NEI Nuclear Notes

Dr. Patrick Moore Earlier today we got the news that the original " sensible environmentalist ," Dr. Patrick Moore, was stepping down as co-chair of the CASEnergy Coalition in order to begin enjoying a well-deserved retirement. The following letter was posted  at the CASEnergy Coalition website: Dear Clean and Safe Energy Coalition Members: With more than 3,000 influential members across the nation, the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition has become an important voice in conversations about our country’s energy future. We know that nuclear energy must continue to be part of a solution – not just to our energy challenges, but to our economic and environmental challenges – and the coalition continues to make great strides toward making sure that Americans understand why. The mission endures, and the coalition is stronger than ever, so it is with mixed emotions that I share with you today my decision to retire as Co-Chair of the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition. I will rem...

This is probably one of the most entertaining debates on nuclear energy I've seen in a long time ! By the way, their debate about $50 billion of loan volume in the Senate's "stimulus" package goes to "projects that avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and employ new or significantly improved technologies as compared to technologies in service in the United States at the time the guarantee is issued." The actual appropriations for the $50B in loan volume is $500 million because the Congressional Budget Office scores the cost of the program at one percent of loan volume . But like I said in a previous post , if the program works as designed and no projects default, then none of this money is needed. Also in the Senate's "stimulus" package but not mentioned in the debate is $95 billion in loan volume earmarked solely for commercially proven renewable energy pro...

Greenpeace co-founder and current co-chair of the Clean and Safe Energy (CASEnergy) Coalition , Patrick Moore, will be appearing on C-SPAN's Washington Journal this morning at 9:30 ET. (Extra bonus: Greta Wodele Brawner will be moderating.) We'll post the video once it becomes available. A live webcast can be seen here . Update : The Moore segment has been archived and can be seen here .

Dr. Patrick Moore, founder of Greenspirit Strategies and a founding member of Greenpeace , hits the cable airwaves today to talk nuclear power in the U.S.

In case you were watching The Wheel and missed it, Patrick Moore , co-Chair of the CASEnergy Coalition and co-founder of Greenpeace , appeared on CNN's Glenn Beck Program last night. The pull quote, Hopefully, by 10 years from now, the first new nuclear plants will be coming online and, hopefully, by then we will have built more wind power so that we can turn the gas off when the wind is blowing. But wind can only provide a small percentage. Denmark gets 15 percent of its energy from wind, and the people there realize now that they went a little overboard on wind, because it stops for three or four days at a time. The sun doesn`t shine at night or when it`s cloudy. These technologies have no storage capacity to be able to tide it over, so you have to back it up with something. We should be building the backups, in other words, the continuous reliable power sources, such as nuclear and hydroelectric and biomass and geothermal and plug-in cars. But it doesn`t make sense to charge...

Patrick Moore , one of the cofounders of Greeenpeace and an advocate for nuclear energy, is interviewed by Fareed Zakaria in the latest issue of Newsweek . The pull quote: Greenpeace still uses the word "evil" to describe nuclear energy. I think that's as big a mistake as if you lumped nuclear medicine in with nuclear weapons. Nuclear medicine uses radioactive isotopes to successfully treat millions of people every year, and those isotopes are all produced in nuclear reactors. That's why I left Greenpeace: I could see that my fellow directors, none of whom had any science education, were starting to deal with issues around chemicals and biology and genetics, which they had no formal training in, and they were taking the organization into what I call "pop environmentalism," which uses sensationalism, misinformation, fear tactics, etc., to deal with people on an emotional level rather than an intellectual level.

Co-founder of Greenpeace and leading environmentalist Patrick Moore encouraged his former organization to support nuclear energy at a speech yesterday at Wits University in South Africa. Here is the account from The Times of South Africa: Greenpeace should now go pro-nuke Radioactive waste ‘no longer a problem’ Greenpeace was right to stop the bomb and save the whales, but should never have opposed nuclear energy, the environmental group’s co-founder and former director, Patrick Moore, said in Sandton yesterday. Moore is on a lecture tour of local universities, sponsored by the Nuclear Industry Association of South Africa. “Climate change has made me a strong supporter of nuclear power,” Moore said. Here is another account by Engineering News Online of South Africa: Greenpeace co-founder Moore backs nuclear power . A blog sponsored by South Africa's Mail & Guardian had a less sanguine viewpoint about building more nuclear power plants. Despite the wide range of opinions, nucl...

