Co-Founder of Greenpeace Envisions a Nuclear Future

Nuclear power presents the ultimate catch-22 for environmentalists. It doesn’t generate a lot of greenhouse gases, but it does produce long-lasting toxic waste.

No one is more familiar with this tough trade-off than Dr. Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace International turned nuclear power booster. He left Greenpeace in the 1980s over ideological differences and now is the co-chairman, along with former EPA administrator Christie Todd Whitman, of the Nuclear Energy Institute’s new Clean and Safe Energy Coalition.

Fossil fuels, nuclear power and hydroelectric power generate 99 percent of the electricity in the United States. Fossil fuels are dirty, and hydroelectric power is tapped out. That leaves nuclear power as a leading alternative. As electricity demand continues to increase, and with wind and solar technologies generating less than 1 percent of our country’s electricity, some activists are turning to once anathema energy sources in the war on global warming.

By Alexis Madrigal

Full Story: http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/news/2007/11/moore_qa