Originally published July 3 2005
Greenpeace founder supports nuclear energy option
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Patrick Moore, founder of Greenpeace, testified before Congress in an attempt to secure nuclear energy as a viable government-subsidized strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save the nation from more foreign oil debt.
A doubling of nuclear energy production would make it possible to significantly reduce total [greenhouse gas] emissions nationwide.
The head of Greenspirit Strategies testified before Congress this past April, and he's not the only big-foot environmentalist who's rethinking nuclear power.
It includes provisions that should advance nuclear power in the next decades: a new test reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory, an extension of industry-funded liability protection for nuclear facilities and incentives to jump-start construction of some advanced-design reactors.
The nuclear industry can point to several advances since the last nuclear power plant came on line or the Three Mile Island fiasco decades ago.
Answer: their concern about greenhouse gases and global warming.
Quite simply, nuclear energy produces none of the sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and carbon dioxide that are spewed into the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burned.
Washington state's nuclear power plant, for example, kept 8,000 tons of sulfur dioxide emissions, 13,500 tons of nitrogen oxide emissions and 7.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions out of the sky in 2004.
Avoiding these greenhouse gases can help areas where car and industrial emissions degrade air quality.
Wind and solar are a small part of U.S. energy production and have become smaller in recent years.
This becomes a greenhouse gas problem if producing the electricity to produce the hydrogen also produces carbon dioxide.
The Idaho National Laboratory project in the Senate bill is for research, development and construction of an advanced nuclear co-generation reactor to produce electricity and hydrogen.
Yet as fears about greenhouse gases and global warming grow -- and the practical problems of filling the world's energy needs with non-emission sources become ever more apparent -- today's nuclear environmentalists may come to be seen as prophets.
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