Nuclear-Free Colorado Coalition 2024 Report
By Dr. VELMA CAMPBEL
Anti-nuclear energy advocates were busy in 2024.
The Nuclear-Free and Renewable Energy Justice advocacy focused on the growing influence and push by the nuclear-industrial complex in Colorado beyond Pueblo, as well as the intersection of legacy nuclear issues with the nuclear-industrial complex and its potential impacts on our communities of new nuclear power development.
Regarding the push for nuclear power in Colorado, the industry and DOE, along with representatives of Xcel Energy, continued courting local elected officials, business leaders, and labor unions, usually in coal-impacted and environmental justice communities such as Pueblo, NW Colorado counties, and Aurora. In their current Just Transitions Proposal for their Energy Resource Plan, Xcel Energy included nuclear as one “tool” they want for the more distant future, proposing the Public Utilities Commission have ratepayers fund speculative demand estimates justifying the potential use of nuclear and other false climate solutions.
The Nuclear-Free Colorado Coalition actively participated, and continues, in a broad coalition of groups responding to the Xcel ERP. On Nov. 13, 2024, NFC members, Jamie Valdez, Jordan Mecham, and myself Velma Campbell, participated in two webinars featuring Xcel ERP coalition members. We spoke about impacts of Xcel’s proposals from the Pueblo perspective, including environmental justice implications, reasons for our opposition to nuclear power in the retiring Xcel coal fired Pueblo plant or the Denver area, and why nuclear is a false climate solution.
We also participated in a press conference about the Xcel Just Transitions Solicitation on Oct.10, 2024, in which several coalition members spoke. One of our key talking points in the coalition is that Pueblo deserves better than false climate solutions like nuclear or gas with carbon capture technology. All speakers at the press conference incorporated a message of “no nuclear” into their comments. Speakers included Jordan Mecham, Naomi Sylvester, and Jamie Valdez. In our weekly meetings we have begun to discuss the emerging role of large data centers in the projected energy demand estimates, in addition to the environmental justice implications of those facilities.
Locally, the Nuclear-Free Colorado members staged rallies at multiple events that featured nuclear advocates speaking at the request of the Pueblo County Commissioners, and also mobilized public testimony from a wide spectrum of the community in opposition to or skeptical of nuclear power. In October, the NFC coalition organized its 3rd annual NFC Day of Action, on Oct. 12, 2024, featuring a door-to-door neighborhood literature drop in Pueblo areas closest to the proposed site followed by a community rally with speakers and refreshments in front of the Pueblo County Courthouse. Materials distributed at the Day of Action, as well as at our other rallies, consisted of informational flyers prepared by the NFC coalition in English and Spanish. Participants came from the Denver area as well as Pueblo. The NFC coalition bought breakfast for all canvassers prior to hitting the streets, distributing more than 2500 flyers. Speakers at the Day of Action Rally included Jordan Mecham, Elizabeth Phebus, Sol Sandoval, and Jamie Valdez.
By speaking at County Commissioner sponsored Town Hall meetings, we have been able to begin swinging the viewpoint even of some union members and county commissioners to at least question the speculative unsupported promises of nuclear advocates such as the Xcel-sponsored PIESAC, a trend we hope to duplicate in other parts of Colorado.
Regarding the nuclear legacy, Coalition members from the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center worked hard on preventing a trail through plutonium-contaminated lands, a Rocky Flats related issue. They also attended national meetings like the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability. The activists from the Cotter Uranium Superfund Site in Cañon City spoke to the group about the history and updates on that site.
Velma Campbell is Co-Founder of Roots to Resilience, Pueblo, CO.
How are the proponents of nuclear energy calling it “clean?” I just read a book called “Yellow Dirt” about the fiasco of illness and death perpetrated by private companies digging on Navajo land for uranium. Even the dirt left behind is TOXIC. And the uranium has to be replentished YEARLY! How will they think to discard used uranium in a CLEAN Manner? This is a campaign of how gullible people are, in general, and how greedy the ‘private companies’ are, in particular! The adults DIE from uranium exposure and the unborn are affected from mothers walking on the soil around a mining site.