In the January/February 2008 edition of Extra, Karl Grossman at Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting wrote a disingenuous, inaccurate piece against nuclear energy . The whole premise of his article is that the mainstream media doesn't question the nuclear advocates in the industry and government. We know this is false, though, as evidenced by AP's one-sided piece on the nuclear industry's water issues . Lifecycle Emissions Grossman's first claim begins with how the biased media doesn't question NEI's clean air ads. What is left unmentioned by the NEI, the Times and other mainstream media making this claim is that the overall “nuclear cycle”—which includes uranium mining and milling, enrichment, fuel fabrication and disposal of radioactive waste—has significant greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. According to his source, there are: independent studies that document in detail the extent to which the entire nuclear cycle generates greenhous...

Michael Kanellos of CNet recently interviewed CASEnergy co-chair Patrick Moore . Here's an excerpt: Q: When people look at your biography and see you're a Greenpeace co-founder and now a nuclear advocate, they don't believe it. Could you give us a synopsis of your personal history on this issue? Moore: Well, actually I did feel a little lonely in that corner for a while, but I've been joined by the likes of Stewart Brand, Jared Diamond (author of Guns, Germs, and Steel), and (environmental author) Tim Flannery, and now we form a fairly serious phalanx of pro-nuclear environmentalists. In fact, I'm the honorary chair of the Canadian chapter of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy, which has 9,000 members worldwide. As a co-founder of Greenpeace, even though I was a scientist, I made the same mistake in those days as all the rest of my colleagues did. We kind of lumped nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons as if all things nuclear were evil. It was an honest mistake...

In yesterday's edition of The Melbourne Age , Dr. Patrick Moore called on his old compatriots at Greenpeace to drop their long-standing opposition to nuclear power in light of the threat posed by climate change. In response, Australian columnist Andrew Bolt is hosting quite a debate over at the Herald Sun . Check it out.

Click here for a clip from Tucker Carlson's MSNBC program that took a look at nuclear energy. There's a lot of talk, along with a short interview with CASEnergy 's Patrick Moore.

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In today's installment of our interview with Dr. Patrick Moore of the CASEnergy Coalition , Dr. Moore talks about his own conversion on the question of nuclear energy: As always, to join CASEnergy, click here . Look for another clip this afternoon.

Know that we were on the cusp of an election in the Canadian province of Ontario in which energy was a big issue, I asked Dr. Patrick Moore about the energy situation there, and how nuclear energy is playing a role as the provincial government seeks to shut down all of its coal plants: As always, to join CASEnergy, click here . Look for another clip tomorrow morning.

In today's installment of our interview with Dr. Patrick Moore of the CASEnergy Coalition , he addresses the link between nuclear energy and low CO2 emissions: As always, to join CASEnergy, click here . Look for another clip this afternoon.

Earlier today, we linked to a clip of Dr. Patrick Moore talking about "independent thinkers" and nuclear energy. In this afternoon's clip, Moore turns to the issue of those who are reflexively anti-nuclear, including groups like the one he helped found, Greenpeace : As always, to join CASEnergy, click here . Look for another clip tomorrow morning.

Yesterday, I posted a link to a clip of Dr. Patrick Moore talking about his work with the CASEnergy Coalition . In today's installment of that same interview, Moore talks about the number of "independent" thinkers that are supporting an expanded role for nuclear energy in the world's energy mix as part of a larger effort to constrain the emission of greenhouse gases while still supplying affordable and reliable electricity: As always, to join CASEnergy, click here . Look for another clip this afternoon.

On Friday, we showed you a clip from Dr. Patrick Moore of the CASEnergy Coalition on why he thinks nuclear energy is getting a second look from the American public . In today's clip from my interview with the co-chair of CASEnergy, he talks about his work with the coalition and why it's important: As always, to join CASEnergy, click here .

Yesterday proved to be a bit busier than I had originally anticipated, as I was afforded the opportunity to speak with Dr. Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace and the co-chair of the CASEnergy Coalition . I met Dr. Moore at the Washington, D.C. offices of Hill and Knowlton and spoke with him for about 25 minutes. Then, for most of the rest of the day, I edited the interview into a number of bite sized pieces for Web consumption. In this first clip, Dr. Moore talks about why nuclear energy is getting a second look from the American public: More clips later. As always, to join CASEnergy, click here .

Details from Tennessee Journalist . Patrick Moore is on the agenda.