Celebrities come out to protest nuclear power

Suzanne Struglinski

Monday, July 25, 2005 | 11:12 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Anti-nuclear activists brought out like-minded celebrities Monday to protest nuclear components of the energy bill and storing nuclear waste on Native American lands.

Singer Ani DiFranco along with Emily Saliers and Amy Ray, who make up the group the Indigo Girls, and actor James Cromwell spoke against Private Fuel Storage, the proposed temporary nuclear waste storage site in Utah. They also objected to Congress passing any new incentives for future nuclear power plants, which may happen in a comprehensive energy bill.

DiFranco summarized her opposition to nuclear power in one word: "cancer."

She said there is no container than can stay air tight forever to keep radiation from nuclear waste away from people just as there is no way to ship the waste across the country "without mishap."

"Anyone who is trying to tell me that nuclear waste is clean is lying to me," DiFranco said.

House and Senate negotiators may be wrapping up work on a final version of the energy bill this week. The bill renews a government insurance program in the event of a nuclear accident and provides incentives to develop new plants.

Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission may issue a decision as early as next month on licensing the Private Fuel Storage facility in Utah on the Skull Valley Goshute Indian Reservation. The site is intended to store waste until the proposed permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, would open.

Saliers said the existing nuclear waste should stay where it is and nuclear power should stop generating more. She would rather seen renewable energy like wind power used and more efforts to conserve energy.

The entertainers, along with U.S. Public Interest Research Group and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, will visit congressional offices today, including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.