Update: Bipartisan Coalition Defeats Manhattan Project Park

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today led a bipartisan coalition of 180 Members of Congress to stand for veterans, for fiscal responsibility and friendship with the Japanese people, voting against H.R. 5987, which would have established a new national park celebrating the technological achievements of the Manhattan Project. Read more…

Congressman Dennis Kucinich
“It it is very difficult for me to sit here today and to listen objectively as the NRC and nuclear industry lobbyists tell us how much has been spent, and how much security has improved… . The facts and the independent experts tell us differently.”

This briefing for our representatives, sponsored by Representative Dennis Kucinich’s congressional office, had several aims.

1. Focus attention on the medical effects of radiation exposure.
2. Call for the phase out of nuclear power beginning with the rapid closure of Mark I and Mark 2 boiling water reactors in the US, in concert with plans to meet our energy needs through conservation, efficiency and renewable energy sources.
3. Call for the decommissioning of any reactors with serious safety concerns or located in a seismic/tsunami prone area.
4. Heighten the focus on the continuing catastrophe in Fukushima, Japan and especially in regards to spent fuel pool in the number 4 Reactor and this in relation to our unresolved issue of nuclear waste disposal here in the United States

Moderator: Brent Blackwelder, emeritus president of Friends of the Earth

Speakers

• Mitsuhei Murata, Japan’s former Ambassador to Switzerland
• Arjun Makhijani, author of Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy and world renowned nuclear expert
• Dr. Catherine Thomasson, Executive Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility
• Mariko Bender will make a passionate appeal on behalf of Children of Fukushima  and the World Network for Saving Children From Radiation.
• Arnie Gundersen will update us and answer questions about the Fukushima catastrophe and reactor in relation to our own nuclear plans.
• Paul Gunter of Beyond Nuclear will address the dangers of the GE Mark 1 and Mark 2 reactor designs.
• Michael Mariotte of NIRS will provide testimony on the state of our decrepit Nuclear fleet in the United States.
• Alice Slater of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation will address the relationship between Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Energy.
• S. David Freeman, senior advisor with Friends of the Earth’s nuclear campaign

Click here to read the complete list of speaker bios.