It's NIRS' 35th Anniversary! And in celebration, a major donor has provided a $25,000 matching grant! Your contributions, through April 30, 2013, are matched dollar-for-dollar. Please make your most generous donation possible today.

Hopefully, you already know why you support NIRS. But if you need a reminder, here are a few of our recent accomplishments that your donations and activism have made possible:

*On August 30, 2012, a construction license for Maryland's Calvert Cliffs-3 reactor was DENIED by a Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing board, in a case brought and litigated by NIRS. This was the first license denial ever in a pro se reactor intervention.

The utility, UniStar (owned by Electricite de France) has asked the NRC Commissioners to review this decision. With your support, we expect to win at this level too!

*Since February 2009, with your help, we have generated more than 250,000 e-mails to Congress—and thousands more phone calls—and have beaten back at least nine different efforts to add tens of billions of dollars to the Department of Energy's nuclear loan program. The result: no taxpayer dollars have been added to the program since 2007 and President Obama has abandoned efforts to add funding to the program..

*We generated more than 6,000 letters to Congress in successful opposition to industry efforts to override the Department of the Interior and allow uranium mining near the Grand Canyon.

*Our Petition for Rulemaking to the NRC would expand emergency evacuation zones and improve emergency training so that responders could learn to come with simultaneous natural disasters. Thousands of people have expressed their support for this petition to the NRC and we are continuing to press the NRC for action.

*Some 6,000 signed a petition to the government of Japan demanding that the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) not provide a loan to help build the proposed South Texas nuclear reactors (a project that since has collapsed). This petition was being distributed to government officials by our colleagues in Japan at the exact moment of the March 11 earthquake. We will continue this campaign whenever there is a threat of such funding.

With your support, we were able to quickly send 10 quality radiation monitors to Japanese groups after the March accident. These monitors were responsible for the first documentation of unacceptable levels of radiation at schools around the region but outside the original evacuation zone. This led directly to formation of the Mothers movement in the region and to increased evacuations. In other words, this action saved lives.

Your support also enabled us to recently publish a new paper documenting the increased risk radiation exposure presents to women over men. We’ve long known that radiation affects children more than adults; now we know that women are about 50% more susceptible to its effects as men. Yet radiation standards worldwide are based on the effects upon men. This paper is the first step in challenging and changing that deficient regulatory scheme.

Your support enables all of this work, and much more. If you agree this work is essential, then please take a moment to support us! All contributions to NIRS are tax-deductible.

If you'd like more information about how we use your donations, please check our donor information page here: http://www.nirs.org/about/donor.htm

And if you'd rather send a check, please make it out to NIRS, and send to NIRS, 6930 Carroll Avenue, #340, Takoma Park, MD 20912.

Thank you so much for your support, and all that you do,

Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
nirsnet@nirs.org
www.nirs.org