Nukes to the Rescue

For decades the position of the environmental movement towards nuclear power has been clear: over our dead bodies. (And please recycle them.) But according to this editorial in the Washington Post, some of the leading figures in the movement may be coming to their senses.

The greens always said, nuclear power plants are too dangerous!! My thought always was, compared with what? Given that American nuclear plants have a perfect safety record, the millions of tons of CO2 that coal fired plants turn out annually is a much greater hazard. As worries mount about the danger of catastrophic climate change, many who thought differently are coming to agree.

We'll never get rid of fossil fuels entirely, of course. When you need to combine efficient power production with mobility, as with cars and planes, petrofuels are the only real choice. But the plants that supply the power grid don't have to go anywhere. If nuclear plants can do the job economically and efficiently and without doing the environmental damage that burning coal does, why not build more of them?