Wisconsin residents do not want nuclear power, according to a cross-section of Madison environmental and public-safety advocacy groups that rallied in front of the state Capitol building Tuesday.
They protested a bill now in the Assembly that would reduce the required conditions to build a nuclear power plant.
The state Public Service Commission must now verify there is a place to dispose of the plant's waste and that it would be economically advantageous to electricity customers.
Some protesters accused UW-Madison of supporting what they said was an environmentally harmful form of power generation.
\The whole university system with its campus research reactor silently endorses the propagation of myths of nuclear power,"" said John LaForge of Nukewatch, a nuclear abolition group.
In addition to speeches and interpretive dance accusing the bill of being driven by corporate money, the protests included signs implying nuclear power plants would cause cancer.
""We feel that from a public health standpoint, nuclear power is a terrible thing,"" Alfred Meyer of Physicians for Social Responsibility said.
Both the radioactive material on site and the waste shipped out would be a risk, he said. And while a proposed storage facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada could keep waste deep underground, if pending federal lawsuits do not block its construction, even that may not be enough.
""Yucca Mountain by no means is a done deal,"" Meyer said. ""And whether or not it opens, we will need a second site, and Wisconsin is at the top of the list.""
State Rep. Spencer Black, D-Madison, said Wisconsin residents had kept their energy costs low by not purchasing nuclear power, which he called ""the most expensive power around.""
Wisconsin and California are the only states with moratoriums on nuclear power generation, according to UW-Madison nuclear engineering Professor Michael L. Corradini.
""I think it was more of a moral statement back in the '80s. ... Twenty years later, this doesn't make any sense,"" he said.
The bill would not remove the strict conditions required to actually build a nuclear power plant, he said, but would remove the ""political element saying you can't even think about it.""
Michael Vickerman of Renew Wisconsin said the bill was an attempt to promote nuclear power over other, sustainable methods, such as wind.
""What we pay for wind power now will be what we pay for wind power 10 years from now,"" he said.
