Mobile Chernobyl bill (S. 1271)

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole has tentatively scheduled the Mobile Chernobyl bill (S. 1271) for a Senate floor vote on the tenth anniversary of the Chernobyl diasaster, April 26. Alert follows.


ALERT / ACTION / ALERT

US Senate Floor Vote on Mobile Chernobyl Bill, S 1271
Scheduled for 10th Anniversary of Chernobyl Disaster

--April 5, 1996-- Senate Majority Leader Dole's office publishes an "up-coming" events calendar which lists S 1271, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1996, for a Senate floor vote on April 25 or April 26, 1996. Friday, April 26 is the 10th anniversary of the explosion and fire at Chernobyl nuclear power reactor in Ukraine, a disaster that continues today. The Ukrainian Health Ministry said last year that there have been some 125,000 deaths as a result of the accident. It is not a fitting remembrance of this tragedy for the U.S. Senate to vote on a bill which will set in motion tens of thousands of potential Chernobyls across our country.


ACTION STEPS: CALL YOUR SENATORS TODAY -- 202-224-3121, better yet call the Home office -- Congress is home for Easter until Monday April 15th. Seek a meeting with your Senators. If you have resolutions passed at your city or county level, ask these officials to help get a meeting with the Senators. (Or start today to get resolutions passed.)

Now is the time to PUSH

TARGET: Senator Dole -- Dole sets the Senate's schedule, he's the one picking April dates for S 1271. There is no rule that he has to bring a bill to the floor. We have been working to keep him from doing just that!

GIVE HIM HEAT: calls - LOTS -- 202-224-3135 or 202-224-6521. Handwritten post cards or letters -- fax is good 202-224-6521 -- or mail to Senator Dole, U.S. Senate, Washington DC 20510. Other ideas: If Dole is coming to your area, don't spare him your point of view, make it as direct as possible -- receiving lines at luncheons, questions at press conferences or posters and pickets at his hotel or airport stop. Leave no stone un-turned, call NIRS (Mary or Diane) 202-328-0002 for more ideas.


GIVE THANKS WHERE DUE: SUPPORT CLINTON'S OPPOSITION TO S 1271.

Letters and calls to the White House -- Address letters to President Clinton, "Attention: Leon Panetta, Chief of Staff." The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC 20500 or call 202-456-1414 -- ask for office of Chief of Staff, and ask the person who answers to pass on your appreciation to the President for opposing S 1271 and HR 1020, and urge that he veto these and any similar bills.

BACKGROUND: S-1271 authorizes a new nuclear dump (so-called "interim" storage) for the nation's high-level waste. 95% of all the radioactivity of the Nuclear Age is in the fuel from nuclear reactors. This waste would be shipped across the nation--from the reactors primarily east of the Mississippi, thousands of miles, through 43 states to a cement pad--like a parking lot. Yucca Mt., NV is one of the most seismically-active areas of the U.S. and is part of Western Shoshone Lands, who oppose it. Accidents happen every day -- there have been 7 major rail accidents in the news in the past two months, five of these were on rail routes that are projected as likely high-level nuclear waste routes. Interstate highways would also carry this lethal waste.

STOP THE MOBILE CHERNOBYLS!

Nuclear Information & Resource Service
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