaron Israel wrote] Tomorrow letters are due to oppose a bill to lift the ban on new nuclear plants in California. If you are an organization, or if you would like to send your own letter, the Natural Resources Committee fax is: 916-319-2192 The Committee prefers faxes, but if this is not possible letters can be emailed to aurora.wallin@asm.ca.gov <mailto:aurora.wallin@asm.ca.gov> Letters must be received by 4:00 pm, Wed. April 11th to be included in Committee packets for hearing next Monday, April 16th. Questions? Contact Rochelle Becker of the Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility and Sierra Club's national chair for radiation and toxics, at "rochelle489@charter.net <mailto:rochelle489@charter.net>" sample letter: Dear Chairwoman Hancock I(WE) am writing in opposition to AB 719, Assemblyman Devore's bill to lift California's ban on the siting of new nuclear plants in California. In 1976 our state had the foresight to question the federal government's ability to create a permanent and safe solution for long term storage of high-level radioactive waste. To undermine this protective legislation could have serious health and economic impacts to California residents—on whose fragile and seismically active coasts radioactive waste continues to accumulate. AB 719 states that: (f) Current California law prohibits the permitting of any new commercial nuclear powerplants until an approved means of disposal of high-level nuclear waste becomes available. With federal efforts well underway to provide an approved means of high-level nuclear waste disposal, and given that timelines for nuclear powerplant design, permitting, construction, on line operation, and first refueling would likely be in excess of 10 years, by the time a powerplant would be ready for operation, an approved high-level nuclear waste disposal means will be available. The current ban, PRC 25524.2, which AB 719 seeks to overturn, states that there can be no new nuclear power plants sited in California until: (a) The commission (California Energy Commission) finds that there has been developed and that the United States through its authorized agency has approved and there exists a demonstrated technology or means for the disposal of high-level nuclear waste. As of this date, _none_ of those conditions have been met. The Federal government has been trying—for a quarter of a century—since the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, to wrestle with the unwieldy problem of radioactive waste. When the author of AB 719 writes, " With federal efforts well underway to provide an approved means of high-level nuclear waste disposal…" one wonders where the facts are to back up this assumption. The only solution on the table, the Yucca Mountain national repository, has been mired in scientific, administrative and political problems for decades. The Department of Energy has yet to even set a date on which it will submit its application for approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the NRC may be a long way from granting that application, as evidenced by these statements from the Las Vegas Review-Journal of January 23 ^rd , 2007: Ed McGaffigan, a veteran member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Monday that the Yucca Mountain program is deeply flawed and that the Nevada nuclear waste site should be scrapped. "It may be time to stop digging, and it may be time to rethink," McGaffigan said in a critique of the Energy Department program as he prepares to retire from the five-member commission that regulates nuclear safety…. "I think Yucca Mountain has been beset by bad law, bad regulatory policy, bad science policy, bad personnel policy, bad budget policy throughout its history," McGaffigan said. "Every time somebody has done something to try to speed things up, it has backfired…. "Each year that passes, we are not going to get any closer to Yucca under the current circumstances," McGaffigan said. It is therefore, at this time, wholly inappropriate to consider lifting the moratorium on new nuclear power plants in California, as conditioned by PRC 25524.2. I (WE) urge that this bill, AB 719, be opposed and rejected. Sincerely,