Revised version, adopted November, 1977, at the Clamshell Congress

We, the member of the Clamshell Alliance, demand an immediate and permanent halt to the construction and export of nuclear power plants and facilities, and nuclear weapons and supporting technology.

Nuclear power is dangerous to all living creatures and to their natural environment. The nuclear industry is designed to concentrate profits and the control of energy resources in the hands of a powerful few, undermining basic principles of human liberty.

A nuclear power plant at Seabrook, New Hampshire, could lock our region into a suicidal path. As an affiliation of a wide range of groups and individuals, the Clamshell Alliance is unalterably opposed to the construction of this, and any other, nuclear power plant.

We recognize:

1. that the present direction in energy research and development is based on corporate efforts to maximize profits and recoup past investments rather than on meeting our real energy needs;
2. that there is a direct relationship between nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons. The arms industry has used the “peaceful atom” to legitimize its technology. The export of nuclear reactors makes possible the spread of nuclear bombs to nations all over the world. The possibility of nuclear thievery and sabotage of nuclear facilities poses further danger to our civil liberties and our lives;
3. that the centralized nature of nuclear power takes control of energy from local communities and strengthens the monopoly of the utilities;
4. that a political and economic environment committed to the nuclear age is not conducive to the development of, and implementation of, renewable energy sources. With changes in the regulatory and political climate, renewable sources of energy – such as solar technologies – would become competitive, conservation would flourish, and the alleged “need” for nuclear energy would vanish. Awareness of the fact that we live within a balanced, natural ecosystem necessitates changes in “traditional” economic and social values;
5. that nuclear power plants have proved to be an economic catastrophe. Expensive, inefficient, and unreliable, they require immense investments of capital, and create fewer jobs, than comparable investments in conservation and solar energy;
6. that the dangers of nuclear power plants are intolerable. They include release of “low-level” radiation – a cause of cancer and genetic disorders; the creation of deadly radioactive waste which must be completely isolated from the environment for 250,000 years; the destruction of our lakes, rivers, and oceans by thermal pollution; and the possibility of a catastrophic meltdown. No material gain, real or imagined, is worth the assault on life itself that atomic energy represents.

We therefore demand:

1. that not one more cent be spent on nuclear power reactors or nuclear weapons, except to dispose of those wastes already created and to decommission those plants and weapons now in existence;
2. that our energy policy be focused on developing and implementing clean and renewable sources of energy in concert with an efficient system of recycling and conservation;
3. that all people who lose jobs through the cancellation of nuclear construction, operation, or weapons production be offered retraining and jobs in the natural energy field at decent, union level wages;
4. that the supply of energy should, in all cases, be controlled by the people. Private monopoly must give way to public control. In concert with public ownership, power supply should be decentralized so that environmental damage is further minimized, and so that control can revert to the local community.

We have full confidence that when the dangers and expense of nuclear energy are made known to the people, they will reject this tragic experiment which has already cost us so much in health, environmental quality, material resources, labot, and control over our own lives.

The Clamshell Alliance will continue its uncompromising opposition to any and all nuclear construction in New England and elsewhere.

Our stand is in defense of the health, safety, and general well-being of ourselves and of future generations of all life on this planet.

We therefore announce that, should construction continue at Seabrook, we will mobilize the citizenry and return to the site to blockade or occupy it until construction has ceased and the project is totally and irrevocably cancelled.