International offices
NIRS and WISE have merged their operations and WISE has relay offices in Amsterdam, Argentina, Austria, the Czech Republic, India, Japan, Russia, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, and Ukraine.[2]
Michael Mariotte (1952-2016) was president and executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service for 30 years. He was a well-known opponent of nuclear power and organized anti-nuclear activities in Europe after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Mariotte was a keen supporter of renewable energy and efficient energy use. He believed that nuclear power would become obsolete, to be replaced by renewable energy sources.[3]
Press
On 3 August 2004, NIRS issued a report stating that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission may allow the illegal practice of manually shutting down nuclear power plants in the event of fire.[4]
On 15 May 2007, NIRS issued a report claiming that radioactive scrap, concrete, equipment, asphalt, plastic, wood, chemicals, and soil from U.S. nuclear weapons facilities are being released to regular landfills and could get into commercial recycling streams."[5]
On 17 July 2007, regarding the leakage of water from the spent fuel pool of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant after the 2007 Niigata earthquake, Michael Mariotte, spoke on behalf of the NIRS and commented "The leak itself doesn't sound significant as of yet, but the fact that it went unreported is a concern, when a company begins by denying a problem, it makes you wonder if there's another shoe to drop."[6]
The magazine Nuclear Engineering International has said that NIRS runs the best website on uranium mining throughout the world.[7]
In October 2010, Michael Mariotte, then the executive director of NIRS, predicted that the U.S. nuclear industry will not experience a nuclear renaissance, for the simple reason that “nuclear reactors make no economic sense”. The economic slump has driven down electricity demand and the price of competing energy sources, and Congress has failed to pass climate change legislation, making nuclear economics very difficult.[8]
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