nuclear-news

The genuine and major environmental groups oppose nuclear power

Greens Still See Red on Nuclear Power, National Journal, Ben Geman, 2 Feb Major environmental groups are ignoring pleas from climate scientists to embrace reactors. “…….while Hansen is a hero to many within the green movement, environmental groups are nonetheless hostile to another Hansen view: that nuclear power is essential to attacking climate change as global energy demand rises.

Along with three other prominent climate scientists, Hansen penned an open letter to environmental groups in November about nuclear power, warning that “continued opposition … threatens humanity’s ability to avoid dangerous climate change” and urging them to push for “development and deployment of safer nuclear energy systems.”

No sale. Major groups such as the Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and the Natural Resources Defense Council haven’t budged in their opposition to a nuclear build-out.

“The [Sierra] Club recently reviewed our entire energy policy, including nuclear, and concluded that it is not only a bad deal for public safety and the environment, but it also doesn’t work economically,” said Maggie Kao, a spokeswoman for the Sierra Club, one of the country’s biggest and most politically influential green groups..

…… there’s a long list of financial and political barriers to building new reactors in the United States.

Steve Kerekes, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s main trade group, said environmental opposition isn’t anywhere near the biggest hurdle to building the first new U.S. reactors in decades.

Even a major antinuclear group isn’t claiming that activists are what’s hindering the industry’s long-hoped-for but slow-to-materialize “renaissance” of new U.S. construction. “Wall Street and Main Street have both rightly abandoned nuclear power,” said Jim Riccio, a nuclear-power analyst with Greenpeace.

February 3, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized