Public Participation and Protest
See also: List of anti-nuclear protests in the United States and Anti-nuclear movement in CaliforniaDiablo Canyon was built and entered service despite legal challenges and civil disobedience from the anti-nuclear protesters of the Abalone Alliance. Over a two-week period in 1981, 1,900 activists were arrested at Diablo Canyon Power Plant. It was the largest arrest total in the history of the U.S. anti-nuclear movement.
In spring of 2011, State Senator Sam Blakeslee and US Representative Lois Capps both expressed concern for a renewed safety review. Speaking before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, the congresswoman stated that she believed the "Nuclear Regulatory Commission should stay the license renewal process until the completion of independent, peer reviewed, advanced seismic studies of all faults in the area." The Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility began circulating a petition to similar effect, going further and calling for an outright halt to relicensing. An array of San Luis Obispo-based anti-nuclear groups including Mothers for Peace also called for the closure of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.
The Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility also works at the level of the California Public Utilities Commission and initiated a letter writing campaign to Governor Jerry Brown, which requests he "instruct the CPUC to rescind the Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity for ... Diablo Canyon ... and allow them to operate conditionally only under the agreement by the utilities to immediately begin to fully comply with completion of the state-directed AB 1632 studies."
Read more about this topic: Diablo Canyon Power Plant
Famous quotes containing the words public and/or protest:
“These native villages are as unchanging as the woman in one of their stories. When she was called before a local justice he asked her age. “I have 45 years.” “But,” said the justice, “you were forty-five when you appeared before me two years ago.” “Señor Judge,” she replied proudly, drawing herself to her full height, “I am not of those who are one thing today and another tomorrow!””
—State of New Mexico, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“[University students] hated the hypocrisy of adult society, the rigidity of its political institutions, the impersonality of its bureaucracies. They sought to create a society that places human values before materialistic ones, that has a little less head and a little more heart, that is dominated by self-interest and loves its neighbor more. And they were persuaded that group protest of a militant nature would advance those goals.”
—Muriel Beadle (b. 1915)