Smart Energy Solutions In the News

Maryland Public Interest Research Group, which launched a campaign in March to try to stop the construction of a third nuclear reactor in Southern Maryland, is holding another protest today.

MaryPIRG says it is planning an 11 a.m. event today (Oct. 11) on the Solomons Boardwalk in Solomons Island with three concerned residents of Calvert County, a Baltimore doctor from the group Physicians for Social Responsibility, and a representative of a group called Beyond Nuclear.

Johanna Neumann, a spokeswoman for MaryPIRG, said her group is concerned that the evacuation routes away from the nuclear reactors at Calvert Cliff, which have been operating for three decades, are not adequate, in part because reactors are on a peninsula and there's only one major route in and out.

Calvert County has strongly endorsed the construction of a third reactor, saying that the plant has proven its safety over many years of operation.   Some supporters of nuclear power argue that reactors are a proven method of generating lots of electricity without producing any of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

But skeptics of an expansion of the nuclear industry worry about the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the globe, and the issue of where spent fuel rods should be stored.