Environmentalists Shift on Nuclear Power

May 15 - United Press International

Some prominent U.S. environmentalists say nuclear power should be reconsidered as a remedy for global warming, the New York Times reported Sunday.

Stewart Brand, a founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and the author of Environmental Heresies, an article in the May issue of Technology Review, said environmentalists are changing their attitudes towards nuclear power because of the growing anxiety about fossil fuels and global warming.

It's not that something new and important and good has happened with nuclear, it's that something new and important and bad has happened with climate change, Brand said in an interview.

Other environmental experts -- including Fred Krupp, the executive director of Environmental Defense; Jonathan Lash, the president of the World Resources Institute; and James Gustave Speth, the dean of Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies -- have stopped short of openly endorsing nuclear power, but they have said it should not be outright rejected.

The environmentalists say solutions should to be developed for the economic, safety and security, waste storage and proliferation issues.