NYT: Ex-Environmental Leaders Tout Nuclear Energy

[DeepModem Mom]

Ex-Environmental Leaders Tout Nuclear Energy
By MATTHEW L. WALD
Published: April 25, 2006

WASHINGTON, April 24 — The nuclear industry has hired Christie Whitman, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, the environmental organization, to lead a public relations campaign for new reactors.

Nuclear power is "environmentally friendly, affordable, clean, dependable and safe," Mrs. Whitman said at a news conference on Monday. She said that as the E.P.A. leader for two and a half years, ending in June 2003, and as governor of New Jersey for seven years, she had promoted various means to reduce the emission of gases that cause global warming and pollution.

But Mrs. Whitman said that "none of them will have as great a positive impact on our environment as will increasing our ability to generate electricity from nuclear power."

Mrs. Whitman headed the E.P.A. when it published rules for the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. After she left the office, the courts threw out the rules because they covered only the first 10,000 years of waste storage, while peak releases of radiation were expected after that time.

Organizers released a list of 58 companies and institutions and 10 people who they said were members of a new Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, which Mr. Moore said would engage in "grass-roots advocacy." A spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade association of reactor operators, acknowledged that it was providing all of the financing, but would not say what the budget was....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/25/us/25nuke.html

[rwenos]

1. How do you spell "Vendido"?

Sounds like Christie's kids want to go to Yale. Time to make some MONEY.

[spag68]

2. First of all

I'm a retired electrician, and worked in nuclear plants in Pa and Fla. The new reactors are safe and non polluting.10000 years should be plenty of time to figure out what to do with the spent rods. I would not be surprised if there was something useful for it down the road. As far as safety, the containment would hardly shake from a plane flying into it. I say use the stuff as we have more of natural uranium then anyone else.

[kysrsoze]

3. You would think they could reprocess it. Anyhow... pebble bed reactors!

I really believe this is the mid-term way to go, along with solar, wind and water. Electric cars are starting to multiply in China, as are these reactors.

[Ikari Gendo]

4. Nukes are clean, reliable, and safe.

I get more daily background radiation from living in the high plains than people living on Three Mile Island were exposed to. I served in the US Navy, where the safety record for shipboard reactors is indeed enviable.

Worry about reactors built and run by communists or islamofascists.