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A nationwide effort to keep nuclear power plants safe from terrorist attack, among other things, will be the subject of a public hearing Tuesday. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are holding a total of six hearings around the country to allow the public to ask questions about proposed changes to emergency preparedness requirements for both new and existing power plants. Both are considering new regulations.

It's not just AIG and Wall Street jeopardizing your financial future. Taxpayers and ratepayers have long been victimized by the nuclear industry, their lobbyists, and some elected officials who take their contributions. Nuclear power couldn't exist without massive taxpayer giveaways. The nuclear industry is reaping enormous profits at your expense. Nuclear power's costs to taxpayers are astronomical. Wall Street rejects the nuclear gamble, so costs for new nuclear power plants and their deadly wastes will continue to come from the wallets of ordinary Americans. Nuclear industry lobbyists and oblivious supporters are perpetrating an unconscionable scam on taxpayers.

These days, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid prefers nothing so much as a one-word description for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository long planned for his state. Dead. And President Barack Obama has made clear he is looking elsewhere for an answer the nation's nuclear waste problem. But that doesn't mean people aren't still paying for it. Sometimes not even the president, with the Senate majority leader at his back, can easily kill a project 25 years and $13.5 billion in the making. Not quickly or cheaply, anyway. In February, Congress allocated $288 million for the development of the site legally designated to hold the nation's radioactive waste. That was about $100 million less than what the Bush administration requested, but still enough for a staff of several hundred people to continue work. Last week, President Barack Obama proposed funding the Yucca Mountain repository at $196.8 million in 2010, an all-time low.

In 1989, Sacramento voters agreed to shut down their utility's nuclear power plant, rejecting warnings that their electricity bills would skyrocket. Twenty years later, the area has among the lowest electricity rates in California, even as the Sacramento Municipal Utility District considers a 13 percent increase. That's a message former state lawmaker Tom Hayden and others involved in the 1989 campaign say the federal government should note. Hayden held a news conference Friday in the capital to mark the 20th anniversary of the vote and urge the federal government to invest in conservation and renewable energy. The U.S. Energy Department is evaluating loan guarantees to four companies planning new nuclear plants. The reactors being considered are in Maryland, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas.

A coalition of six anti-nuclear groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and Livermore's Tri-Valley CAREs, on Wednesday released its in-depth blueprint for steering Obama administration policy toward a nuclear weapons-free future. The timing of the report's release was deliberate: It was intended to get to President Barack Obama's desk before a bipartisan congressional committee releases its own report in early May to guide the president's thinking as he prepares a new nuclear weapons policy. Obama's eagerly-anticipated "2009 Nuclear Posture Review" is due this year, and will lay out the nation's guiding principles for a reduction of its nuclear weapons stockpile and for maintaining the viability of existing warheads to serve as a credible nuclear deterrent. The anti-nuclear coalition, called the Nuclear Weapons Complex Consolidation Policy Network, calls for slashing the U.S. nuclear stockpile to 500 weapons from 2015 to 2020, and for scaling down the nuclear weapons complex from eight sites to three.

Opponents of the idea to use the Northern Territory for nuclear waste dumping will seek support for their campaign in Wollongong. Following the high-profile transfer of spent nuclear fuel to Port Kembla last month, the organisers of a public forum at the Illawarra Aboriginal Cultural Centre are hoping they might find sympathy for their cause in the Illawarra. The public forum will be held on April 22 at 6pm and coincides with the World Nuclear Fuel Cycle Conference, a major industry event being held in Sydney. Traditional land owners from the Muckaty land trust in the Northern Territory will speak at the forum. In 2011, the first shipment of Australia's re-processed low and intermediate level waste is due back from Scotland and France and needs to be stored somewhere, based on an agreement signed in the 1990s.

Jason Kish's November 21 letter misses the point I made about Potassium Iodide (KI) pills. I wasn't referring to the effectiveness of KI pills protecting the thyroid gland from a concentration of radioactive iodine released in a nuclear plant disaster. The myth I referred to is the false assumption made by many that KI pills are the magic protector in the event of an accident or terrorist attack at Limerick Nuclear Plant, when in reality, KI pills would only protect one gland from one radionuclide. That inaccurate assumption is made because when handing out KI pills, the public is not provided with full disclosure of all the radionuclides that would be released in a nuclear disaster, for which KI pills will not protect us. It's time to tell the whole truth .

Jason Kish's November 21 letter misses the point I made about Potassium Iodide (KI) pills. I wasn't referring to the effectiveness of KI pills protecting the thyroid gland from a concentration of radioactive iodine released in a nuclear plant disaster. The myth I referred to is the false assumption made by many that KI pills are the magic protector in the event of an accident or terrorist attack at Limerick Nuclear Plant, when in reality, KI pills would only protect one gland from one radionuclide. That inaccurate assumption is made because when handing out KI pills, the public is not provided with full disclosure of all the radionuclides that would be released in a nuclear disaster, for which KI pills will not protect us. It's time to tell the whole truth .

