PUC Chair: "United States has made a huge, huge error in not pursuing nuclear energy sooner."

Public Utilities Commission Chair LeRoy Koppendrayer is direct — you can’t talk about electric power, cutting carbon emissions, and not talk about nuclear energy.

The countries most aggressively pushing the United States to comply with the Kyoto Protocol — to limit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions — have nuclear power, he said.

“It’s my personal opinion that the United States has made a huge, huge error in not pursuing nuclear energy sooner and more aggressively than we have,” said Koppendrayer, former Republican lawmaker from Princeton.

“We simply have put our head in the sand on that issue — going forward with a lot of rhetoric and a poor energy policy,” he said, speaking for himself, not the commission.

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