It is not unusual, especially in an election year, to see new special-interest groups form in Washington DC and across the country.
But it is somewhat unusual to see a new, avidly pro-nuclear alliance form, particularly one with the imprimatur of the usually staid professional organization, American Nuclear Society.
And it is still rarer to find one that has among its explicit goals influence over upcoming elections and party platforms, but which also numbers top officials from five major Department of Energy laboratories among its founding members.
Welcome to the Eagle Alliance--the nuclear industry's latest shot at promoting a nuclear power revival.
Not that the Eagle Alliance would settle for just a few new nuclear plants. Sure, they want some new reactors, but this group wants it all: massive food irradiation; a nuclear cure for cancer (apparently they're not interested in a cure if it's non-nuclear); establishment of a scientific basis that proves low doses of radiation aren't harmful (forget the scientific method, which requires that experiments precede conclusions); and making environmental and anti-nuclear groups "responsible" for their actions--whatever that might mean.
The Eagle Alliance seemed to have come out of nowhere (a copy of its brochure arrived on NIRS' fax machine one night), but obviously has been some time in the making.
Its founding members are dominated, unsurprisingly, by executives from nuclear utilities and nuclear industry suppliers. But they also include the President of the National Treasury Employees Union, high-ranking officials in the American Medical Association and American Cancer Society, and, of all people, the executive director of the Institute of Packaging Professionals. Most controversially, the Alliance founders also include the chiefs of the major Department of Energy nuclear laboratories at Brookhaven, Los Alamos, Argonne, Oak Ridge, and the Department of Energy manager at Idaho Operations.
What is even more remarkable is that the Eagle Alliance apparently was established by the relatively stodgy American Nuclear Society (ANS). Like most professional organizations, the ANS has primarily devoted its efforts to ensuring standards within its field, holding annual conferences for society members, and publishing a monthly magazine (Nuclear News) which serves as a news source and cheerleader for subscribers.
But the type of lobbying and militant pro-nuclear rhetoric espoused by the Eagle Alliance might make even the Nuclear Energy Institute blush.
For example, the Eagle Alliance is not content to merely battle environmental groups for public opinion. In rather threatening language, it seeks to "institute methods to make special interest and activist organizations responsible for the results of their actions."
Similarly, when the Eagle Alliance talks about food irradiation, it wants it on a "major" scale. As one of its five key goals, the Alliance says it wants to "stimulate major use of food irradiation." Its strategies include "support legislative to designate food irradiation as a process, rather than an additive...develop strong media coverage showing the health benefits of food irradiation...establish strong support for at least one major retailer selling irradiated food."
Eschewing the scientific process (a rather odd position for an allegedly scientific society). another goal is to "achieve risk-based regulations for nuclear industry." The strategies are "establish a strong scientific basis for negligible health effects of low-level radiation...encourage a political mandate for risk-based approach at NRC, EPA, and FDA."
Nuclear medicine? If you believe the Alliance, that's all there is. They're not searching for a cure for cancer, they're searching for "a nuclear cure for cancer."
Don't forget politics. The Alliance's number one goal is to "achieve pro-nuclear planks in major political parties for 1996 elections." Strategies include "make persuasive contact, via senior nuclear personnel, to every incumbent and candidate for 1996 congressional and gubernatorial offices in the nation...convene at least one significant session with every president candidate in the 1996 election with a top-level cross-section of the Alliance."
Pretty soon, we expect the Eagle Alliance to be leading demonstrations in the streets, conducting sit-ins in front of NIRS' offices, and conducting relief efforts for those who have lost money on nuclear utility stocks. That may not be so far-fetched: the Alliance says it wants to "orchestrate a 'Nuclear Freeze' day with wide public coverage to dramatize everyday services provided by nuclear technology."
In the meantime, however, their presence among the founding members of the Eagle Alliance raises serious conflict-of interest charges for the directors of the DOE-sponsored national laboratories, as well as the members from medical societies--who, after all, aren't charged with promoting nuclear cures for disease (at least by the public) but who are entrusted with curing disease, period.
The founding of the Eagle Alliance brings the hypocrisy of the nuclear establishment front and center. It smacks of nothing more than a last-ditch effort by a flailing industry which must know the game is already over even as its members run out onto the field.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Write Department of Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary (DOE, Washington, DC 20585), and include a copy of your letter to your senators, representatives and President Clinton. Demand the immediate dismissal of the five officials from of the DOE national labs on conflict of interest grounds, and an assurance that future directors will not be allowed to mix their personal politics and vendettas with their business.