"State water board regulators are mulling a plan to stop power companies from vacuuming the ocean for water to cool their machinery. Environmentalists said the practice destroys too much sea life, while utility advocates said the impact is minimal. Banning the practice would cost too much, jeopardize the reliability of the electricity grid and slow the state's transition to clean energy, supporters of the practice said. Screens prevent larger animals from entering the plants, but fish can die while trapped against these barriers. Anything smaller than the openings in the screens, including millions of tiny fish larvae, can enter the power plants and also die. Federal rules ban new operations from drawing in seawater for so-called "once-through" cooling systems. State regulators now want to apply this rule to the 19 existing plants from Eureka to San Diego. The board's proposal would give owners a dozen years to comply and contains special provisions for nuclear-plant safety issues. In most cases, plants would have to replace seawater pipes with massive cooling towers that recycle water or use air-cooling platforms. "

"President Barack Obama's interest in nuclear power has kicked off a new national debate on the industry, and it's about time. The last U.S. nuclear power plant to be built came on line decades ago, and advances in technology since then make some earlier objections obsolete. But two familiar issues remain: the overall cost of nuclear generation and the safe, long-term storage of waste. Obama and Congress need to resolve these challenges before making nuclear power a major part of a national energy policy designed to reduce the risk of climate change. Even now, the United States produces more electricity from nuclear power plants than any other nation in the world. But the total output of the 104 reactors amounts to only 20 percent of the nation's electrical needs. Many European countries have been more aggressive in pursuing nuclear power, including France, which has 58 plants generating 76 percent of its power. Worldwide, there are just over 400 plants producing 15 percent of the world's energy."

"The hypocrisy is astonishing! Some in Congress used fiscal responsibility as an excuse to oppose health care reform, yet they support an outrageous attempted money grab in risky taxpayer loans (tens of billions to a trillion) to the wealthy nuclear industry, when the Congressional Budget Office estimates more than 50 percent risk of default. Taxpayers should be outraged. The nuclear industry has already externalized most of its costs, risks, and liabilities onto taxpayers, ratepayers, and future generations, both financially and radiologically. Nuclear power is a dangerous distraction from real solutions to climate change and our energy needs, yet the nuclear industry, that already got the lion's share of energy subsidies for the past 50 years, is shamelessly attempting to rob the clean energy fund from the Climate Bill and Energy Bill. In reality, new nuclear plants are not the answer to global warming or the energy crisis."

"Federal officials say they have removed a document from a U.S. government Web site after a Pennsylvania anti-nuclear group said it could help terrorists plan an airplane attack on a nuclear plant. Scott Portzline, a security consultant to Three Mile Island Alert, said he found the report "Evaluation of Air Craft Crash Hazards Analyses for Nuclear Power Plants" available for download on the Department of Energy site. He said it shows the areas a plane could hit with maximum effect and buildings or targets where a strike could release radiation. Energy Department spokeswoman Jennifer Lee said in an e-mail that the document should not have been made available. Officials called the posting part of an effort to inform the public about the scientific work of the department."

"Protestors from around the world and around the corner converged on Exelon Nuclear's Limerick Generating Station Tuesday morning to protest the world's continued pursuit of nuclear power. Part of a group called Footprints for Peace, about 21 people, some of them Buddhist monks and nuns, carried flags, donned gas masks, chanted mantras and banged drums outside the plant's main entrance at Sanatoga and Evergreen roads. Plant security were present, as were the Limerick Police, but there were no incidents and the protest ended as peacefully as it began after a little more than an hour. The protestors - who starting walking two months ago from the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. - arrived in Montgomery County via the Schuylkill River Trail and stayed overnight at St. James United Church of Christ on High Street."

"Regional water quality regulators have fined Boeing Co. $500,000 for contaminated stormwater runoff at a former nuclear and rocket engine testing facility in eastern Ventura County. The Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board issued a consent judgment Thursday also ordering Boeing to pay $75,000 in attorneys fees and civil penalties for days when contaminants exceeded permitted limits at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Boeing spokeswoman Kamara Sams Holden says the judgment covers violations from 2007 through the end of 2009. The lab 30 miles north of downtown Los Angeles was used for nuclear and rocket testing for more than four decades. A nuclear reactor had a partial meltdown at the 2,800 acre site in 1959."

"This is in reply to the article "Power walk in Limerick." It's time for a reality check on nuclear power and green energy. The quick definition of green energy is that it leaves a small if no impact on the environment. 1. Some of the byproducts of a nuclear power plant are hazardous for 250,000 years. True it doesn't have smoke stacks spewing CO2 into the atmosphere but it spews invisible radiation. If you took a plane ride from Los Angeles to New York City, you would receive as much radiation as if you were getting a chest X-ray. This is from the "allowable" amount the plants can emit which is raising the background levels of radiation in this country."

"ACE believes taxpayer funding should go to residents and small businesses for solar and wind energy installations, instead of the wealthy nuclear industry. With solar and wind there's no perpetual astronomical waste costs, no security force, no government subsidized catastrophic insurance and no need for evacuation plans. In his April 30 letter, Ross Brady used meaningless calculations to support giving our tax dollars to the wealthy nuclear industry. Brady can defend dangerous, polluting, and costly nuclear power and attack ACE, but he can't silence ACE or make us move. I lived here over 40 years before Limerick Nuclear Plant started operating. I won't stop trying to prevent harm to our community's children and their children from Limerick's operations. ACE members care deeply about others. We don't believe anyone should have to leave their community for a safer life."

he U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants the help of former workers at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory to identify contamination from nuclear and radiological projects at the site. The EPA is interested in interviewing former workers for three companies-Atomics International, Rocketdyne and Rockwell-who may know about spills, dumping or other releases of radiological material, the agency said in a news release this week. The lab was established in 1946 and covers nearly 2,900 acres in eastern Ventura County, just west of the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles.

he U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants the help of former workers at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory to identify contamination from nuclear and radiological projects at the site. The EPA is interested in interviewing former workers for three companies-Atomics International, Rocketdyne and Rockwell-who may know about spills, dumping or other releases of radiological material, the agency said in a news release this week. The lab was established in 1946 and covers nearly 2,900 acres in eastern Ventura County, just west of the San Fernando Valley section of Los Angeles.