Friends of the Earth is a leader in the fight to prevent new nuclear reactors from being constructed in North and South Carolina. If built, these could be the first new U.S. reactors in decades. The industry is proposing four new reactors for South Carolina alone. The tremendous construction costs will be passed onto electricity consumers, leading to massive increases in utility bills. Cleaner, less expensive alternatives are available. The Carolinas just can’t afford more nuclear power.
Experienced nuclear campaigner Tom Clements serves as Friends of the Earth’s Southeast Nuclear Coordinator and is directing our fight against new reactors in the Carolinas. Under his leadership, we have engaged at multiple levels, including:
- Organizing grassroots opposition to the reactors -- We rallied public interest groups in Maryland, South Carolina, Georgia and Texas to stop the Department of Defense from issuing loan guarantees that would subsidize new reactor projects with up to $18.5 billion in taxpayer money. Read the letters we sent to the Department of Defense here and here.
- Filing formal interventions with South Carolina Public Service Commission to stop Duke Energy’s attempt to make South Carolina power customers pay for “pre-construction” costs for new reactors and to prevent South Carolina Electric & Gas from increasing electricity rates to build new reactors. (Duke Energy’s definition of pre-construction costs is so broad that it encompasses much of the actual construction cost of each reactor, expected to be $8 billion or more.)
- Working with state legislatures to prevent nuclear power from being misleadingly defined as “renewable” energy
- Generating substantial media coverage of the costs of these proposed new reactors
- Building alliances with other groups -- including NC WARN and the Sierra Club's South Carolina chapter -- that are also fighting new nuclear plants
- Releasing a report and calling attention to the fact that South Carolina is in danger of becoming a global nuclear waste dump thanks to President Bush’s proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.
Our campaign continues. If the nuclear industry is successful in its attempt to put new reactors in the Carolinas, this may just be the start of a dangerous, costly nuclear renaissance that sweeps the country. If we can stop these reactors here, the industry may have a hard time raising money to built plants elsewhere, clearing the path for better alternatives.
