Union of Concerned Scientists - Real Science for Real People

Friends,

An email I received the other day reminded me that many of us engaged in nuclear weapons abolition work aren't familiar with all the other organizations out there doing the same (or related) work. So I thought I would occasionally highlight an organization that I find valuable in my work.

I just received an Action Alert from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The alert asked people to urge the Department of Energy to cancel plans for "the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), a costly, dangerous program that attempts to reuse—or "reprocess"—commercial nuclear waste by extracting weapons-usable plutonium from spent fuel from nuclear power reactors. Reprocessing will seriously undermine U.S. efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and materials and will do nothing to solve the problem of nuclear waste. In the waning days of the Bush administration, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released a required environmental assessment of the proposed GNEP program that is now open for public comment."

The Union of Concerned Scientists is a science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world that began as a collaboration between faculty and students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969, and has since grown into an alliance of more than 250,000 citizens and scientists. You might have heard UCS screaming at the top of its scientific lungs during the faith-based Bush administration (what science???).

UCS works on a number of topics, including Nuclear Weapons and Global Security. Check it out, and while there you can sign up to receive Action Alerts like the one I just got. You will find overviews on different nuclear weapons-related topics at their Nuclear Weapons and Global Security 101 page.

You can also learn more about the dubious (and dangerous) Global Nuclear Energy Partnership and send an email message to the DOE by clicking here.

Science for the people!

Peace,

Leonard