Columnists Support Nuclear Energy

Support for nuclear energy is a growing trend among columnists at major newspapers, many of whom are self-described environmentalists.

“As a radical environmentalist, I support Progress Energy’s plans to build a nuclear power plant in Florida,” columnist Mike Thomas wrote in the Oct. 11 edition of the Orlando Sentinel.

Michael Fumento, the environment columnists for Scripps Howard News Service, wrote in September that “environmentalists think cheap food and housing are great, yet somehow affordable energy from any source is evil. Saintliness, to them, is achieved by paying through the nose for extravagantly inefficient power sources like windmills and solar panels. Well, let them build a windmill in their backyards. The rest of us need an exorcism from the demons of anti-nuclear hysteria.”

Finally, Oregonian columnist David Reinhard back in June wrote the following in his column entitled At Long Last, It’s Nuclear Option Time: “…as fears about greenhouse gases and global warming grow – and the practical problem of filling the world’s energy needs with non-emission sources becomes ever more apparent – today’s nuclear environmentalists may come to be seen as prophets.”

This does not come as much of a surprise. A May nationwide survey of adults by Bisconti Research Inc./NOP World revealed that 71 percent of environmentalists favor the use of nuclear energy as one of the ways to generate electricity.