"This legislation is not wise," said Markey.
"And while some of the bill's supporters argue we need new nuclear technologies to combat the climate crisis, I have an arched eyebrow as to why this bill focuses solely on nuclear energy," he said. He said technologies "such as wind and solar and geothermal" are "what our country should be promoting around the rest of the world".
Markey continued: "It's also shortsighted to me to make such a herculean effort to promote new nuclear technologies when we're yet to solve the longstanding problems resulting from our existing nuclear fleet. To this day, the Navajo Nation is dealing with the legacy of uranium contamination, including more than 500 abandoned uranium mines and homes and water sources polluted with elevated levels of radiation."
The Nuclear Information and Resource Service had extensively campaigned against the ADVANCE Act asking people, as a dispatch it sent out declared, "Please Ask Your Senators to Vote NO on the Nuclear Advance Act."
It said: "The nuclear ADVANCE Act, a 93-page bill to promote expensive, dangerous, dirty, environmentally unjust nuclear power that could accelerate nuclear exports and weapons proliferation and allow foreign ownership/control of U.S. nuclear facilities, is hitching a ride "on the short Fire Grants and Safety." It "shifts the mission of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to boosting more than regulating".
As for "new nuclear power", it said that "from mining to long-term waste management it violates environmental justice and relies on carbon at every step, is radioactively and chemically dirty, dangerous, expensive, slow, takes resources from true climate solutions and leaves intense, long-lasting radioactive waste that technically cannot be isolated for the eons it remains dangerous".
Also campaigning against the act has been Beyond Nuclear, which says: "The ADVANCE Act will significantly increase the risks of nuclear power by changing the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's mandate from safety regulation to industry promotion. It would also promote new atomic reactors, and much more highly enriched nuclear fuel, both in the U.S. as well as overseas. This will worsen the hazards, harms and environmental injustices at each and every stage of the uranium fuel chain, from mining to highly radioactive waste dumping. The ADVANCE Act's allowing of foreign ownership of nuclear facilities in the U.S., and its promotion of High Assay Low-Enriched Uranium fuel, both domestically and overseas, will also significantly increase nuclear weapons proliferation."
The Sierra Club has opposed the act. In a letter to Senator Majority Leader Charles Schumer, it has declared: "Nuclear power is not a solution to the climate crisis. Spending precious federal resources on nuclear power only takes away from the desperately needed development of a clean, affordable and more equitable energy system powered by renewable energy. Passage of the ADVANCE Act... will lock in the use of dirty, dangerous and expensive nuclear power for a generation.
"As a result of this legislation ," the letter continued, "we would expect to see the production of vast amounts of uranium mining and mill tailings waste, even hotter high level radioactive waste, for which there is no final plan for isolation, and depleted uranium that becomes more radioactive over one million years. Additionally, the expansion of nuclear power will result in more so-called 'low-level' radioactive waste going into unlined trenches and the release of radioactive liquids and gasses into the air, water and environment from every reactor around the country and around the world."
Also opposing the act has been Food and Water Watch whose executive director, Wenonah Hauter, has said: "Senator Schumer's apparent embrace of new nuclear energy development represents a stark betrayal of the clean, safe renewable energy options like wind and solar that he claims to champion. The Senate and President Biden must quickly come to their senses and reject the dangerous and unaffordable false promises of toxic nuclear energy."
Among many other groups opposing the ADVANCE Act have been: Climate Justice Alliance, Environment America, Friends of the Earth, Institute for Policy Studies, Indigenous Environmental Network, Science and Environmental Health Network, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Waterspirit, 350 New Orleans, Earth Action, Inc., Endangered Species Coalition, Long Island Progressive Coalition and Methane Action.
In regard to "follow the money," that element of congressional support of the ADVANCE Act was certainly also a factor. Politico in 2011 ran an article headlined: "Nuclear lobbyists' clout felt on Hill".
"Facing its biggest crisis in 25 years, the U.S. nuclear power industry can count on plenty of Democratic and Republican friends in both high and low places," began the piece by Darren Samuelsohn. "During the past election cycle alone, the Nuclear Energy Institute and more than a dozen companies with big nuclear portfolios have spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions to lawmakers in key leadership slots and across influential state delegations."
The Nuclear Energy Institute, "the industry's biggest voice in Washington, for example, spent $3.76 million to lobby the federal government and an additional $323,000 through its political action committee on a bipartisan congressional slate, including 134 House and 30 Senate candidates--
"Nearly all of the investor-owned power companies that operate U.S. nuclear reactors play in the donation game," said the article.
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