"Churches and their congregations are realizing that nuclear energy is no longer a safe, cheap or viable energy source, although the nuclear industry has told them otherwise," Chris Cowap, one of the council's directors, says.
Tim Smith, executive director of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a group similar to the National Council of Churches but aimed directly at investment policy says institutional churches will emerge as a cohesive power, questioning the future of nuclear energy in America.
The center and council will try to increase the opposition to nuclear power, Smith says, by supporting anti-nuclear legislation, distributing information to their member churches and seeking the support of scientists opposed to nuclear energy.
Beth Lerch, energy program director at the center, says their opposition to nuclear power is based on moral grounds, and promotes anti-nuke sentiment. The center is directly questioning member churches' reluctance to oppose an industry that produces materials that imperil human lives.
But interest groups using investment power to oppose nuclear industry realize that in the past proxies have been relatively ineffective in altering corporate practices. Lerch says shareholder resolutions are "but one of many tools the center will use to show the extent and amorality of corporate investment in nuclear energy."
Representatives from the Clamshell Alliance, however, see the move toward pressuring companies invested in nuclear power as something more than just an effective means of promoting anti-nuke feeling. Instead they see it as a broadening of the movement from its initial focus on halting the nuclear energy through occupations--direct action--to measures involving economics.
"Hitting the fence didn't close down Seabrook." Robert Cushing, a founder of Clamsheel, says. "Perhaps hitting the corporations in the wallet might."
On Monday the alliance and a coalition of other anti-nuke groups plan to block the opening of the New York Stock Exchange 50 years after the Crash. The "Manhattan Project" demonstrators plan to cordon off the doors of the exchange to prevent brokers from entering the building and trading the stocks of the 66 corporations active in nuclear energy
Dorothy Boudreau, a staff member of the Mobilization for Survival, says, "Shutting down the stock exchange will be the movement's most political action ever, involving more than just the apolitical environmentalists that have been the primary supporters of the occupation."
By supporting the use of shareholder resolutions and broadening the anti-nuclear movement to oppose the corporations that fund the power plants, Boudreau and her collegues say they believe they will increase popular support for the anti-nuclear movement to include other groups that are disenchanted with the capatalist economic system.
"Nukes are a symbol of economic exploitation," Boudreau says. She adds that by opposing the companies that support nukes "we're striking right at the heart of the American economic system."