Help the Illinois Greens Say No To Nukes in Illinois!




The Illinois Green Party supports maintaining the moratorium on licensing new nuclear power plants; Eliminating all subsidies and tax breaks for nuclear power (including guarantees for nuclear waste disposal, loan guarantees and subsidized insurance) and directing the private company charged with managing existing nuclear power plants in Illinois to decommission them. Although some policymakers have pointed to nuclear power as an “answer” to global warming, this would be a “cure” worse than the disease. While the Illinois Green Party does not oppose basic research on any technology, we categorically oppose the building of new nuclear power plants, and call for the rapid phaseout of existing plants, given the present state of nuclear reactor technology.

Current forms of production of nuclear energy –from the mining of uranium, which constitutes one of the grossest forms of exploitation of the Native American population, to the still unsolved problem of radioactive waste disposal –are an environmental nightmare from beginning to end. That’s not even counting the unacceptable risk of another Chernobyl or Fukushima-Daiichi type disaster, the periodic smaller-scale releases such as those that have polluted waterways in Illinois, the hazards posed by transporting nuclear materials and waste, the industry’s ties to the nuclear weapons complex, including depleted uranium weapons, and its reliance on massive governmental subsidies, with taxpayers being the “insurers” of final resort. Nuclear energy production cannot be justified. Our goal is an energy future that is “carbon-free and nuclear-free.”