Now We're Cooking!

As I've mentioned before, the Virginia Section of North American-Young Generation in Nuclear (NA-YGN) has been vocal in the public debate about the potential for new nuclear power plants in our state. Articles have appeared in many local newspapers and anti-nuclear activists have been writing letters attacking not only nuclear power, but NA-YGN members personally. Some of us have responded as diplomatically as possible to the misinformation and character defamation.

Recently, in a letter published in Cville, a weekly newspaper in Charlottesville, one writer suspected that the nuclear industry was trying to fake a grassroots movement and that NA-YGN "reeks of deceit and corruption." In response, I wrote that NA-YGN was founded in 1999 well before anyone seriously began talking about new nuclear plants, that the Virginia section in particular was engaged in many public outreach activities years before Dominion ever submitted an Early Site Permit application, and that making such slanderous statements about an organization simply because it supports an action that one does not is the height of rudeness and intolerance.

The next week, another locally prominent anti-nuclear extremist, Elena Day, wrote a letter in which she said in part:

While Vice President Lisa Shell likes to characterize the group as a “pro-nuclear grassroots organization” [“Talking ‘bout my Generation,” Mailbag, March 8], I would like to pose the following question: Is it reasonable for groups whose members have vested their careers in the nationwide acceptance and growth of the nuclear industry to direct or dominate the debate on the expansion of nuclear power in Virginia? I believe not.

Unfortunately, I was on vacation and unable to respond to Ms. Day in time for the next issue. I would have said,

1) I don't support nuclear power because I work in the industry, I work in the industry because I support nuclear power.

2) If greed were my motivation, I would be lobbying to shutdown all nuclear power plants in this country. With ten years of research and working experience in spent nuclear fuel management, if every plant began decommissioning I could name my price as a consultant and retire wealthy at a young age.

3) Who, exactly, is better positioned to comment objectively on nuclear power plants than well-educated professionals who work there and choose to live in the surrounding communities?

4) If, as Ms. Day suggests, those who are employed in the nuclear industry should be disqualified from the public debate, then to be fair, the career anti-nuclear ideologues who make a living working for Public Citizen, BREDL, NIRS, etc., and who provide the skewed information that she often quotes in her letters, must also be excluded.

I didn't have the opportunity to submit the above, but luckily, two of my colleagues that were also called out by Ms. Day fired back in letters printed this week.

Mike Stuart corrected some of Ms. Day's statments about coal plants and ended with:

As for the young engineers and nuclear professionals in NA-YGN, we will not sit idly by while the best chance this country has for energy independence is discredited by the half-truths and misrepresentations that groups such as the People’s Alliance for Clean Energy and the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League will spread to promote their anti-nuclear agenda. These groups have been allowed to spread flawed information without accountability for far too long. If anything, these groups should take a lesson from another grass roots organization, Greenpeace, whose founder, Patrick Moore, has publicly admitted that nuclear power is preferable to the alternatives.

And, to top off the page linked above, you'll note that two local seventh-grade students weighed in with their thoughts on the benefits of nuclear power.

Woohoo! The public debate about nuclear power is heating up in Virginia!

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