“We Need to Start Building New Nuclear”

From Duke Energy’s CEO Jim Rogers:

"We do need to pause, we need to learn the lessons, we need to implement them," he said. "But I think at the end of the day our industry's prepared to do that. More importantly, we need to start building new nuclear in this country because we're going to start retiring our nuclear plants as early as 2019."

He’s right. After all:

"Do you think China is going to slow down on any of its 24 reactors (under construction), or India, or Abu Dhabi? No."

That’s the spirit of competition!

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When an anti-nuclear advocate changes his mind in part due to Fukushima Daiichi, there’s just no stopping him:

Over the last fortnight I've made a deeply troubling discovery. The anti-nuclear movement to which I once belonged has misled the world about the impacts of radiation on human health. The claims we have made are ungrounded in science, unsupportable when challenged, and wildly wrong. We have done other people, and ourselves, a terrible disservice.

That’s George Monbiot, who wrote earlier:

Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small. The crisis at Fukushima has converted me to the cause of nuclear power.

The current column involves a debate between himself and Dr. Helen Caldicott. It went badly for Dr. Caldicott:

First she sent me nine documents: newspaper articles, press releases and an advertisement. None were scientific publications; none contained sources for the claims she had made. But one of the press releases referred to a report by the US National Academy of Sciences, which she urged me to read. I have now done so – all 423 pages. It supports none of the statements I questioned; in fact it strongly contradicts her claims about the health effects of radiation.

You can listen to the debate here.

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The best – by which I mean, most alarming – footage of the Japan tsunami I’ve seen. If the destructive power of a tsunami has been only seen by its result before and thus left a bit abstract, here it is in its full measure, seen as it works its way forward from the coast, destroying everything in its path.

Jim Rogers.