Central New York CAN has been organizing to shut the four reactors in our neighborhood and to revitalize our region through renewable energy for ten years.

In our experience, the problem with nuclear power in Central New York is not merely ignorance of how radiation makes people sick and kills them. Cancer rates are through the roof here -- particularly in Oswego County -- and a lot of people already believe it's because of the nukes. When we go to door-to-door and talk to people about the nukes, people have taken us onto their front porches and point down their blocks at all of the houses where their neighbors have had cancer. They've told us about their own health problems, and about the birth defects their children have. They appreciate the fact that we are out there raising the issues and fighting. CAN’s role is to empower more people to get involved – and to envision a future for our communities where we don’t have to sacrifice our health, safety, and environment for the promise of good jobs.

One of the reasons the industry is almost exclusively targeting exisitng sites for new nukes is that so many reactor communities are already beaten down and compliant. Nuclear power is unaffordable, unsustainable, and dangerous. But the issue of nuclear power at the local level is about community economics and power -- not subsidies, but the fact that reactor communities are mostly poor and rural, in cases like Oswego desperately poor, and people have been conditioned to see no other options for survival than the good-paying jobs at the nukes. That fear is compounded by the fact that they feel they have no power to change things -- the NRC is on the industry's side, their local officials are in the pocket of the company, their neighbors work at the nuke, and the state and federal governments have abandoned them.

Fear makes people feel they have no power. The truth is, there are realistic ways to make things better, not just by getting rid of the nukes, but by creating better options for those communities and our country to thrive without nuclear power. Replacing our nukes with renewable energy would create far more jobs than we would lose, and it would make our communities healthier, more vibrant and livable places to live.

This is our reality. Nuclear power stands in the way of better opportunities that offer a much brighter future for Central New York. It's a choice between the status quo and something better, something worth fighting for.