Saturday, January 13, 2007

Mike Gravel, Global Warming & Nuclear Power


Former Senator Mike Gravel, left, is clear: He is anti nuclear. He is also one of the many canddidates running for the presidency. He wrote the Forward to the publication, "Poisoned Power: The Case Against Nuclear Power Plants Before & After Three Mile Island." He is no friend to global warming mitigation because he opposes commercial nuclear power. His quotes in the publication and below are full of errors, but here is a bit to chew on. He writes, "...nuclear pollution is certainly a most serious threat to life. Exposure to nuclear radiation can cause cancer, it can cause babies to be born mentally or physically defective and it can cause increases in many serious illnesses like heart disease. The problem with nuclear electricity is that as much long-lived radioactivity is produced inside one large nuclear power plant every year as there is in the explosion of about 1,000 Hiroshima bombs." He continues:

"Unprotected, above-ground nuclear power plants, loaded with radioactivity in their cores, would certainly be large liabilities if this country were ever under attack. They seem to make the country virtually indefensible. Quite aside from war or sabotage, an accident allowing just one percent of the inner radioactivity to escape from one plant would put as much harmful contamination directly into the environment as 10 bombs. And it would not be spread out all over the globe like bomb fallout; it would all be concentrated in just a few states. Suppose we had to abandon large sections of this land we love?" Whew. We think we know where he stands.

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