Nuclear Energy Information Service
Illinois' Nuclear Power Watchdog for 25 Years

NRC Uses War a Pretext to Withhold Information

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE	For Information:
Friday, October 12, 2001, 5 p.m	David A. Kraft, (847)869-7650

TRUTH BECOMES CASUALTY OF WAR:
TERRORISTS VICTORIOUS AGAIN,
AS NRC CLOSES WEBSITE TO PUBLIC
JUST AS CONGRESS TAKES UP NUCLEAR POLICY

EVANSTON--Safe energy organizations around the country decried the abrupt Thursday decision of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to close its website to the public, ostensibly to review its content to prevent potential terrorists from gaining sensitive data on nuclear facilities.

"The timing and motivation of this move seems very suspicious," notes David Kraft, director of the Evanston-based Nuclear Energy Information Service, Illinois' nuclear power watchdog organization. "The site has been operating 30 days since the attack on the World Trade Center, and NOW the NRC pulls the site, just as Congress begins to take up several critical pieces of legislation on nuclear power issues," Kraft observed. "It does not make practical sense."

The House Energy and Commerce Committee was scheduled to have a full Committee vote Friday on the controversial Price Anderson Act, long viewed by nuclear critics as an unfair nuclear power subsidy which limits the liability of nuclear utilities in case of a severe nuclear accident. Last week, several Senators were pushing for controversial fast movement of the Bush/Cheney energy plan, which calls for the construction of 150 new nuclear reactors.

"The public needs access to the NRC website to examine these issues thoroughly, before Congress hastily saddles the U.S. taxpayers with all kinds of nuclear subsidies and bailouts. Pulling the site denies the public the right of ‘informed consent' on these issues," Kraft maintains.

Critics also observed that NRC has already kept off of the site much if not all of the sensitive information a potential terrorist would find useful; so a quiet, ongoing review with the site in operation would have made more sense.

"We have long maintained that reactors are terrorist targets that should be shut down. Terrorists probably have gotten whatever they needed from the NRC site long ago, anyway. It's the American public that is penalized, by being kept from information they deserve to have to make informed decisions about nuclear power hazards. Thanks to NRC, the terrorists have scored yet another victory -- against public participation in this democracy," Kraft said.

NEIS has sent a letter of protest to the Illinois delegation to Congress, asking them to call for a moratorium on all Congressional action on legislation dealing with nuclear power and waste issues until NRC reinstates its website.

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- Dave Kraft
(847)869-7650; -7658 fax
NEIS P.O. Box 1637
Evanston, IL 60204-1637
neis@neis.org
www.neis.org