Whereas, the Republican party platform and the Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, call for the expansion of the nuclear power industry with the construction of several dozen new nuclear power plans in the continental United States; Whereas, there are currently no federally approved permanent nuclear waste sites to store the tons of low-level and high-level radiation waste generated by existing or future nuclear power plants; Whereas, the citizens of Appalachia have suffered for decades from the unsustainable exploitation of non-renewal resources in our region, We, the undersigned, call on our elected officials to enact a permanent ban on the storage of nuclear power plant waste in abandoned coalmines.